Question re: Caseta, hubs, two homes, Alexa

tl;dr - a question re: Amazon accounts

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Hi folks,

When I first made the move to Lutron Caseta, I was totally shut down with the option of using multiple hubs. And that made me stick with Lutron Caseta in my main home, and WeMo in my outbuildings.

What was important for me was Alexa Integration. And from a verbal control perspective, the Caseta and WeMo solution really work well together.

In other words, for me, the Amazon Alexa voice control integration is the real key part of the whole enchilada.

I have simplified things for myself, always using a location indicator as part of the name (ex: Main-Kitchen-Light, Garage-Front-Light, Cabin-Kitchen-Light, etc.)

So.

I have told you all that so I can say this:

I HAVE ADDED A SECOND HOME. a vacation home far away from the main home. and I would like to use Lutron Caseta devoices there now.

I will first say that I have my various Amazon Echo devices working very well at the first and second home. A whole slew of Amazon Echo & Tap devices, two different networks, all on one Amazon account, no problems (even though Amazon says that is not supported). So, it is great that I get notifications and have one single account integration everywhere.

And...

Now, in 2022, I see that the Lutron Caseta App supports multiple homes, and allows a person to switch back and forth between home to manage a two-home integration. Which is great. For me one hub will be Colorado, and the other will be Florida. and all the devices will (like before) have that location indicator (Ex: Florida-Kitchen-Lighting, etc.)


SO, WHAT IS THE QUESTION?

In most of the questions other postings I have seen related to this, connecting to the Amazon Service only allows for one single hub to connect. (Clearly this limitation is Amazon's perspective that each home should have its own Amazon account. Which I see as poor programming, but hey: not my company, not my code.).

Then I ask:


When Lutron says: "You need an Amazon account per Hub." Does that mean that (a) I need to create an entirely separate account or (b) I need to set up a household account ?

If the answer is (a), then this would really be disappointing as I would no longer receive what I consider "my" notifications at one of the homes. :(

If the answer is that (b) is good, then we are solid.

But... I would really like to know what is supported (even marginally).

Thanks,

Vincent


PS... what I mean by "marginally" is that I have a Lutron Caseta on/off switch outside in a weatherproof box controlling an exterior light. Not supported... works great.

I would be really fine with a "not supported but works good" solution.

Hello, currently Alexa only supports a single home. You will be able to select which home when linking the account. If you wish to have more than 1 Lutron home with Alexa, you need to create multiple Alexa accounts. Note: If you don’t create a second Alexa account in your other home, voice control can only be used to control the lights and shades in the first home you picked. So it would be answer A.

You can learn more about how each integration behaves when using multi-homes here at: https://www.casetawireless.com/us/en/faqs

@FreddyG - Wow... I just wrote a very lengthy response, the system logged me out, and it was lost in the ether.


So, here is the abridged version: HOW do I add that second Alexa account? I looked at the FAQ info, it does not provide guidance on the HOW of adding that account to the second home.

Yes, I created a new email and new amazon account and validate each with Gmail's and Amazon's required security hoops.

Then I went into Lutron App / second home / settings / advanced / integration /connections... and there appears not a way to add that second Amazon Account to the Lutron Second house.

Here is the screenshot of my Samsung Android Lutron app: your Lutron system does not have any integration connections set up

Attachment 974


Under the first home, it does recognize Amazon Alexa integration. The second does not have any way to add it.

Please provide specific steps I should take to add that second Alexa account info to the Luton second home. There is much guidance on how to do ONE... but nothing that I have found that discusses the set-up for the SECOND Hub / Home.

Thank you.

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ps: I would be willing to volunteer my time working with Lutron to resolve this multiple hub / one account product shortcoming. While I commend Lutron in adding the ability to add a second home, the lack of practical multi-house voice control is jarring.

And Customer Experience is all about easy. Voice Control is critical.

We can discuss with a compare and contrast of the KMC Smart experience. Multiple homes, no hubs, dozen devices at both homes, one Amazon account (so that means dozens of connections to my Alexa account, and Lutron does only ONE), and that means simple voice control across both hubs/homes.

The integration is done through the Alexa app. Please visit the support article here for instructions on how to integrate your second Amazon account to your Caseta bridge.

I am interested in learning how to get the Lutron Caseta App to support my two homes, and allow me to switch back and forth between homes to manage my Lutron switches. Thank you.

Hello,

Linked here is a helpful knowledge article from our Caseta Support site on how to add a second Caseta Smart Hub to your Lutron app under an existing account: https://support.lutron.com/us/en/pro...Caseta-account

Once the second home is added to your app, a new icon will appear in the top right corner of the main screen (opposite the settings icon) that will allow you to toggle between your two Hub systems in each home.

