Alexa heartache all weekend

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21

Unless someone has some bright ideas am going to downgrade over the weekend ... see what happens

Am going to leave this as is for the moment... maybe with a small number of devices things will hold together longer

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And for fun I changed the I’d of 2 devices to 50 and 51 to see if the errors would go away ... they did, Alexa to Hubitat response time improved and Alexa is seeing the new device instantly vs 15 - 30 seconds ( retroactive observation )

Yep added another device and no errors

I think something is going on with the integration with Alexa ..... either we are sending the wrong device ids to Alexa at install or new device install or something is getting all confused in the Alexa skill Alexa

Am going to run with the phantom device 50 and 51 and see how it goes

Hmmm those device ids did change between runs !!! Wondering if those ids are phantom ids used by the skill for messaging of some kind

Edit
Nope that didn’t hold... the now 3 devices are all offline again

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I believe what is happening is that when you delete and reinstall the skill from HE, the skill gets a new ID and so do the devices. I’ve notices this with other Alexa integrations as well (like Hue) and think that it is just the nature of how it us setup. It doesn’t care what you call a device, it only looks at the device ID. If you uninstall the integration, you have to delete or disable all of the devices and scenes associated with it in the Alexa app.

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24

Exactly.

@okellyro, I believe if you want to clean up these issues, you may want to try the following procedure:

  1. Disable the Hubitat Skill from within the Alexa App on your phone
  2. Remove the Amazon Echo Skill App on your Hubitat Hub
  3. Go to alexa.amazon.com and delete all smart home devices that were ever associated with Hubitat. Do not delete any devices that are from another Alexa Skill you have enabled (like Hue, Lutron, Logitech, SmartThings, etc...)
  4. Enable the Hubitat Skill from within the Alexa App on your phone. This will automatically install the Amazon Echo Skill App on your Hubitat Hub.
  5. Select the devices you want exposed to Alexa from within the Amazon Echo Skill App on your Hubitat Hub.

Many months ago I had some strange issues and the above procedure worked well to get everything working smoothly again.

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I’ll give the a shoot ... if true ... Why would an upgrade cause this problem to surface and where are the bad id events comming from eg if device 50 is dead but Alexa thinks it’s there but is doing nothing with it is it refreshing the status if so surely it’s not an authorized device anymore and the request would be access denied .... either way why would that cause the whole integration to fail ....

If the above is tru it really means the Alexa integration is fun but not to be relied on ... if you had a boatload of routines & Rooms set it is a project to get setup and test again ....

Ps is the same on other integrations like hue then it’s a AWS issue ..... PIA

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Sorry, I don't know the answer to this as I have never written an Alexa Skill. I wish I had more to offer in this regard.

Agreed. However, I can say that after going through this process one time, I have never had the same problem again. I believe it is important that when there are issues with the Hubitat Alexa Skill, it is prudent to be patient and not disable/enable the skill or mess with the Amazon Echo Skill app on the hub. The problem is probably either an AWS, Hubitat Cloud, or other issue not specifically related to one's hub. By aggressively troubleshooting the problem, I believe it may be possible to make matters worse. (Note: I am not saying that this is what happened here... I am just thinking out loud. :thinking:)

I hope everything gets sorted out soon for you.

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Good points all

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I went through the painful process of identifying and deleting orphaned devices and scenes through the Alexa app a few months back. A lot of them were remnants from when I was using SmartThings.

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Yea did that a long time ago 2 ....

A migration step that

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Well followed the above procedure to the letter and the problem continues......

I was able to set up the skill after that added a few devices and all were responsive... waited an hour and tried to access a device and it was unresponsive.... so I then went to Hubitat and added a new device and it added perfectly, Alexa saw it but immediately reported unresponsive....

So inbound and out works for setup, both work for a while and then inbound to my Hubitat fails .... no errors I can see anywhere just unresponsive phhhhhh

Edit

Adding and removing devices no problems but they all become unresponsive immediately! So authentication is ok and 2 cons is happening ....

Anyone know what happens when Alexa asks for device status or issues a command .... ports, protocols, etc

Edit 2

And when I remove the device from the amazon skill in Hubitat it is removed as a device in Alexa = ok that’s great it’s talking but can’t control ...

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What type of devices are these? Specific Make and Model, as well as the driver (Built-in or Custom?)

Also, are you still seeing errors in the Hubitat logs?

What local area network design/hardware are you using? Anything complicated with VLANs or such?

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@okellyro Is it possible your router is to blame? Are you reserving IP addresses for both the hub and your Echos? Are you using an Asus or Netgear router? I don't remember what the issue was, but they were causing grief for some users last year.

If the problem persists, you might try doing a database backup and then a soft reset.

2 Likes
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I had exactly the same thought about the router .... about an hour ago .... have a cable modem + network connected to the eero so I restarted the eero and all hell broke loosseee hahaha

Looks like the cable modem / router was having problems .. the eero went offline and never came back !!! Got my son to turn off/on the cable modem / router ... everything came back up and Hubitat + Alexa seem to be good again !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Damn damn and double damn ...... try not to jump on the network stuff as the problem , in many cases it is not but on this .........

Sorry for wasting tour time on this ..... it was a network issue of some type ....

6 Likes
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Hate that you had to go through all of those troubleshooting steps. Hopefully doing so did help to clean up things a bit (looking for the silver lining here :wink: )

Very glad to hear that things are working well again!

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It’s all good ... I hate just rebooting and praying ... better to chase and find than to give up and hit restart ..... I’m thinking I need to look at that cable modem though... it should not go offline like that regardless..... have a vpn and a firewall and a few other things humming along but nothing serious ..... trouble shooting is now on that darn router

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Networking bugaboos are the worst! I have no idea how mortals solve these issues (I guess they just call their "techie' friends!) I have Orbi and have also gone through weirdness that was directly correlated to Orbi's behavior and a reboot resolved. Glad you're back up and running.

1 Like
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Downgrade to 2.18 fixed the issues for me.

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You know I think there is something to that .... the timing of my problems on the network matches exactly the upgrade .... not to say the upgrade caused the problem but that it possibly precipitated something .... and that’s all conjecture

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Well the problems persist ... mostly working but sometimes not ..... downgrade this weekend and see how it goes :frowning:

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What’s the process for downgrading? Couldn’t find a thread explaining the process. Tks