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Sharing Scenes and Household Routines

trumpton
Community Member

I have 2 users in the household, and following the introduction of Household Routines, I have deleted all routines for all users, unlinked all works with google accounts and attempted to start from scratch.

I have linked my "Home Assistant" login through my google home app.
I have linked my wife's "Home Assistant" login through her google home app.
Note that these two "Home Assistant" accounts are linked to the same server with the same setup and the same scenes.

I have linked my "Broadlink IHC" login through my google home app.
I have linked my wife's "Broadlink IHC" login through her google home app.
Note that these two logins are linked together in the same 'family' through the broadlink system and we can see the same scenes.

I add a personal routine for myself to access a Home Assistant Scene, or a Broadlink Scene, and it works - I can also say "Activate XXX" to activate one of the scenes.

I add a personal routine for my wife to access a Home Assistant Scene, or a Broadlink Scene, and it works - She can also say "Activate XXX" to activate the same scenes as me.

I now add a Household Routine which activates a Home Assistant or Broadlink IHC scene, and it works for me, and my wife gets a message saying that it is not accessible.

Conversely, she can add a Household Routine, which activates a Home Assistant or Broadlink IHC scene, and it works for her, but not for me.

The only way I can get this to work is to create a Household Routine which rather than activating a scene, runs a custom command where I type in "Activate XXX". This works for both of us.

It almost looks like that under the bonnet, there is some link between the creator's account and the creator's linked service (e.g. a UUID) - i.e. the scene is not associated / accessed by its name, and in the two examples cited, the two users have different UUIDs for the same thing.

One may think that a possible solution could be for both users to link using the same (shared) login, however, some services will not allow the same login to be linked to different Google accounts.

Question: Is there a way to share scenes between users so that Household Routines will work?

Question: Is there a case where there is actually a third tier of sharing?

  • Personal
  • Household
  • Household with Shared Scenes

Ta, Steve

15 REPLIES 15

kiltguy2112
Bronze
Bronze

We use Hubitat, and what works for us is:

1. I setup Hubitat and linked it to my Google Home account

2. Through Google home I invited my wife on her Google account.

3. She joined the home and did not link her Google home account to Hubitat

4.  All routines and devices work as expected.

Hi KiltGuy - I've tried something similar.

Originally, only I had things linked (such as Philips Hue) and both of us could access them.

Once Google stopped us from effectively using IFTTT, we started using the Google shopping lists, which required us to register our voices.  Even following this, my wife could still access the Philips Hue (for example).

Then Google rolled out the Household Routines, and then _some_ of the scenes called up by routines worked for her, and some did not.

I then removed / uninstalled everything, and just linked the Hue, Broadlink and Home Assistant to my account only, and she had _zero_ access to the scenes.

I then tried logging her into the same services as me with the same accounts, and some of them did not allow this, so I ended up creating duplicate accounts for the services, and linking them together.

Which gets me to where I am today - 2 users with voice recognition, each with 3 linked services to their own account (and the associated services are linked together), where if one user creates a Household Routine which access a scene, the routine is available to both, but the scene is only accessible by the creator.

Steve

Jake
Community Specialist
Community Specialist

Hey there,

 

Thanks for the help kiltguy2112.

Sorry for the late reply. I wanted to follow up and see if I could be of any help. Please let me know if you are still having any trouble from here, as I would be happy to take a closer look and assist you further. 

Best regards,
Jake

Muddi
Community Specialist
Community Specialist

Hey folks,

 

It's been some time since this thread was updated. Does anyone here need assistance?

 

Cheers,

Muddi

trumpton
Community Member

Still no solution I'm afraid - It would be good to see someone confirming that they have got it working with Philips Hue, IHC or Home Assistant -

i.e.

1. something setup _since_ Google created household routines

2. 2 Household members where one has setup a household routine which uses scenes

3. Scenes are on Philips Hue, IHC or Home Assistant

4. And only one member needs to set up the scene for all household members to be able to access it.

Perhaps the Hubitat software works differently?

😞

If I recall correctly, a hubitat scene can appear as a household device. That way any member could "turn on" the scene and then hubitat would do what it does.

