Josh Sherman
Every time we move, I invest just a little bit more into smart home devices. While not the most cost effective option, we are very much “all in” on Philips Hue bulbs.
While I really do love the product, getting them to play nice with Amazon Alexa’s voice controls has proven to be a major chore in the past.
The rooms and lights I configured within the Philips Hue application worked fine, but the moment I’d try a voice command, I’d be told that the device doesn’t exist, or even more fun, that multiple devices shared the same name.
This was especially true when renaming existing lights, as their placement had changed, and with the room groupings in general.
Historically, I would just go through and manually set things back up in the Alexa application, which was quite tedious. This has gotten even worse as we’ve continued to expand our collection of bulbs.
This go around, I learned about a voice command you can spit at your Echo, and it handles the whole situation swimmingly.
Simply say:
Alexa, scan for new devices
After a few minutes, Alexa will announce what it found, and you’ll be off to the races! This includes syncing not just your lights and rooms, but your scenes as well.
While I’ve yet to try it with other smart home devices, I have to imagine it will work with other devices as well.
