[Alexa] Devices Exposed via Skill App: Device Type Issues

Background: I have most of my lights and most of my control virtual switches exposed to Alexa through the built in Amazon Alexa Skill App, including hue devices. As a result I have almost no skills enabled in Alexa besides hubitat, and definitely no skills that overlap with the devices exposed.

So here is my problem and I am hoping someone here has experienced this or has a solution because it is really starting to get annoying. Out of the box, almost all of my exposed devices look like switches to Alexa, as such, for the lights, I recategorized the device type in the Alexa phone app as lights so that when I say turn on/off the lights, it just works for the room that it was said in. That being said, about once every week, don't quote me on that timeline though, I have issues where even though the non-lights are categorized as switches, and the lights are categorized as lights, when I say turn on/off lights, it just turns everything, both switch and light types, on/off. I found a fix, but it involves switching the device type for all of the switches to light and then changing it back. I am under the assumption that this is an Amazon issue rather than a Hubitat Amazon Alexa Skill App issue, but I was hoping that I am not going insane and that someone else has experienced this issue.

If anyone has any ideas on what I can do or how I can circumvent this problem it would be much appreciated.

I would create some virtual switches and expose them to Alexa and pull your real switches back into HE only. Then set up rules or groups & scenes in HE that trigger from that switch. Then she can't mess them up. You can set up routines to make them sound more natural. It might be some work up front, but less annoying in the long term.
Just a thought.

Alexa isn't all that reliable to begin with, so you won't get away from her mistakes.

I get this and have done this for a couple things such as disabling my motion sensors, but my biggest issue with custom routines is that that they are not location/context sensitive, meaning if I say it to a certain echo dot, then the action applies to these devices, and if said to another echo dot, it applies to those devices.

I got around this with the Echo Speaks wasLastSpokenToDevice attribute so that I can activate one Alexa routine with one command and it will do work in the room it was spoken to, the issue is there is a considerable delay, in the neighborhood of 5+ seconds, which obviously isn't acceptable for a lighting routine.

Have you experienced the weird behavior my devices are experiencing, with their device type being overridden?

Are you kidding? Alexa friggin' hates me. She NEVER does what I ask her. :grin:
If there's any background noise, good luck on getting her to be remotely reliable. I hate to be a broken record, but as someone pointed out to me that not exclusive to one protocol, but to add to your combination of home automation to make it more robust, you could do some controlling of this in node red. There, you can choose which device a command is spoken to and delegate accordingly. Might be able to achieve what you want with more reliability.
I'm certainly not a node red expert, but I am learning that you can enhance your environment experience and reliability with it. Just a thought. No matter what, it's going to be a lot of work on whatever you choose, or maybe not. I've seen some pretty impressive things done with the nodes lately.

Interesting thought, I set a Node Red server up on my Pi, but have not run into issues with the base apps and RM so I did not see the point to add an additional point of failure. Does it play nicely with Alexa at a device level or is that through Hubitat still?

If it does play nice what are you suggesting? Would I make a turn on lights routine in Alexa that triggers a virtual switch that starts a flow and turns on associated lights, and a turn off routine that does the opposite?

I'd have to think it through, but if you have node red set up already check out
node-red-contrib-alexa-remote2

I set up voice announcements through Node red and completely bypassed echo speaks, which I ran on smartthings via hub connect until it ceased to function last week. Got tired of fighting with it. The node will listen for activity from alexa and connect to hubitat. From there, it's your imagination. I used the same nodes for my classic radio automation listed here.

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In thinking about it, you would still probably run into issues with Alexa being able to understand your command.

Understand at all or understand with location context?

You can definitely delegate the location. To clarify, I was referring to your voice command. that's where it's going to have to start.

I had a terrible time getting the node connected to Alexa, so if you do decide to set it up, reach out to me if you have issues. I think I ran into every snag known to man while setting it up. And it should be super easy. And it is. As long as you know.

Have you ever used this node?


It seems to have local control of alexa, and seems to be tailored towards lighting control.
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Gonna check this one out tomorrow. I had no idea this was out there. Oh the possibilities. I was pointed to alexa2 and have always limited myself to what was contained there. I am off to bed, though, so I'll be checking in on this tomorrow.

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Thank you so much, I too will research and let you know if I find anything. I just searched alexa on the node install field and there are tons of nodes in there.

Also for anyone else reading this, please let me know if you have experienced my issue or if you have found/thought of a workaround that I haven't, it would be much appreciated.

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I just wanted to throw this out there because I've been very happy with our setup. My husband allowed me to get into home automation a few years ago on the understanding that he wouldn't ask, dance or sing to get a light to turn on or for something to happen in general. A light switch would be easier. So, I've stuck to that creedo to the letter. I CAN ask Alexa to do things, but usually it's been only for the garage door to open or the weather. It's kind've cool because my alexa upstairs is in a classic radio, so it's a point of interest. I spent a lot of time watching our habits and based rules on motion and harmony, time of day, who is home, etc. Now, we have a house that just knows what we're doing. Sure, there's some things that don't work quite right and give me an excuse to tinker, but you can bet my husband isn't going to have to touch a light switch or ask Alexa to do something for him. That's my story. I think that's why Alexa hates me. She's feeling a bit useless in the Brandt residence. Your use case works for you, but just thought I'd throw it out there in case you're open to suggestion.

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Yeah, I totally see that and agree 100%. I am effectively using Alexa right now as a crutch to make up for a lack of hardware like buttons or contact sensors. I could put a button in each room or contacts sensors on certain doors I guess but currently I don't have that hardware so I use Alexa as basically a catchall for administrative tasks, lights, fans that are smart, and motion sensing disabling/enabling.

I am just trying to optimize what I have and really don't understand what is going wrong since this feature is from Amazon and not anything custom I did.

Definitely get that. One thing at a time, right? I use a lot of motion sensors in rooms. Contact sensors on external doors and pantry and closet doors.

This one looks like it might be something that will work for you?

node-red-contrib-alexa-home-skill

I see that it can trigger like a routine, but I don't see any way to have location sensitive actions, like if the commands come from a specific echo turn those lights on.

Like you said earlier I really don't find having to remember an alphabet soup of keywords in order to just use the house acceptable, so I really want to make any command as device, and by extension room, agnostic as possible.

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I am starting to think that this is an issue with the Hubitat Skill for Alexa since I have not experienced this issue before switching to Hubitat when my smart home was purely Alexa with various cloud skills. For example, I had the exact same setup with Hue bulbs and Kasa plug directly into Alexa skills, and never ran into these issues with the "switches" turning on when I ask her to turn on the lights.

Currently in a chat with Alexa support so we will see how that turns out.

Post Chat (2-hours later :confounded: ): For anyone interested, send me a DM for the transcript. Basically, they do not feel that it is an issue and that it is working as intended and that if there is any issue, it is on the side of the Skill Developer, i.e. Hubitat, which I am calling B.S. on, but I digress. Since my brother who is not using Hubitat and only cloud skills has the same issue, they did say that they are passing this onto the technicians/developers to see what can be done given that they have reports of two people not having it work for them. If anyone else has this issue I would highly recommend letting Amazon know.

Hmm ... there must be a way around this. I know that I can specify which alexa does what within node red. there has to be a way to engineer this. I probably won't get much time to play around with it this week, but I'll let you know if I do find out something.

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