ok. We may not have a problem. "I" may have a problem. I removed all of my skills in Alexa and made sure there was no Alexa app in HE. I then rebooted the hub for good measure. While it was rebooting I ran a discovery and found:
Then I went into my Alexa settings and discovered one more echo than should be there. About a month ago, I created a "Family" account so my daughter (moved out and on her own) could listen to some of my audio books. So, I removed her from the family plan, removed all the devices and then ran a discover again. It's sqeaky clean! No devices. My apologies for disrupting the thread.
Earlier I mentioned dimming did not appear to be working with the Alexa skill. With some testing I narrowed it down a bit.
If a make an Alexa Device Group and put ONLY Hubitat lights in it, the group responds to dimming commands fine. As soon as I add a bulb from another source to the group (SmartThings hub, TP-Link app) dimming stops working through Alexa. The TP-Link bulb will dim, but none of the Hubitat bulbs will respond.
I am seeing this error in the logs over and over. Not sure what is causing it. Anyone have any ideas?
edit: I have removed the the Alexa app. Use the Forget all through the alexa website. Rediscovered the devices. Everything seems to respond to commands ok. Just unsure what is causing this.
I'm seeing this Cannot invoke method toUpperCase() on null object (deviceHandler) error as well.
Every time I run a Rule Machine rule to adjust the color of a bulb (which is an Aeon Aeotec RGB Z-Wave bulb, ZW098-A52) using the "Hank RGBW LED Bulb" driver, this error is thrown 3 times. errorjava.lang.NullPointerException: Cannot invoke method toUpperCase() on null object (deviceHandler)
I can go into the devices page and set level, saturation, color, on/off, etc without producing the error. I can only duplicate this when the bulb is modified by rule machine; however the "app:xxx" id of the error is the "Amazon Echo Skill".
All I have to do is go into the rule that was true which was set to change the RGB bulb color and hit done to produce the error. I've repeated the same on other similar rules that didn't produce this (but they were false). See below, the first 2 (home and away) were false the third (Stay) was true and only it produced these errors.
They don't show up because they have capability "Alarm", which is a no-no for Alexa. The work-around @SmartHomePrimer suggests will work. We intend to update the driver soon to remove the Alarm capability,
I don’t understand why you deleted all of your devices! That wasn’t necessary at al. Probably what is happening is that your mesh networks have not recovered. For Zigbee you should shut down your hub for 20 minutes and the network will take several hours to rebuild the routes. For Z-Wave, do a Z-Wave repair. Again, it may be several hours for routes to rebuild.
I rebuilt the z-wave network on Tue evening. Last night I told Alexa Goodnight, some light went off right away, 1 took 5 seconds and the other took 12 seconds to turn off
I'll rebuild the zigbee network tonight and see if that helps
Good Night is the name of the Alexa routine in the Alexa app on my phone. It basically turns off a bunch of lights.
I have used it this way for nearly 2 years now on ST before HE. Up until this week, all lights would turn off in less than a second
The other night when I removed all devices from the Alexa app and then added the new skill, the re-discovered all devices, I had to rebuild the routine
On Thurs evening I unplugged the hub for 30 mins then rebooted to rebuild the mesh. All lights turned off in about 3 seconds when I went to bed. Last night 1 light took 5 seconds, the final light took 14 seconds
When I first got HE, the lights would be off/on even before Alexa would says OK
You may want to create a Group of Lights using Hubitat's built-in 'Groups' App. This will create a Virtual Device with whatever name you assign the group. You can then add that virtual device to the Alexa Skill App, and then have Alexa discover the new device. Then, modify your Alexa Routine to use that one new 'Group Device' to turn everything off.
I am guessing this will be much quicker as Alexa need only control 1 device in Hubitat, instead of every bulb individually. My guess is the new Alexa Skill is waiting for confirmation for each light before moving on to the next one. Maybe the Hubitat team could investigate to see if this is the case? I too have seen my lights 'popcorn' on and off with the new Alexa Skill versus the old method. I do like the ability to control color bulbs via the skill though...
OK, I created a new group of lights in the HE app called Goodnight, assigned only the devices I wish to turn off. Added it to the Skill in HE, told Alexa to rediscover, she found 1 new device. I then updated my Alexa Routine in my phone app to only call the new Goodnight virtual device. Upon command othing shuts off. Then I discovered that none of my lights will respond to Alexa or from within HE so I rebooted the hub. Now they all work through HE and through Alexa by saying turn off XXX light. As soon as I tell her Goodnight (new virtual device), she says OK but nothing goes off and now nothing will respond to her individually or through HE. Reboot the hub again and now they all work
Unless I am missing something, there appears to be something wrong with the skill
Can you manually turn On/Off the Virtual Group Device within Hubitat and have it work correctly?
If yes, can you manually Turn On/Off the Virtual Group Device within the Alexa App on your phone and have it work correctly? How about with voice control directly to the group device? (again, no routine involved...)
Just trying to figure out where the issue is.
I have a Group defined in Hubitat that I use directly from Alexa voice control (not using an Alexa Routine) and it works fine. I;ll try adding an Alexa Routine to see if it works or not.
[UPDATE] I just tested using an alexa routine to turn on and another routine to turn off the Hubitat Virtual Alexa Dimmer device that was created by the Hubitat Groups App. Everything worked perfectly and the lights came on together and went off together.
I deleted all routines, groups, skill... and started over and now Yes to all of your questions... however 12-20 seconds to turn on/off via virtual device group name and with Alexa voice, some lights turn off pretty quickly, others not so much
Wow! So even from within the Hubitat Web Device Details page for the Group device, it takes 12-20 seconds to turn everything on or off? What type of lights are these? Zigbee switches or bulbs? Z-Wave switches or bulbs? Direct connected? Or through a Philips Hue Bridge? Or Lutron Caseta Pro Bridge? Or, some sort of cloud connected bulbs?
