Alexa voice command issue after switching to Hubitat

[aaiyar]

@LibraSun

On my Hubitat, I have only one device (migrating from Vera Plus), an Intermatic HA20C*** in-wall Z-Wave dimmer switch. It responds perfectly to all of the testing panel buttons (On, SetLevel, Off, etc.) in the Hubitat UI.

Alexa will turn it ON or OFF, no problem. But asking her to "Dim the Dining Room Light to 30 percent" results in a "Sorry, that device is not responding" error. Every time. And the light remains off/unchanged. (I should note here as well that I tried turning on the Echo app's "Respond immediately without waiting for device" option, to no avail, so turned that back off.)

Swapping the device class to "Smart" (per the recommended solution) and deleting/re-adding the device to the Echo Skill app did not solve the issue I'm sorry to report.

This is not a zwave+ device, so a “Smart” driver shouldn’t be used.

I just answered another post on a related subject, so I’ve linked to that post below. There’s no real solution, outside of turning on zwave polling for this device. While that does add unnecessary traffic to your zwave network, doing it for one device is not so bad.

Personally, I replaced all my zwave switches/dimmers with zwave+ equivalents, or Lutron Caséta devices.

Z-Wave Devices w/ Missing or Incomplete Drivers

This is an old zwave device that does not report its status back automatically to the controller. The driver to use is Generic Zwave Dimmer. And then, use the built in Zwave Poller app to poll this switch so the hub keeps track of the current status of the dimmer. Also, without polling, the dimmer will not be controlled well by voice assistants like Alexa. Three final things: Click Configure each time you change drivers. The “Smart” drivers are for zwave+ devices. Consider replacing it with …

[rwclements228]

Electronic devices tend to age poorly over the years. A vintage 2009 z-wave device is now 12 years old. Z-wave Plus was introduced in 2013 with the 500 series chipset. The current version uses the 700 series chipset, but a lot of devices are still using the older 500 chipset.

For comparison purposes, in late 2009, Microsoft introduced Windows 7 which was considered EOL in 2020. Over the past 12 years, Microsoft introduced Windows 8, Windows 8.1, multiple versions of Windows 10 and has now released Windows 11. It is rare to get more than 10 years of life from an electronic device, whether is is a computer, TV, cell phone, etc. Technology advances quickly, so routine replacements become necessary.

Be thankful you have gotten 10 good years out of your device and consider upgrading to a device was one of the newer (500 or 700) chipsets.

[uncleflip]

I'm going to ask the really stupid question here... When you have added the device under Hubitat into Alexa, did you make sure the same device (under your old system) was disabled or removed? I may not have been entirely clear about it in my original thread, but it seems when I sent an on/off command, it was going to the device under Hubitat, but sometimes when I would send dimming commands, they were going to my dimmer instance under Nexia. Of course, this resulted in extremely similar behavior to what you are getting.

[stephen_nutt]

That's a great point to look out for that can bite you in the a$$. I had that happen when deciding whether to use my Bond devices thru Hubitat to Alexa or use Bond Alexa skill directly. I ended up with duplicate devices with same name in Alexa.