Zones / Multi Room Use

[WBChunx]

Hi Guys,

First post, be gentle 

I have been using a couple of echo dots to control my Sonos (Amazon Unlimited) and my Hue bulbs in my Kitchen and Lounge.

I have recently added a few more Echo devices to other rooms.  If I am playing music within the kitchen/Lounge on the Sonos and my son asks Alexa a question in a different room the music I am listening to goes quiet.  I assume this is because Alexa is listening on all devices.  It's incredibly frustrating!!

To try and mitigate this, I've reconfigured the echo devices so that my son, daughter & media room have there own amazon accounts.  This works well as there is no overlap and I am able to get over the restrictions with multiple Harmony Hubs.

The problem I now have is that I am unable to 'drop in'...

Has anyone else configured there system like this?

Is there a more simple way to create zones to avoid my media room echo affecting my kitchen music?

Any ideas how to fix the drop in?  I thought I would have been able to link the additional amazon accounts somehow.


Apologies for the long post, all help appreciated
Thanks

[seast91]

Enable Drop In to 'on' instead of 'household only'. This will still only allow contacts you set drop in to on for in the app not everyone. You just need to do it on all the accounts and for the relevant contacts.

[WBChunx]

Excellent Thankyou.

I have a couple of additional questions...

I have the 'Drop In' option on my iPhone but not on the iPads.  My son's echo is configured via his iPad, how would I get around this?

How do I setup each echo as a contact?  I've not set contacts up at all currently.

Thanks again for the help, its appreciated.

[Jeff29]

I would suggest following up with Amazon support.  Asking a question on one device should not interrupt streaming on other devices.  Only the device on which you are asking the question.

One additional thought:  If you have a very low-bandwidth connection to the Internet that can cause problems although when I temporarily had low bandwidth it didn't cause this specific problem.