Maybe not a 100 % Homey question, but still hoping for some ideas.
I’m using Homey with Hue and Alexa and have enabled the Homey skill in Alexa. Now when I open up the Alexa app, it showed all Hue devices twice. Makes sense. So I disabled the Hue skill, deleted all devices and ran a new search. And again, all devices show up twice. When I go to the details of one device, it says Connected through Homey in one, and the other it says Connected through Hue Hub.
Seems Alexa still connects to Hue somehow, although the skill is disabled and I have also removed the access rights in Meet Hue.
First : I delete the Homey Hue Lights -> And retain the Hue Hub Lights
Generally Speaking
Homey Hue Lights
Alexa -> Server -> Homey Server -> Homey -> Hue Hub -> Light
Hue Hub Lights
Alexa -> Server -> Hue Server -> Hue Hub -> Light
One whole less jump, which can be significant especially when Homey Server(EU) is on one side of the word, the alexa server (US) on the other - and I live practically in an different universe (AU).
Second : If you decide to do the same then you need to be aware that the Homey Skill while stable is half-baked. So it is not possible stop a device being imported and further to that as soon as you delete a device … it is re-added. So Instead of deleting the devices you need to disable them in the alexa app.
Third : When attempting to turn on/off a device using Alexa if there is a disabled device of the same name Alexa will tell you she cant comply. And she can easily get confused so you will have to be extreme when renaming the device to stop this. I Found "x[emoji] - Homey - Hue - Disabled - Lounge Light " seems to work .
Forth : I’ve found that there are also sometimes issues with the Rooms imported from the Hue app, and naming them as “Hue in Lounge Room” rather then “Lounge Room” seems to help - this is an issue for me in particular as I have ZWave lights. So I can “Turn off all Lounge lights” as well as “turn off hue in lounge”
Fifth : I use the group app to named as "All Down stairs lights’ To allow me to turn off items not grouped in the hue app.
What I did was to rename all the homey included hue lights with a different name.
I had to do this for my MCO switches as well (those switches add an extra switch)
So my alexa would have ie. Reading light (via HUE) and a duplicate named homey.reading.light. I have like 180 devices within alexa so as long as they name contains z.toilet.light.switch or homey.reading.light, I didn’t need to disable it within the alexa app as alexa doesnt say “there is a few devices name XXX”.
Be sure to check that renaming in homey doesn’t change the bulb name in the hue app. I recalled that homey might rename the bulb back in the hub but once it’s added and u just need to rename it back within the hue app and homey doesn’t update the bulb names…
Its a pain to do that, but once u did this house keeping, the next time I need to forget devices in alexa and add them back, I dont have to re-disable the lights and there’s less admin to do within the alexa app.
What would be great though if there was a way to set within homey what devices are exposed to alexa…
