Amazon Echo Skill not working with Sengled Zigbee Plug

Relative newbie here (especially with Zigbee devices) needs a little help and guidance (please!). I have been successfully using Hubitat’s Amazon Echo Skill to incorporate various Hubitat devices into Alexa Routines and for voice control via my Echo dots. I recently addd my first Zigbee devices (Sengled’s new oval shaped Zigbee outlet plugs) and successfully and easily paired with my Hubitat. When I use Hubitat’s Amazon Echo Skill app to expose my Sengled Zigbee outlets to Alexa, they are recognized and show up in the Alexa App. However, when I attempt to turn on or turn off the outlet via an Alexa Routine, the device does not respond and shows the message “there was a problem”. The outlets are all within 7 - 10 feet of the HE hub so I assume signal strength is not an issue. All plugs can be controlled with HE and show correct states. Latest firmware on all devices and on HE. Just cannot do the same using Alexa. Any known incompatibilities or issues (Sengled model #E1C-NB7). Any help is greatly appreciated.

On the Alexa side what type of device does it think the plug is?

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It is showing up as a plug on the Alexa side. It's just that when the device is clicked on in Alexa, a message states that “there was a problem”. In addition, regardless of what state the plug is actually in (for example the “on” state, Alexa shows the device as “off”. Then when I click (in Alexa) to turn on the device, Alexa will briefly (for a fraction of a second), show the device as “on” (even though it is not), then immediately shows the device as “off”, again displaying the “There was a problem” message. On the HE side, I the driver used is the “Generic Zigbee Outlet” driver.

As a side note, does anyone have a Zigbee Plug type outlet that 1) has a form factor where two plugs can fit in a single gang outlet (just like the Sengled ones), 2) are UL or ETL certified (like the Sengled ones), but 3) successfully work with the Hubitat Amazon Echo Skill? They do not have to be repeaters. Thanks!

Can you change the device type to a switch?

I just now switched the driver to “Generic Zigbee Switch” and the device now shows up in Alexa as a “light”. Still no joy with same message of “There was a problem”. It is interesting however, that the plug can still be controlled in Hubitat as a switch, even flashing works, however, unlike when the “Generic Zigbee Outlet” driver is used, the Current State is not updated until you manually click on the Refresh button (which is not good for keeping dashboards etc current.

Anyway, if no solution exists, hope this information helps others to stay away from the Sengled plugs if they expect to be able to control through Alexa voice controls via Hubitat. You can of course link the Sengled App with Alexa, but then you are going through two cloud based services and I was hoping to have to go through only one (Alexa) for voice control.

It may be time to return the Sengleds (TG for Amazon Prime). Again, any suggestions for Zigbee plugs that actually work through Hubitat’s Amazon Echo Skill? Hubitat itself pairs easily and controls the Sengleds but I also want voice control. TIA for any other suggestions.

@thebearmay,
Thanks for your suggestion. It got me thinking to trying other drivers as well. Although the “Generic Zigbee Switch” driver did not work, I also tried the “Generic Zigbee Bulb” driver and it did work (at least partially for my purposes). Using the Zigbee bulb driver, I have on/off control using Hubitat with current status updates. You do lose the Flash button and of course, lose the current live energy monitoring that you keep with the “outlet” driver. However, now the device does show up in Alexa now as a “light” and can be turned on and off. Alexa also displays correct current state (“current” meaning the present state, not the amperage). Thanks for your suggestion to change the device type. Unfortunately, you do lose some of the functionality of the outlet to make it work with Alexa.
Hope this info also helps others.
Still looking for other outlet/plug solutions though that don’t have to be so jury-rigged. Any suggestions?

May just be able to change it on the Alexa side without changing it on the HE side

Do you know how to do this? Any help would be appreciated. I tried by going into Alexa and clicking on the device, then on the settings “gear” icon. Could not change device type. I know that in some cases if you have a light switch you can sometimes designate it as a “light” so that you can control an assigned Echo dot or other Alexa device to a specific room and just say “Alexa, turn out the lights” to control all the “lights” in just that room, but I could not change the Sengled plug into a light on the Alexa side. Please elaborate on how you are able to do this. Thanks for all you help. Much appreciated.

Been a while since I played with it, but I want to say that it used to only capture the device type when you first added (or deleted, exited, and then readded) it to the Alexa Echo Skill in HE. So what I'd do is create it as a switch, add it to the Skill app, and then change the driver back to the plug or whatever. Alexa would show a switch, but HE would have the correct driver which would allow Alexa to turn on/off and HE to do full function. Not sure if it still works that way or not...

@thebearmay,
Thanks so much for spending the time and effort to try and help me out! I tried adding to the Amazon Echo Skill as a bulb (as that was what I was able to get working, at least for ON/OFF), then switching the driver in HE after the plug was added the Echo Skill as a “outlet”. The good news . . . The outlet continued to work in Alexa . . .the bad . . .although in HE you could see get most functionality back (e.g., energy monitoring, flashing etc) the state of the device would not update unless you manually hit the refresh button. So if you turned on your device using Alexa voice control, the HE would become out of sync until you hit refresh. So this is still not ideal.

Fortunately in my use case, for the devices that I need Alexa voice control, I only need ON/OFF functionality, so can continue to use the bulb driver “fix”. In addition, for rules that utilize power monitoring, they can all be done solely in HE Rule 4.1 without any Alexa intervention, so I can add these devices as “outlets”.

The reason I was looking for a Zigbee outlet was to transition my Tasmota devices since I am afraid that given Tasmota is no longer being actively supported in the Hubitat community due to the development of Core, sooner or later the Tasmota HTTP hook and Tasmota 8.5.1 devices may no longer be compatible with a future Hubitat update. As Tasmota continues to develop and upgrade, it seems that the “nuts and bolts” of the Hubitat software updates are no longer available to the developers of the HE Tasmota Device Manager. Eventually, I may lose function of my Tasmota flashed devices and wanted to avoid an emergency one day when all the devices failed due to a Hubitat update. I figure Hubitat will always support Zigbee and Z-wave as they are built into the Hub hardware and software. I could of course, just “freeze” my Hubitat in time by not updating it, but whats the fun in that and losing potential benefits of future update features.

Anyway, thanks for all your suggestions. It helped me get this sorted out. Last question for @thebearmay and anyone else: what Zigbee plugs are you actually using that work with the Echo Skill with the native “outlet” driver (and are any UL or ETL certified)?

Mine are the old, old Iris and ST plugs....

@moh, make sure each time you change the driver type and click SAVE, that you also click the CONFIGURE button. This configures the device to properly report status updates back to the Hubitat hub. Those updates are often what Alexa is waiting for…if she doesn’t get an update in a timely manner, she complains.

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@ogiewon,

Thank you so much for the reminder! That took care of everything. Everything now stays in-sync. It has been awhile since I first started to add devices and drivers (I now have around 100 plus) and official Hubitat step-by-step documentation is not so great. Hitting configure after each and every change was something that I just overlooked.
Most of my getting things to work has been extensive searches in this forum (sometimes hit or miss, sometimes just luck in coming across some statement that one of the members have buried in a discussion), and mostly just hours of experimentation manipulating variables and testing and re-testing conditions. You’re the best! Thank you! Thanks for all your contributions to this forum.

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