Question re: Caseta, hubs, two homes, Alexa

[bought_2_hubs_fix]

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.

[bought_2_hubs_fix]

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.

[bought_2_hubs_fix]

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.

[bought_2_hubs_fix]

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!

[uclalee]

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

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)?

[JS-NJ]

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?

[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!

[JS-NJ]

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!

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?