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In this video we'll take a look at how
to control multiple devices using groups. We'll also add an Echo into a group that
way we can say, "turn off the lights" and it'll know which lights we're talking
about. Or, "play some music" and it'll know which Echo speakers to play the music on.
Hi my name is Craig this is part of my weekly echo series. Check out the
description, I'll put links in there to the echos if you want to learn more
about them. Please, use those links they definitely help the channel out. This is
season 2, episode 3 of my weekly echo series. Here's a playlist from last
year's series if you want to check it out. Also, I've changed the name of my
device to Echo so hopefully I don't trigger your device at home. Amazon is
great about updating and adding new features to control smart devices. Now
groups isn't a new feature. But, it is a great feature to know about if you're
not using it.

Groups allow you to take multiple devices and put them into a
group. That way you don't need to remember that that's called the small
lamp, that's called the tall lamp, this is the office LED. And you don't need to
keep track of all these new devices as they enter your house. So with groups you
put them all into one. The thing I like about using groups is you can add Echoes
into groups. Once a group has an echo tied to it you can say things like, "Echo
turn off lights" and it knows that lights… Thank you
It knows that when you ask to turn off lights, since it's part of my office group,
it'll turn off just the lights in the office group. To turn the lights back on,
"Echo turn on lights" "okay" and it turned on my two Philip Hue
bulbs and a smart plug that has this LED light plugged into it.

You can also do
the same thing with playing music. Echo play classical music. "playing classical
music from Apple music" so it's playing here. But it also started playing over
here on my show. Echo stop. So let's look at how to set this up. The first
thing you're gonna need to do is grab your mobile device and we're gonna open
the app up. Go down to devices and here if you're not familiar with this screen
it has a list of your devices up on top. You can also add devices by hitting the
plus button in the upper right hand corner.

You'll see add a device and it'll
discover it. You can also see a list of your devices by clicking the all devices
in the corner. It'll show you everything that you have installed there. What we're
gonna do is create a group. Right now I have a bedroom group a living room
lights group. I also have my speaker groups downstairs, everywhere and the
office group that you heard before. We're gonna go up in the upper right hand
corner. Hit plus. We're gonna add a group. Give it a name, office. Done, hit next.

Here
we can see our Echos. If we scroll down we'll see all of our devices. For now
let's just pick out the lights that I want. So, I have my office LED, I have
my short lamp, my tall lamp and that's all I want to control right now. So I'll
hit save and now I have a new group that's
created called office. If I want to turn off that group I can say, "Echo turn office
off. Okay. Being patient for her to respond. Now you see everything turned
off. Echo turn office on. Okay. So how do I turn off the lights without having to
specify the group? Echo turn off lights. Sorry, I didn't find a device named
lights. The way we do that is we go back into our group and you could have added
this from the beginning.

But, I just wanted to show this as an example. Let's
select our group that we made called office. Let's hit edit and if we scroll
through here you'll see that your different echo devices are listed here. My bedrooms not available because it's in another group. My living room is not
available because it's also in another group. You're only able to add echoes
into one group so that it can tie it to the devices in that group.

So in here I'm
gonna select my office dot and my office show and I'll hit save. Now if I select
that group you'll see that the dot and the show are in there. I have my office
LED switch, my short lamp, my tall lamp and there's also a category here for
preferred speakers. Preferred speakers is for when you're playing music. So if I
hit plus, I can have it set up so that if I speak to one of my devices in this
room, if it hears me and ask for music it will either play music out of this echo
or to play it out of this show. Or, one of the cooler options is you can pick one
of your speaker groups. So I'll just pick the office speaker group. So now if I ask
for music like I did earlier it'll come out of both of these speakers or in the
case of my living room if I wanted it to play in the kitchen and in
the living room that could all be in the same group.

I could use my downstairs
group it really gives you some options. There, so let's save that. While the
coolest parts of using groups now is opened up to us, I can say "Echo turn off
the lights" and it knows which devices. Now if I want to play music like I did
before, "Echo play classical music." Playing
classical music from Apple music. Echo turn down the music Now we're accessing our group without
having to actually specify play music on downstairs group. It knows that if you're
requesting it from either these devices in this room to play on this specified
group. Echo pause. Echo turn the lights to 50%. Okay. And it brought those lights up
to 50%. it didn't bring on my smart plug because that's not dimmable. Echo turn on
the lights. Okay. Now that lights up because it's
considered a light. Echo turn lights blue okay Echo turn lights to full. Okay
Echo turn lights to white. Okay Echo turn lights to warm white. Okay. I
still can grab things individually such as "Echo turn tall lamp to cool white."
Okay. Having this functionality and adding the
echoes to a groups really simplifies things.

I think it makes it a lot more
useful for myself for my wife who's not into most of this tech. For people who
don't want to remember what everything is called. Is it called this group? you
just want to be able to leave a room and say echo turn off lights. Okay
when you wake up in the morning you don't want to have to remember what this
stuff's called. Echo turn on lights okay That's it. That's the benefit of adding
your devices into a group. It used to be if you asked to turn off all lights your
whole house would shut off because it would just grab all the lights. But now
with this you're able to kind of customize rooms and just be able to walk
from room to room and say turn lights on turn lights off and the device will know
what you're talking about. What do you think of this feature? is
this something you use or are going to use? Let me know in the comment section.
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Have a great day, bye.