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/

I guess totally separate is better than totally mixed Mainly, I just want to say "turn on the kitchen lights" and have it turn the kitchen lights on for the house I'm in. I don't want to have to say "turn on the house1 kitchen lights"

So the wiki link you provided ends up with 2 homes, each with their own ISY and echo devices... all being controlled together. So for example, you need to differentiate between house1's kitchen lights and house2's kitchen lights. How do you have 2 houses, each with their own isy and echos... that are independent? Or mostly independent? I *think* you'll need two amazon accounts. And you'll need to put each ISY on its own sub-account in the portal. With ISYs all in sub-accounts, can you still use the main account to create commands that work on both? For example, if I'm in house1 I'd like to be able to change house2's temperature but I don't really care about being able to turn on any of the lights.

My original setup including dividing the house up into folders for the floor and room, placing devices inside each room and naming them "Keypad" or "Dimmer" or something along those lines. When I went to setup the echo, I now had a list of 20 "Keypads" and 20 "Dimmers" w/o any useful way to figure out which was which. So I had to re-think my naming scheme and now the device names are more useful like "Master Bedroom Lights"

How about a program that calls that scene for false and nothing for true? Then have echo call that program instead of the scene.

And if you don't want to mess w/ the pins, you can just pull the tumblers out and take them to a lock smith. This is especially easy if you do it *before* you install the locks.

So you have one set of can lights that is controlled by 4 or 5 switches? Once you untangle the switch legs, you can do whatever you want. You'll need one switch at the load, but all the other switches are "optional". So if you don't *really* want 4 or 5 switches controlling the lights, you can just cap half of the traveler (red?) and wire the other half together (black?). Then just put a non-load switch in any location you want one. Or don't, if the load happens to be exactly where you want a switch.

I still want a Dot in every room or an Echo remote. With a phone, you're going to have to whip it out, unlock it, open the app and then do whatever. And what about people visiting your house? Or your kids that don't have iPhones yet? I think I'll end up putting a Dot in almost every room, though I wish it were a little cheaper. The remote would be perfect if you didn't have to hit a button first.

Not yet, but I saw a link to a tweet on Reddit the other day that strongly implied this was coming.

Using two Amazon accounts to solve this is really bugging me. It means that I'll have to log out of the app every time I'm at another house and log in again. Also, some of the account sharing doesn't work, right? Like music? It also looks like you can only have two "adult" accounts in your Amazon household? :/

So I finally got around to doing this myself and it worked great! I have two houses, each with an ISY. A month or so ago, I added an Echo and got the ISY Portal working on our vacation home while we were there for a long stay. Came back a week or two ago and ordered an Echo for it too. Thought I might have to do some crazy stuff to get it all working, but nope. Just paid for the portal on the other ISY, added the Echo to my amazon account and then "Alexa, switch IZZY to <name of ISY in portal>." and it worked great. It *did* take me a few tries to figure that out, so I think it was turning the kitchen lights on and off in our other house to start with. Edit: I spoke too soon, I'm having trouble w/ the one at our vacation house now. I can't get it to switch to the right ISY. :/