A bit sleepy after an evening of debugging this issue for the second time in as many years, so forgive the run-on paragraph, feel free to skip to the fix. For anyone else suffering from the great ifttt/Alexa breakup of Halloween 2023, or more generally for anyone who decides to use two Lutron smart hubs with Alexa at once, there is hope. As many others, I bought a second Lutron Caseta system for my home (in a detached office 100ft from the house connected via ethernet to the house) a while ago without verifying device control via Alexa was a supported feature for both hubs at once (side note: it really should be devs, I promise you adding this feature is worth the goodwill bump, until then you're welcome). For a while, I paid for ifttt to bridge the gap and route Lutron devices connected to my second hub to Alexa routines through that. While it was better than nothing, the ifttt app had some annoying quirks when used via Alexa (i.e. "Alexa, trigger..."). Now that the Alexa team has stopped support for the ifttt skill on Halloween (October 31st, 2023), that broke today (November 1st 2023). Whelp, let me save you the time when you debug your ifttt Lutron issues tonight. Don't be like me and spend a whole evening on this or try to install homeassistant (or do, it seems great and has a docker container, as long as you're only trying to control local devices). Just implement the below smartthings fix for a free and pretty robust solution. If you have more than two Lutron smart hubs (smart bridges?) at once, I don't know if this will work (probably won't), but two will.

FIX:
1. Make a Samsung my.smartthings.com account (if you don't already have one)
2. Connect Samsung my.smartthings.com account (if you don't already have one)
3. Download the Samsung smartthings app.
4. Connect the smartthings app (Devices > + > Add Device > Search "Lutron" > click the Lutron option to connect the app) to your Lutron app account via the smartthings app
5. Add the smartthings skill to Alexa
6. ???
7. Profit

...Go update your Alexa routines, and then hope Alexa doesn't drop smartthings support next. Seems unlikely to me though, since there's a much larger userbase than ifttt, and supporting it is probably a pretty minor cost to Samsung to maintain their legacy device Alexa support (Samsung doesn't use or make smartthings hubs for newer Samsung devices anymore). I hope this helps save someone else some time!

Note on the previous post. You do not need to own a smartthings hub for any of that to work.

Are you saying this will work without actually owning an actual smartthings hub?

Exactly, no smartthings hub is needed for the fix to work.

Just to clarify further, all you really need is the smartthings backend website/app bouncing your requests between Alexa and Lutron for the second bridge. That connection doesn't involve a smartthings hub anyway, so one isn't needed. I don't imagine owning a smartthings hub would hurt anything either, it just doesn't affect the connection between Alexa and Lutron via the smartthings backend at all.

One additional note that might be helpful, I couldn't get the smartthings website to work for this fix, just the app.

Just to clarify further, all you really need is the smartthings backend website/app bouncing your requests between Alexa and Lutron for the second bridge. That connection doesn't involve a smartthings hub anyway, so one isn't needed. I don't imagine owning a smartthings hub would hurt anything either, it just doesn't affect the connection between Alexa and Lutron via the smartthings backend at all.

One additional note that might be helpful, I couldn't get the smartthings website to work for this fix, just the app.

Just to clarify further, all you really need is the smartthings backend website/app bouncing your requests between Alexa and Lutron for the second bridge. That connection doesn't involve a smartthings hub anyway, so one isn't needed. I don't imagine owning a smartthings hub would hurt anything either, it just doesn't affect the connection between Alexa and Lutron via the smartthings backend at all.

One additional note that might be helpful, I couldn't get the smartthings website to work for this fix, just the app.

One more follow up, the reason you don't need a smartthings hub here, is that the real key is the smartthings servers. Those servers can sit on the open web and make connections between the Alexa and Lutron services. Since that connection between Lutron and Alexa is completely in the cloud, smartthings is more or less just serving as a way to "bounce" a second Lutron hub off smartthings servers to Alexa's servers. Since all you need for the bounce is the servers, the smartthings hub wouldn't actually be connected to your Lutron device, even if you had a smartthings hub. Thus, you can just run this fix for free by foregoing the smartthings hub. They're expensive and unnecessary for this fix.

Also, in case I didn't make it clear before, I was only able to set up the connection via the app, not the smartthings website. I used the website to make my account, but then immediately hopped to the smartthings app to do the rest. You probably could just make an account through the app and have this all work too. But I didn't realize the website was missing the proper functionality when I started figuring out this fix.

Hope this has helped!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by bought_2_hubs_fix

Exactly, no smartthings hub is needed for the fix to work.

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So smartthings can recognize two "homes" or hubs that are setup under one username in the lutron app. It appears that once you get the second hub, you install it as a second home in the lutron app. This would then be recognized by smartthings as one big home (combining both hub devices)?

When I try to add caseta to smartthings, it asks me which home I want to add and says it can only add one home. Am I missing something?

To clarify, although SmartThings has the option for multiple homes, if you wish to have more than 1 Lutron home with SmartThings, you need to create multiple SmartThings accounts. The user above is describing a potential workaround where for Alexa and multiple Lutron hubs, you can utilize a SmartThings integration with Alexa to route the second Lutron home into the Alexa interface that way, not a workaround for two Lutron homes on one SmartThings account. We hope this helps!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Joy L.

To clarify, although SmartThings has the option for multiple homes, if you wish to have more than 1 Lutron home with SmartThings, you need to create multiple SmartThings accounts. The user above is describing a potential workaround where for Alexa and multiple Lutron hubs, you can utilize a SmartThings integration with Alexa to route the second Lutron home into the Alexa interface that way, not a workaround for two Lutron homes on one SmartThings account. We hope this helps!

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Ah, so the resolution is that Alexa connects directly to one home and then Alexa connects to Smartthings and Smartthings is connected to the second home. Is that the gist?