Another potential test case would be to simply use the āextra routerā as a WiFi Access Point, physically attached to the Airport Extreme router via Cat5. (This somewhat assumes the extra router supports an Access Point mode. If not, youāll have to configure a bunch of settings to get it to run as an AP instead of a NAT router.)
Then, simply have Alexa connect to the new Access Point, instead of the Airport Extreme, and see if the discovery works in that configuration. It might tell you if the Airport Extreme is blocking some traffic between it WiFi and LAN side. This avoids the double NAT scenario in this test case.
Since discovery isnāt happening on the Echo itself, Iād be more inclined to test as @jprosiak plans to, or with the old router direct to the ISP modem without AirPort Extreme attached.
However, the test case I have proposed might allow him to continue using his Airport Extreme as his main router/WiFi AP for everything except Alexa. Having an extra WiFi Access Point in the house is usually helpful anyway, and avoids the double NAT problems. If that solves his issue, I believe it might be a good compromise.
Agree, as long as that old router can do
AP mode or bridge mode. Otherwise he might have problems with Hue discovery as a result. If the router firmware does support either, it might still be possible if it can be flashed with an alternate firmware like DD-WRT.
Iāve been doing extensive testing on how Amazon Echoās do discoveryā¦ They seem to randomly pick an echo to act as the āmasterā on the network and be the lan to cloud relay.
Not every echo does discovery and it does seem random now Amazon picks which one. Once it picks that one, the others are just slaves to it. They will not attempt discovery, no matter what.
It appears the only option is a network sniffer to see which echo is acting as the master on the LAN and then power that down. It takes about an hour for my echoās to realize the master is dead and pick a new master. I canāt seem to figure out a way to force a new master. Rebooting, discovery, etc. all seem to just āfailā thinking the previous master is still doing the jobā¦
This probably explains most of what a few are seeing, if the one master echo isnāt seeing the network, or is offline then nothing gets discovered. The more you mess with it, rebooting stuff, turning stuff off, etc. the worse it gets.
We will have our Alexa Skill soon, and hopefully this will solve this local discovery issueā¦ Until then, thanks for everyone trying different things. Keep it up, we will figure out the problem. However, I donāt think its related to the type of router or wireless access point. It has to do with how Amazon chooses which echo is going to be that āmasterā for the lan.
Thatās interesting. So if one has more than one Echo, you could reset the one you suspect (most likely the first to your account I would guess), effectively removing it from the Alexa app, and it would then immediately use the other as āmasterā< or would you still need to wait and hour or so? I realize that resetting it, keeps the echo still part of your Amazon devices profile, so Iām guessing it could be worse, as it would be looking for the āmasterā that has now suddenly disappeared!
Not sure. I have had multiple echoās on different networks but same account work. So there is some logic that amazon Alexa cloud uses to determine whatās on which lan and who can talk to who.
Per @patrick, it sounds like only one of the Echo devices associated with your account will perform the device discovery process. You may want to try moving both Echos to the new network for a quick test.
Itās just not that important since they are working on an alexa skill. Iāll Just control devices in SmartThings and make those send events to Hubitat for now.
Yeah, Iām not really happy with the extra hoops to get this configured in AVS, and Iām looking forward to being able to better configure groups before Alexa discovery, and then being able to use those groups within Alexa Groups and Routines.
I can get my Alexa to see my device (only testing with one for now) but it wonāt control it. I tell it to turn it off and it says āokā but it remains on.
