I have 5 lights set up in my Wyze app. I use Google Home to turn them ON and OFF sometimes. When I say "turn lights ON or OFF, it turns all 5 ON (or OFF). I want to exclude one of those 5 lights but not the other 4 when issuing the command to Google Home. Is there another way to accomplish this without setting up a group containing the 4 lights ?
You can create a room with the 4 bulbs and then associate your Google Home device with that room and then when you say to turn on or off, those lights will go on and not the others.
Or, you can change the one bulb type to a plug or switch. then when you say turn on, it will only turn the lights on
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Can’t you set up automation in your Google Home to turn on all those 4 specific lights when you say “Turn on lights” ? Then you do the same for turning off those 4 specific lights by saying “Turn off lights”.
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I don’t see a way to do this. I think I understand the concept that’s described here. For instance, if I navigate in the Google Home app into the Device settings for a smart plug, then I can tap Device type and select from things such as Light, Fan, Outlet, Switch, and others. I’m not seeing a similar setting for smart bulbs.
I can think of at least two ways to accomplish @tlhutch4’s goal.
- @spamoni’s suggestion about the room is a really good one, because in Google Home a “room” doesn’t have to be or correspond to a physical room. It’s just a logical container. You can have a room called “bacon” and move four bulbs to that “room”, and then you can say, “Hey, Google, turn on the bacon lights.” Just make sure that the light you want to exclude is in another “room”, like “wombat”.
- Choose names—for both rooms and devices—that are easy for you to remember and have meaning to you. In my home, I have 6 Wyze bulbs (5 Bulb Color and 1 Bulb Color (BR30)) in the same physical room and also in the same logical (Google Home) “Living Room”, and I can easily control the 5 lights with my voice without affecting the other light because of the way I’ve named the devices in Google Home. The group of 5 all happen to be in the same floor lamp, so each bulb has a name like “Corner Pole Lamp 1”, “Corner Pole Lamp 2”, etc. The BR30 in the ceiling fixture is named “Fireplace Light”. If I want to turn on/off or set color/brightness only on the group of 5 bulbs, I say, “Hey, Google, set the corner lamp to 20%.” If I decide that I want to turn off all the lights at once, I can say, “Hey, Google, turn off the living room lights.”
Some things I’ve observed about device names in Google Home:
- You don’t have to use a device’s full name. I don’t have to say “Corner Pole Lamp 3”. I could—if I wanted to control that one bulb individually—but I can also just say “Pole Lamp 3” or “Corner Lamp 3” and Google Assistant figures it out…unless I have another lamp with a very similar name. Choosing names is important.
- A device in Google Home can have at least 3 different “names” and you can use any of those when talking to Google Assistant!
- The name you assign to the device in the Google Home app.
- The name of the room where you assign the device.
- The name you gave the device in the 3rd-party app where you originally set it up and configured it (before linking it to Google Home). So you can call a bulb one thing in the Wyze app and give it a completely different name in Google Home, and if you navigate into the device’s settings, you can see at the bottom a line that says Name from Wyze Home: [whatever that name is]. Because this information is exposed through the “Works with Google” 3rd-party link, Google Assistant will recognize this name if you say it.
I think @grapefruityoda’s idea about using an Automation/Routine in Google Home works, too, and I do use those for lots of things, but then I have to be careful about choosing Starters and populate that with a phrase or phrases that I’m likely to remember (and then I have to remember that specific phrase later). With the way my brain works, it’s just easier for me if I’m thoughtful about choosing names, because that’s more of a set-it-and-forget-it solution for my way of doing things.
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@spamoni @grapefruityoda @Crease
Thanks for your very helpful and detailed response. I’m working on your suggestions now…Thanks again
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My Pleasure. Keep us informed of the progress.
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