A Beginners set up for Alexa and Philips Hue that my wife finally approves of

[DxFoster]

This is a revised version. After trying to add some bulbs and move bulbs at a later date, I realized the procedures in the original post did not make things easy at a later date.
Please note, I’m not saying this is the correct way or even the easiest way to set up Hue and Alexa. This is the procedure I used after a lot of trial and error to get my wife to accept Alexa. At first I was having problems with verbal commands not working and at the same time problems with lights turning on to their previous state, not fully bright as I wanted.

NOTE-YOU CAN NOT USE ANY DUPLICATE NAMES in Alexa or Hue

1.   First thing is start out with clean phone apps. Delete all HUE associated devices, groups and scenes in Alexa and delete all lights and rooms in HUE and then reset the bridge.

2.   Using your phone, start up the Philips Hue app and let the bridge discover all your light bulbs. Do Not rename the bulbs. Rearrange the bulbs, as required and note their location.
 I found that making changes with bulb location and or adding bulbs at a later date can be a bit frustrating unless you keep track of each bulb’s serial number and the bulbs location. I ended up having to check each bulb and then make a chart showing their location.

3.   On the Hue app go to settings, room setup, create room, click on room type, select other, create a "room with a generic name" and then add the correct bulb to that room For my rooms with Hue White bulbs, I used the bulb name and substituted the word room for the word lamp. 
NOTE- In order for a light to be turned on to a specific brightness and or color (and not the last one used) a scene has to be added to each “room” with that color and brightness using a different scene name for each room. So if you want your lights to always turn on to bright, one room can have the scene name bright and all other rooms will need a custom name. I used High01, High02, High03 etc for all other rooms (I used the actual room number). For low light, if one “bulb” is going to be used as a nightlight, make sure that “bulb” has a scene for nightlight and no other bulbs have that scene name.
 
4.   To work with scenes, go to the Hue App home page where you can add or delete scenes to each room. Delete all duplicate scenes and then add the custom scenes (bright). Do this for all rooms.

5.   Now, open Alexa, go to Smart home, click your smart home skills and either add Hue or click on Hue, click disable skill, then click enable, sign in, say yes, close window and click discover devices. All Hue lights, rooms and scenes will now be imported to Alexa.

6.   With Alexa you add groups that allow you to give the name(s) to each light fixture and to any room you will be using.  First add the correct name(s) to each fixture- sink, couch, desk, stair etc. (Make the name as short as possible- do not add “the" or put “light" at the end). Go to groups, create new, type in the name, click next (note you can add one “group" name to each echo device to easily turn on that group). Next, click on the device (the “Hue room name”) used in that group and then scroll down and click on the bright scene that belongs to that device (Note for fixtures with more than one bulb add them all to the group along with their bright light scenes). Do this for all your fixtures (note add as many groups as there are possible names to turn on a light, you can have as many groups as you want, just don't duplicate any names). Next create any rooms you will be using (kitchen, living room, upstairs). Create a group with the room name, click on all the fixtures (Hue Room Name) that will be in that room and click on the bright scenes that are associated with each fixture.

Add as many groups as required to cover all the expressions that could be used to turn on a specific light or room.  If necessary, routines can be added to cover a specific phrase to turn on a light. Turn on sink, Turn on the sink, Turn on sink light, turn on the sink light. The only thing I don't like about routines is Alexa will respond even if set to Brief Mode.


Had my first issue- asked Alexa to turn off the nightlight and got the response it was unsupported. Was going to add a routine but decided to try and add the group nightlight (was afraid of a duplicate name issue). Adding the group worked, now alexa will turn the nightlight off.