 

When a different service links a scene it's a unique item that only the Google user who linked the service can access via routines, even if they are household routines.

And it's infuriating that even if two household members have separately linked access to one scene, only the person who creates that action in a household routine can have that scene appear on that routine, it deletes the action from the other person's view.

LorenzoPreda
Community Member

Hello i think i got where is the problem with broadlink scenes. If you pay attention when you are creating a personal routine (family routine have different set of actions) and choosing control devices as an action, you will see that the scenes button is under the group 'devices not in your home'. I think this is the main reason which avoids you to share the scenes with other home members. So, the only way i've found so far that is working for both of me and my girlfriend is to invite her in broadlink home and link her broadlink account with her google home app. Then you can both create personal routines with the broadlink scenes. Hope this can help someone

I've found a workaround for my similar situation.

For me my devices and scenes are registered in the Smart Life app (Tuya). I can't call on one of these scenes via a single routine for multiple Google household members. 

 

The answer is a virtual device.

In Samsung's Smart Things you can create a virtual switch or button. Link Smart Things to your service (in my case Smart Life). Create an automation in Smart Things that runs you're desired scene when the designated virtual switch is flipped.

 

Then link Smart Things to Google and in your Google household routine make the command flip the virtual switch, any member can do this. Then Smart Things will take that and run the scene from whatever service has your scenes.

It ain't pretty but I think it works.

hawk88
Community Member

The workaround using Samsung's SmartThings works, and I can confirm that. I have installed Smart and linked to Smart Life, and then all devices from Smart Life are available to Smart Things. Then in Google Assistant, I linked Work With Google option to authorize Smart Things to be accessed by Google Assistant, and woyla! All the devices are availabe to Google Action Block app including Smart Life scenes. It is a work around, but it seems Smart Things are more compatible to Google than Smart Life itself.

Lawtrueton
Community Member

I can't believe how frustrating this problem is. I can't believe that there STILL isn't a native solution. I also can't believe that the support strategy is to show up after the parties going and just say y'all need help, without reading anything, answering any questions, or offering any insight?! If I turn to my partner and try to explain to them that we have to get a new app like flugle or behuvior or Samsung Smart Thang, we're just gonna pack up all the smart bulbs and **bleep** and move away. 

The other workaround I've done is that I have a tuya/smart life power bar that has about 4 outlets on it that I'm not using. What I can do is set a household command that turns plug 4 on. Then in smart life I can have scenes and actions triggered by that "device" turning on. The automated routine also turns that switch off once complete so that it's ready to go again.

 

With 4 switches you can get at least 6 different shared routines going using combinations.

If you don't have something like that handy, you could do it with just a single device. A single obscure smart light that you never use. Have Google turn on the obscure light, then every other device in your house becomes a trigger for a routine.

In Google home: "set the scene" is a household command that turns on obscure light + changes the state of the kitchen light.

From smart life's perspective: If obscure light is ON + kitchen light CHANGES STATE = turn off obscure light, change kitchen light back, and do this particular scene.

 

Now you have as many household scenes as you have devices.

hawk88
Community Member

SmartThings by Samsung is actually more compatible to Google Home than Smart Life or Tuya, and you can just simply link Smart Life into SmartThings easily that will include all defined Scenes from Smart Life as well. Then in Google Home, we need only to link SmartThings in "Works with Google" setting, and all Smart Life devices and scenes will be available in Google Home. Well, in that case, if we activate any device in Smart Life, it actually linked indirectly through SmartThings , but it works well.

darrin0
Community Member

@Muddi this is still a problem today. A major problem and annoyance with Google Home that I'm sure most users aren't able to drill down to figure out what the problem is. It's taken me a year to get here. Bottom line is scenes are not shareable in household routines. I can create household routines using scenes which makes it appear that anyone can use it, but they can't. This is very infuriating!

Lawtrueton
Community Member

Hell yeah brother.  I second this. 

Raphael_Rocha
Community Member

Hey guys, I have a simular problem, i have a scene that works perfectly in the broadlink app, but dont work in the google home app, and the devices were shared from another acount, to the broadlink acount I'm using today, so I dont know what more to do, i need to active a scene in the broadlink app that is shared and can be seen in the google home app and i cant found a work around.

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