fryfrog

You don't even need a sub-account to have two ISYs, both of mine are just on the one portal account. All my Echos are also on one Amazon account. So the current behavior is that both houses act as one. Which is kind of neat in that at my real house, I can say "Alexa, turn on the gutter heaters." and they'll turn on at our snow house. But awkward when you're at the snow house and say "Alexa, turn on the kitchen lights." and way back at our real house, the kitchen lights turn on and nothing happens at the snow house. With a bunch of tricky naming, I *could* make this work... but it isn't very user friendly. The new v3 skill and Echo groups would help, but not enough. Each house has its own internet and internal network, so they're not on the same LAN.

Ah, I was hoping at least portal sub-accounts would work. If they're independent, how would you do cross ISY access?

I want each house to be almost entirely stand alone, independent. Like "Alexa, turn on the kitchen lights." wouldn't work in the above example because I have two kitchens, so each would have to have a unique qualifier which would make it even more annoying. Having them be merged is "easy" and is actually unintentionally how they are now. I was *hoping* I didn't literally have to set them up w/ their own portal accounts and having two Amazon accounts will be annoying because I pay for Prime and Music and a bunch of other stuff on my primary, but I wouldn't on my secondary.

I *think* I want to create sub-accounts in the ISY portal and move each ISY to a sub account. I *think* each houses Echos need to be on a different Amazon account. Probably the primary I'm using now and a sub-account that is family. Is that right? Both my ISYs are on the main account in the portal and have a fair number of Echo commands setup. I found a download for the spoken commands, but don't see an upload. I also don't see a way to just move them around. Am I close in what I need to do? Am I missing anything obvious?

To be fair, it could be that the Insteon "cloud" infrastructure is less reliable than what ISY has setup. It'd be hard to test this as the issue w/o actually having both to test with. But assuming they've got good wifi, a good router and good internet, this could be it. I don't exactly hear a lot of people talking about Insteon + Alexa integration in any of the places I frequent. :/

Ah, there it is! Thanks!

I can't find it there, what section are you looking at?

Arg, I was just looking for this today. It looks like the "new hotness" is to disable and re-enable the skill. But even that didn't seem to work for me, so I've had to "Forget" one by one all my Harmony devices. :/

While Music Groups have a similar limitation, this post surely is referring to the new system that lets you create a Group with devices and an Echo, then say "Alexa, turn on the lights" to *that* Echo and have it work. The limitation of an Echo being only in one group makes sense in this case, since that is how it knows what devices to turn on/off when you just tell it to "Turn on the lights" For Music groups, the limitation is a little less understandable to me.

This already exists for Echo and will work with ISY when v3 is approved. You create a Group w/ the Echo and lights in that room. Now, when you say "Alexa, turn on the lights" to *that* Echo, the lights in that group turn on/off. Each Echo can only be in *one* group. Nice and elegant way of doing it, I think. Now I have a good excuse to have one in *every* room!

Do you know some/all/any of the words that you *can* use for "open" to work? Garage is the only obvious one so far. Are stu's suggestions of lock, door, deadbolt, window and gate accurate?

Maybe we're talking about different things? Do you have a link? The thing that exists and works *now* (but not for ISY until v3 gets approved) is Echo specific groups. For example, you have an Echo in your kitchen and you create a smart group called Kitchen and you add to it that *one* echo and all the kitchen lights you'd normally want turned on. Now when you say "Alexa, turn on the lights" to that Echo... the lights in that group turn on. An Echo can only be in *one* group, which is why this works and is simple and is elegant. But it does mean you need an Echo in each room. It sounds like you think they have some way to have an Echo in say room A and C, then someone in room B (where there is no echo) can say something and Echo's in A and C will realize you were in room B. This sounds *much* harder and I doubt this is what they mean or are working on.

Ah, nice! Looking forward to v3 then!

https://www.reddit.com/r/homeautomation/comments/79bi8w/speak_naturally_to_your_alexa_context_aware/ This should already be possible, but I haven't been able to get it to work. Maybe because my devices don't look like lights? :/

It exists and works for some people, is achieved in an interesting way. You just add an echo to a group. But I can't get it to work myself. http://www.vmwareinfo.com/2017/10/speak-naturally-to-your-alexa-context.html https://www.reddit.com/r/homeautomation/comments/79bi8w/speak_naturally_to_your_alexa_context_aware/