Amazon Echo Skill all devices 'not responding' until Hub rebooted

I answered the question by telling you that the issue is not limited to devices on my wifi network since cloud-based control also fails. And the hub is not on Wifi. So the answer is 'wifi NOT relevant since I can reproduce the issue without using anything on my wifi.'

Just FYI. He is trying to help you. @Chen555 also.

staff

You know what I can reproduce every day without fail on my hub? Working results from the exact same app, connected to the same service as you. Good night and good luck.

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I know but apparently he's upset beacuse my answer was that I was able to rule out anything with the wifi by reproducing the issue without using wifi.

I'm curious how you did that. Your Echo devices all use WiFi to connect (there are other potential issues with "cloud control" - presumably using the Alexa app). To repeat @SmartHomePrimer's question - do you have a mesh WiFi router?

Do I have a mesh wifi router? Yes.

Can I reproduce this issue while using components that are in no way connected to the mesh wifi? Also yes.

@d114 and @Chen555

It is odd that something is bumping both of your hubs off the Alexa Cloud connection on a weekly schedule. I have been running without any such issue for 3 years now on Hubitat. I started with an Asus RT-AC86U-based home network and have since migrated to a full Ubiquiti UniFi Dream Machine based network. Neither of these have experienced any recurring issues keeping Amazon Alexa connected to my Hubitat hub. Based on your feedback thus far, it is hard to determine where the root cause is located. Is it an issue with your home network, your ISP, your Hubitat hub, or a weekly cleaning service that comes into your house and unplugs something in order to plug in their vacuum cleaner :wink: .

A couple of questions for each of you to answer:

  1. What brand and model of home networking equipment are you using? Do you have a weekly automatic reboot of any network hardware configured that might be causing the issue? Are your home networks simple in design, or complicated (e.g. multiple VLANs, special firewall rules, etc...)?
  2. Just to verify, are you running the "Amazon Echo Skill" app or the "Amazon Echo App" on your Hubitat hub? The former is the currently supported integration and works very well for a variety of device types. The latter is deprecated and should only be used in countries that do not support the Hubitat Skill.
  3. What model Hubitat Hub are you running and what firmware version?
  4. Do you have any automatic scheduled reboots of your hub?
  5. Who is your ISP and what type of connection do you have? Cable Modem, DSL, Fiber?
  6. Any chance that your ISP provided network equipment is a router, and then you attached another router to it, thus causing a 'Double NAT' configuration?

Please note that I am hoping that by providing this information, perhaps something will pop up that the community will recognize as a possible root cause.

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Is your Hubitat hub connected to a mesh point or the main router? Is it connected via a switch to either?

It's on the main router.

What I'm really looking for here is some sort of log that would help me understand if this is a connectivity issue or not. I'm happy to go drill down into wireshark-level logs and see if there's ANY activity on my hub when the Alexa integration craps out. Unfortunately any time I ask about finding more logs I get no information back. So does more verbose debug logging not exist or does no one here know how to get at it?

There is no more logging available to end-users than what you see in the Live Logs/Past Logs.

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There is no more logging available to end-users

Hence why I've been forced to rely on Hubitat support to diagnose this. And they can't prioritize this apparently. Which leads me to conclude that Hubitat is simply not a good fit for anyone expecting Alexa integration to work reliably. Sure, for some it does, but for built-in functionality of a consumer product to fail regularly like this in any case is kind of not acceptable.

You have not yet answered any of my questions that I posed just a few posts up. Without sharing details of your complete system architecture, no one, not even Support, can really offer much more assistance.

In the past, almost every issue like the one you're experiencing ultimately ended up being a home networking problem.

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Sorry, I missed that post. Will reply to it.

But in my experience 'blame the network' is sort of a classic cop-out. I've had a career as the 'network guy.' I've lost count of the number of times an app developer, when presented with proof that the network works fine, continues to blame the network for a bug in his app. So I'm skeptical and admittedly maybe a little biased when I get vague "must be your network" responses, but I've got lots of direct experience that says if you can't prove it's the network, it's your app.

Yep, I can definitely understand that perspective. I have worked in industrial automation for 30 years now, and I agree that it is almost never the properly engineered enterprise network that is causing the issue.

However, you have to understand that 99.9% of home users are not networking gurus, and they just plug stuff in...if the plug fits in the socket, it should just work, right? :wink: Thus, without knowing anything about a user's network configuration, it is hard to not suspect the network. So many users, so little networking expertise... :slight_smile:

We're all trying to help find the root cause. I am tagging @bobbyD and @gopher.ny who both work for Hubitat, and may be able to dig a little deeper into you Hubitat hub to try to understand what might be happening to cause you to lose Alexa connectivity exactly once every week.

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I can't ping the hub from the support tool... does the hub have cloud access?
Off the top of my head, you can use either rule machine or a community app to reboot the hub twice a week in the middle of the night when nothing is running. Of course, that's a band-aid, and it does nothing to figure out/solve the root cause.
This once-a-week disconnect, does it happen at a fixed time (say, always Sunday night) or just after one week of hub uptime?

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  1. What brand and model of home networking equipment are you using? Do you have a weekly automatic reboot of any network hardware configured that might be causing the issue? Are your home networks simple in design, or complicated (e.g. multiple VLANs, special firewall rules, etc...)?

Google Wi-Fi pucks. No VLANs; flat network, main WiFi access point straight into the ISP modem.

  1. Just to verify, are you running the "Amazon Echo Skill" app or the "Amazon Echo App" on your Hubitat hub? The former is the currently supported integration and works very well for a variety of device types. The latter is deprecated and should only be used in countries that do not support the Hubitat Skill.

Using 'Amazon Echo Skill'

  1. What model Hubitat Hub are you running and what firmware version?

Hubitat Elevation® Platform Version

2.2.5.119

Hardware Version

Rev C-7

  1. Do you have any automatic scheduled reboots of your hub?

I do not.

  1. Who is your ISP and what type of connection do you have? Cable Modem, DSL, Fiber?

I've actually (due to issues unrelated to this) switches ISPs and confirmed no change in behavior. Comcast cable internet, now FiOS.

  1. Any chance that your ISP provided network equipment is a router, and then you attached another router to it, thus causing a 'Double NAT' configuration?

With both ISPs, my equipment has the public IP issued by the ISP on its WAN interface. No double-nat.

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If you couldn't ping the hub a few minutes ago try again. I just bounced the wifi network --just in case-- something changes with that, though I've done that many times before and of course no change.

It's after 7 days of uptime. Next failure expected tomorrow evening.

I can access the hub now, it looks like it had no internet for about 8 minutes.
The "developer" logs on the back end look squeaky clean. I was hoping to find some sort of an obvious root cause there.
Going to dig into Alexa integration code, but I'd still recommend a twice-a-week automated reboot in the meantime. Beyond saving some aggravation, it will help narrow things down. I use Alexa with the hubs at home, but mine constantly get testing-in-progress updates, so they're never up for a week at a time.

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Is your Hubitat hub plugged directly into the main Google WiFi 'Router' device (or via a switch hanging off of the main router), or one of the satellites?

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  1. Fios quantum router
  2. Amazon Echo Skill
  3. C7 and lastest version
  4. My router reboots 4AM Monday (today) and Echo Skill is working fine after the reboot.
  5. Verizon fios
  6. I have two routers, both FIOS routers, and one as master and connect to FIOS fiber, and the second one is using MoCA to connect to the master router).