Room Awareness

[Guest]

Room awareness - http://www.smarthomereviewer.com/how...the-alexa-app/

Great feature which used to work for me but stopped some time back. If I am in the guest suite and say "Alexa, turn on the guest suite lights" all works as expected. If I say "Alexa, turn on the lights" she says "Sorry, I didn't find a device named lights".

What am I missing? The devices are part of the same group as the Echo Dot I'm speaking to and the devices are set as lights in the settings.

[AZweimiller]

Try simplifying your setup and see if it works. Drop all devices from the group except for one light and the Echo you are testing from. If that works add things back to the group until it breaks. If it doesn't work with one might and one Echo try deleting and recreating the group.

[Guest]

Thanks AZweimiller. I actually did try that a couple of months ago without success. I may need to try again. In the mean time, I've spent a very frustrating hour on support with Amazon where I had to find all of the documentation to prove that this actually should work. They were convinced this was not a feature of Alexa. Fortunately, there is some documentation on their support site that mentions this. I ended up with an escalation and a support ticket. We'll see what happens.

My real question is - does this feature work as expected for anyone else right now?

[jmaddox]

I wasn't aware it was an available feature until I saw your topic. I set it up this morning in one room as a test and it's currently working as expected. I had been looking for an excuse to update my alexa HS devices. If it remains stable I'll expand to other rooms.

As a side note. I got my ceiling fan working by creating 4 events, off, low, medium, high. Apparently you need to prepend 'run' in front of events.

[Guest]

Thanks Jmaddox. That is a very useful data point. I'm pretty much stuck except for trying (again) to start from scratch or having Amazon fix something (unlikely).

Regarding the scenes, I avoid saying "run" by not using scenes directly. I create a routine using the alexa app and then have it fire the scene or a virtual device which triggers an event. The speech is much more natural because you don't need to say "run" but it is an extra step in the setup.

[Rupp]

Room awareness - http://www.smarthomereviewer.com/how...the-alexa-app/

Great feature which used to work for me but stopped some time back. If I am in the guest suite and say "Alexa, turn on the guest suite lights" all works as expected. If I say "Alexa, turn on the lights" she says "Sorry, I didn't find a device named lights".

What am I missing? The devices are part of the same group as the Echo Dot I'm speaking to and the devices are set as lights in the settings.

Did you group your lights to create rooms?

[jmaddox]

Thanks Jmaddox. That is a very useful data point. I'm pretty much stuck except for trying (again) to start from scratch or having Amazon fix something (unlikely).

Regarding the scenes, I avoid saying "run" by not using scenes directly. I create a routine using the alexa app and then have it fire the scene or a virtual device which triggers an event. The speech is much more natural because you don't need to say "run" but it is an extra step in the setup.

awesome, thanks for the tip!

[jmaddox]

I thought I might add. I'm on HS4. I also had Homeseer SmartHome installed previously with devices added when I was on HS3, I did not remove it. Installed Homeseer Home Automation Skill which asked for myhs credentials. I used bulk edit and disabled voice on everything. deleted all HS devices from alexa. Manually added voice to 2 lights, then used discover which discovered the 2 lights and 3 of the 4 ceiling fan events. Granted I created the ceiling fan events in 3 batches. one to test, then 3 other speeds. then I realized I needed off too. 'off' event didn't discover but I was happy enough until my wife tried to turn the fan off using alexa and I had to quickly pull out my phone and turn the fan off. The alexa interface I'm using is installed on an android phone; though I don't think that would be an issue.

just did discover again and my off event transferred

[Guest]

Hi Rupp. I believe that I have groups setup properly. The app screenshots in the first post should provide the details. Amazon just responded looking for details for the support ticket so I'll see where that goes.

jmaddox, Good to know how things are working for you.