Echo devices are basically hardwired and they can already be singled out in Indigo, so, is there a way to route "turn off the lights" to the nearest room? That sounds fancy AF, I just mean, have assign a generic term to the appropriate bridge. Though it would indeed be really cool if Indigo had some sort of approach/roaming- and/or zone-based logistics.
I see the plugin itself doesn't have the option, I think I read Alexa doesn't like duplicates in the documentation at GitHub when I skimmed the docs, but, is there any way to trick it? I managed to [reliably] control IR devices using only variables, ultra-short schedules and triggers. It's inefficient but it works and I still don't know how to code. Maybe there's a way.
If Alexa can't have repeated names, I assume that's cloud-side, I think I've seen something similar with Logitech's Harmony. If that's true, what if each Echo device is put on a different account? They can't be accountless, can they? I haven't tried TBH. But, it's not like it needs to know who I am, the least it knows the better, I only use for Indigo and occasionally for the briefings.
So that's solved... I think. Next is network visibility; using RADIUS Echo devices can be put in isolated in their own VLAN, so they can't see one another, they use multicast which won't make it outside L2. -- Ironically I spent the last week learning about/setting up Wide Area DNS Service Discovery with DNS-LLQ to get rid of Avahi and multicast repeaters only to tear it down if this Alexa thing can be done.
Macs can deal with VLANs so well it's what I'll miss the most now that I'm switching away. The computer running Indigo is the only device that has an interface on every beside of the hypervisors, not even the switches and routers have all subnets. The plugin already has a field to specify listening address. So I guess the last part would be isolating the bridges themselves I guess so they don't catch the other's requests. Although if they are listening on a specific address, would they? There's some sort of pairing when discovery is performed, right? They don't just execute command from random Alexa accounts, correct?
I'm already feeling a little motivated. Since here, at home, basically speak different languages per floor, it's served as an unexpected workaround, I'd be nicer per room. Once (and only once) I was listening to music on Spotify, I believe, and the music followed me to the second floor automatically, it's sort of meh on paper but it felt legitimately cool. Hopefully something half as awesome can be replicated without cloud services. *fingerscrossed*
Almost forgot thank you in adv for your help.
At least I got to plan while typing.