Echo & Alexa Forums
General Category => Amazon Echo Discussion => Topic started by: vinothkumar on January 18, 2018, 04:26:00 am
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Alexa used to turn on my lights whenever I said something like, "Alexa, turn on light1". I have 4 lights. ligh1, light2, light3 and light4. After two weeks i got replied from Alexa "A few things share that name, which one do you want?" When asking "Alexa, Turn on light1"
how to fix this?
Regards,
VinothS
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Find naming "Light1" as "LightOne" Or "Light one" etc. etc.
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Really, you should name your bulbs differently. Most of the manufacturers recommend NOT using actual numbers or names of numbers to identify them. They suggest names like "Sofa Light" "Corner Light" "Table Light", "East light" etc... Truthfully they actually mean naming it just the name without the word "Light" after it. You can also cause yourself issues if you named the bulb and a room by the same name... Such as "Ruby's Room" and "Ruby's Light"... these cause conflict as well due to a recent update. until about 3 or 4 weeks ago, you wouldn't have had a problem. Now you will hear the "A few things share that name"... message... basically just be more creative in naming rooms and bulbs. It will go a long way toward correcting things.
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We have smart plugs named One Lamp and Two Lamps and we easily can turn the lamps on and off individually, and they also are in an Alexa Group called Living Room that gets both of them. We found that naming the Lamps in this order (with One or Two first in name) eliminated the problem you have.
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I’ve noticed Alexa becoming more error-prone over the past week, with this error being prominent.
I have a bulb called ‘Landing’. It is at the top of a flight of stairs. Nothing else has that name, or a name close to that.
Yet I get that error every time when trying to get Alexa to turn that light on or off recently.
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In the Hue apps check to see if you named the bulb and room the same thing. That is what I did wrong. I had a light called 'Bedroom' in the room named 'bedroom'. Alexa finds both lights and rooms. If I had not used a lower case 'b' for the room bedroom, I doubt I would have figured it out.
If this is your case, in the Hue app rename the lights and rooms differently, like "Bedroom' for the light and 'Bed' for the room. Then in the PC web app for Alexa, click on 'Forget All' and then rediscover. Now you can control each light individually with your Echo by using the light's name and with all the functionality of that bulb.
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So I had my desk lamp connected to a TP-Link brand controlled outlet. All was cool and I could have Alexa turn it on and off by name.
Then I got a 4 outlet strip (different brand & skill) and moved the desk lamp to it. I named one of the outlets on it "desk lamp" and renamed the TP-link single outlet one to "whatever" until such time as I decide to reuse it.
Yet now when I ask Alexa to turn on or off the desk lamp, I get the "A few things share that name..." response.
I have one and only one thing (one of the plugs on the 4 outlet strip) named "desk lamp" and nothing else has a name even similar to that.
I removed the "whatever" plug device, and even disabled the TP-link skill, but still get this message.
How do I clear the duplicate name??? As mentioned, I renamed it, deleted it, and even disabled the skill.
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Go in and look at all devices and groups and see what names may sound similar or are still listed even though "removed" and make a new name for any that have similar names. If you can... do this on a PC or Other computer through the web page. It makes things easy to See and manipulate. If you have another device called "Lamp" or "Desk" anywhere in the house you can have a conflict due to just the one word of two... The Echo's seem to ignore the "light" designation much better than "lamp" when on multiple devices. I have probably 10 or 12 bulbs with a the word "light" in them, but I now only have one "Lamp" as I had similar issue once, and finally decided to just manage it myself since Alexa couldn't seem to get it right at times... sometimes it was no big deal but most times it caused the same conflict of "multiple items share that name"... I didn't realize how un-creative I was until Alexa came along and made it very obvious to me. ,So I have made some effort to change my ways. I have bulbs that are named "Left" and "Right" in a single fixture and the name of the fixture is "the twins" and even all of that is in a room, so I can control every level individually now... It takes a while to wrap your head around ways to make things work the way you want, by changing the way you think about what is desired and how to get there.
All in all, I believe you're on the right track as well, but I don't use any smart outlets, as I have nothing in my house that I can turn on with an outlet except lamps ( that wouldn't require human interaction to make function... all electronic stuff), and all of them have Hue Bulbs in them now. I don't even have a fan that would work with an outlet. Even my CPAP machine requires me to turn it back on after a power outage.
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I was running into this error with TP-Link Smart Plugs. Here's how I got in the situation and how I fixed it.
I had a smart plug called "Guest Bedroom". I was able to turn on it on by saying either:
"Alexa, turn on Guest"
"Alexa, turn on Guest Bedroom"
Then I added a few more smart plugs and decided to change the name of that device from "Guest Bedroom" to "Guest Bedroom Light". There were no other devices named "Guest" or "Guest Bedroom" or any devices that started with those. There was only "Guest Bedroom Light" now. After making this change, saying:
"Alexa, turn on Guest"
"Alexa, turn on Guest Bedroom"
I got the dreaded "A few things share that name, which one did you want" and I had to specify the whole name "Guest Bedroom Light". Not a big deal, but frustrating, because I know there's an entry in a database somewhere that's no longer needed, but it's stopping me from using the abbreviated versions with Alexa for my guest bedroom light. I figured I needed to somehow reset that database.
Here's what finally worked.
1. Start Alexa app on iPhone (make sure you have the most current version of the App)
2. Tap Device icon on lower right of screen
3. Tap the "+" icon in the upper right to add a new device
4. Tap "Add Device" (Even though there is no new device to add)
5. Tap "Plug"
6. Tap "TP-Link Kasa"
7. Tap "DISCOVER DEVICES"
And that fixed it. My guess is in trying to discover devices Alexa/Amazon rebuilt the database and all the old names that no longer existed were discarded. Don't know if this will work for everything, but it worked for TP-Link Smart Plugs.