Echo and room awareness

[jonsmirl]

I have several Echo Dots located in bedrooms. Each of those bedrooms also has a bathroom.   I have made Echo Smart Home Groups for each room and put an echo and the appropriate devices into the group. When I am in the room and say "Alexa turn lights on" it works as expected.

How can I change the spoken phrases so that I can have multiple devices with the name "bath"? The UD Echo portal forces me to have unique phrases on each device. If I could duplicate the phase it seems like I could achieve individual bath control based on the Echo Smart Home Group support.

I'd like to be able to say - "Alexa, turn off bath" in each room.

[Goose66]

That's not how the implicit targeting feature of the Alexa groups works. It doesn't use the name of the devices in the groups to determine which ones to target with a spoken like "Alexa, turn on the lights," it uses the device type. Devices with a type of "Light" are what are turned on and off by this implicit targeting. It also appears to work with door locks. But not with thermostats, fans, or anything custom, like "bath," as of yet. All-in-all a very weak first step towards room awareness.

[jonsmirl]

In the ISY Alexa portal you enter the trigger phases for your various scenes. The portal forces those phrase to be unique. So I have to enter "red bath" and "blue bath" to achieve two unique phrases. 

I have the red bath light assigned to the red echo group, and the blue bath light assigned to the blue echo group. What it I assigned both the red and blue devices the phrase "bath"? Then the "red echo" should look in its group devices for one with the phrase "bath" and find the correct light.

Who is enforcing the phrases to be unique? The ISY portal or Amazon?

 

Edited April 21, 2018 by jonsmirl