Set Up Alexa Voice Control

Alexa voice control lets a homeowner operate their Home Assistant devices by voice, from anything with Alexa built in: an Echo, the Alexa app, a Fire TV, or a speaker you may already be specifying for the job such as the Sonos Era 100.

The homeowner enables the Selora Homes skill in the Alexa app. Directives travel from Amazon to Selora Connect and down the existing tunnel to the hub, so there is nothing to configure on the customer’s router and no per-customer skill to author.

This page covers the parts you own: confirming the installation is ready, cleaning up the entity list, and verifying the result. For the homeowner’s own instructions, see Alexa Voice Control.

What You Can and Cannot Do

Linking is the homeowner’s action. It binds their Amazon account to their Selora account, so it has to happen on their device, signed in as them. Only the homeowner of record can link: your installer account cannot, and neither can anyone else in the household with their own Selora login. Do not ask for their Amazon credentials.

Everything either side of that is yours. Confirming the plan, getting the hub online, cleaning up the entity list, and verifying the result all sit with you.

Check the Prerequisites

Work through these before you involve the homeowner. Each one causes a failure that looks like something else if you skip it.

Decide Which Entities Alexa Sees

There is no Alexa column on the Home Assistant Expose page on a Selora hub. Home Assistant only shows that column when a Home Assistant Cloud account is signed in, so do not send the customer looking for it.

Instead, the hub applies Home Assistant’s defaults. An entity is included if it is in one of these domains:

• light, switch, climate, fan, cover, humidifier, water_heater
• scene, media_player, vacuum, todo
• binary_sensor with a door, garage door, lock, motion, opening, presence, or window device class
• sensor with a temperature, humidity, CO, CO2, AQI, PM2.5, PM10, or VOC device class

Locks are never included, so “Alexa, lock the front door” does not work today, even though the Amazon listing uses it as an example. Set the customer’s expectations before they try it.

Entities that are hidden or have an entity category (configuration and diagnostic entities) are left out. That is the one lever you have:

1. Before the homeowner links, go to Settings → Entities in Home Assistant.
2. Hide every entity in those domains the customer should not speak to: the guest bathroom fan, helper switches, the media player for the rack amplifier.
3. Give every remaining entity a name the customer would actually say. Alexa matches on the Home Assistant name, and most “Alexa doesn’t understand me” reports are a naming problem rather than a voice problem.

Alexa accepts up to 300 devices per Amazon account. On a large installation, hide aggressively.

Walk the Homeowner Through Linking

Stay with them for this. It takes a few minutes and the failure modes are easier to catch live than over email.

1. Open the Selora Homes skill page on their phone, or in the Alexa app go to More → Skills & Games and search for Selora Homes.
2. Tap Enable To Use.
3. They sign in to Selora Connect as the homeowner, using whichever method they normally use: email and login code, Google, Apple, or a passkey.
4. If their account has more than one home, the linking screen asks “Which home should this control?”. Confirm they pick the right one. This is the step that goes wrong on multi-property customers, and it is not free to get wrong: one Amazon account controls one home, so re-linking later switches the skill to the other home rather than adding it. A customer with two properties needs a second Amazon account for the second one.
5. They tap Allow Alexa.
6. Wait for the Alexa tile in Selora Connect to go from Finishing setup to Ready. This takes a few minutes while the hub receives its Alexa key.
7. Say “Alexa, discover devices”, or use Devices → + → Add Device → Discover Devices.

Confirm It Worked

Open the installation in Selora Connect and look at the Services section. The Alexa tile reports what Connect and the hub know:

Under Linked by, the tile lists the Selora user who completed each link and when. Several Amazon accounts can link to one home, which is expected for couples and families. Because only the homeowner can link, every row names the homeowner: the tile does not show which Amazon account each row belongs to.

The tile records what was linked, not what Alexa is still using. Amazon sends no notification when a customer disables the skill, so an abandoned link keeps showing until a periodic clean-up removes it, which can take several weeks. The same goes for the old home after a customer re-links to a different one.

Then confirm with an actual command. Ready proves the hub is set up, but only a spoken command proves the entity you care about made it through and is named well.

Troubleshooting

Discovery returns nothing. Check that the tile says Ready. Discovery fails while Home Assistant is still starting. If the tile says Ready and discovery is still empty, check the installation has entities in the domains listed above that are not hidden, then contact Selora support.

Linking stops at “This account has no Selora home”. The customer signed in to a Selora account that does not own a home in Selora Connect. Usually they are signed in with a personal login rather than the homeowner account. Have them tap Sign in with a different account on the same screen.

Linking stops at “Voice control needs a paid plan”. The home is on Free. Move it to a paid plan first.

Linking stops at “Alexa is not switched on for this account”. Voice control is not yet enabled for the account. Contact Selora support.

Commands fail but the tile says Linked. The binding is fine and the hub has not confirmed it is ready. Check the hub is online and that Home Assistant itself is running.

“Alexa, lock the front door” does nothing. Locks are not available to Alexa yet.

A device the customer added is missing. Run discovery again. Alexa does not pick up new entities on its own, and adding an entity in Home Assistant does not trigger a refresh.

The customer wants voice control off. Either they disable the skill in the Alexa app (More → Skills & Games → Your Skills → Selora Homes → Disable Skill), which removes their Amazon account only, or the homeowner presses Disconnect Alexa on the tile in Selora Connect, which unlinks every Amazon account from the home.

Ownership of the home is transferred. All Alexa links are removed. The new owner enables the skill again from their own Alexa app.