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Scenes and Alexa

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Scenes and Alexa
« on: January 10, 2018, 07:57:12 am »
So the last couple of weeks has been exasperating as far as things that keep happening to a system of Echos and Hue Lamps/bulbs that up until now have been rock solid. All of a sudden, mob system keeps installing scenes I didn't ask for. This doesn't bother me as much as it does the IN-Laws, as their  lights in their rooms keep installing all the scenes (the rest of the house doesn't seem to be affected). Bright, concentrate, dimmed, nightlight, that kind of crap... All I want is for Alexa to turn 'em on and off by the simple same command. When the new scenes are installed, they add a scene with the name of the room or bulb to the list of devices and scenes. I have to go in and manually remove each scene to get down to working "rooms" again. These updates have done this twice in less than 2 weeks... Kind of getting fed up with Alexa. If this keeps on happening, I will move to another AI to stop the madness.

Does anyone know how to stop automatically adding scenes to my Smart home devices in the Alexa app. I have none installed anywhere else on my Hue app or any other device that I am aware of... but that doesn't mean it's not there somehow. The Hue app doesn't show any scenes at all. Only the Alexa app shows them.
2 Echo Dots 2nd gen
2 echo dots gen 3 (no clock) -2 Echo Dot 3rd gen with Clock
1 echo dot Gen 4 with clock
1 Echo Spot
4 10" Fire Tablets
1 15' Echo show
23 Hue Lights 1 Hue bridge - 1 Amazon Smart plug outlet
One Ring Doorbell Pro
4 cell phones with Alexa app installed!
You should see My Apple Device List!

Re: Scenes and Alexa
« Reply #1 on: January 10, 2018, 09:49:45 pm »
I know people have read this, but no replies, So I will update as necessary if I find any answer/s.

Today, while I was at work, The Alexa "Scenes" section repopulated again... I deleted ALL scenes as I have never set up ANY scenes... Is there some reason Alexa discovers devices and scenes on it's own? If so that sux.
2 Echo Dots 2nd gen
2 echo dots gen 3 (no clock) -2 Echo Dot 3rd gen with Clock
1 echo dot Gen 4 with clock
1 Echo Spot
4 10" Fire Tablets
1 15' Echo show
23 Hue Lights 1 Hue bridge - 1 Amazon Smart plug outlet
One Ring Doorbell Pro
4 cell phones with Alexa app installed!
You should see My Apple Device List!

cdnirene

Re: Scenes and Alexa
« Reply #2 on: January 10, 2018, 11:44:07 pm »
Have you tried deleting the Amazon Alexa app and reinstalling again?

Snakeyes

Re: Scenes and Alexa
« Reply #3 on: January 11, 2018, 09:21:39 am »
Unfortunately/fortunately Alexa will automatically pull scenes that you have not set up, but are included in other smart home software/hubs. My system includes Phillips hue, SmartThings, Harmony, Nest, Romba and a few others including a smart coffee system. The harmony hub and the Phillips hue have a lot of built-in scenes that Alexa will automatically drag into its list. In SmartThings you have to create scenes in the SmartThings app before they get dragged in.

While it seems like a pain, in the long run some of the scenes create some great smart home ideas. In the meantime your best and possibly only, option is to disable these scenes. I see this not as a flaw in Alexa software, but rather flaw in the integration software of Phillips hue etc. etc. The SmartThings approach allowing you to create your own scenes seems to be the ideal way to integrate the hub with Alexa.

Re: Scenes and Alexa
« Reply #4 on: January 11, 2018, 08:59:19 pm »
I have update (and would like to thank those who replied with thoughts to help... Very kind of you), that will help explain what was happening and what is currently happening.

When I set up the 2 particular rooms with their own echo dots and Hue White Bulbs, I set them up as the room by the persons name Steve's room and Ruby's room, and named the bulbs Steves light and Ruby's light respectively... This worked without problems for months... no problem whatsoever. Could tell any echo in the house "Alexa, turn on Steve's/Ruby's Light" and get perfect response. So there's how things have been for a while now.

I think it was last week, when the Hue update hit that gave room set-up where you can do some crap with your TV and Hue Bulbs so that all the lights respond to your viewing material... not interested, but I knew it came out and I knew I would ignore it... I read about it a little and decided I had already made the choice that makes the most sense, the decision to not use that feature within the Hue System... Seems like that should keep things Status Quo... or at least I thought it did...

evidently, in the same time frame, Amazon rolled out a fairly big update that had little explanation and lots of feature changes. one of them was the ability to set up Single Echo units to recognize what room you're in and give you the ability to walk into just about any room in your home that has an echo device and say "Alexa, turn on lights" and Alexa would activate the lights in the room you're "grouped to" or whatever... Still sounds like a cool feature... I may give that a try soon as well, but if they keep jacking up the already functional things... I may go Apple when they release their Home Pod. Another feature evidently is to automatically load Scenes for every damn light you own, if there is a room named and set up in the HUE app. It somehow sees what Hue has for a list and copies the whole thing to your Alexa App, and makes rooms for any rooms you had set up in Hue that were not set up as separate groups on Alexa app... With an explanation of it and a guide to help you walk through the changes and the new processes, It might not be such a pain, but without these things it's a mess at best.

So... Basically I figured out (since there is only one light in each of the rooms I had problems with) I could eliminate the rooms in the Hue App, and let Alexa discover devices and it wouldn't identify the rooms any more and now functions as I had it set up to begin with. Now I can tell you the exact reason I had the problem, and how to avoid it.

NEVER SET UP A ROOM AND A HUE BULB WITH THE SAME NAME AS ONE ANOTHER - That's where I made the mistake that was hard to identify, as it wasn't a problem until Alexa started automatically setting up scenes and collecting room data from the Hue App.

2 Echo Dots 2nd gen
2 echo dots gen 3 (no clock) -2 Echo Dot 3rd gen with Clock
1 echo dot Gen 4 with clock
1 Echo Spot
4 10" Fire Tablets
1 15' Echo show
23 Hue Lights 1 Hue bridge - 1 Amazon Smart plug outlet
One Ring Doorbell Pro
4 cell phones with Alexa app installed!
You should see My Apple Device List!