Not sure if this has anything to do with the latest update, but I’m suddenly encountering issues with Hubitat C-5 not communicating via the Amazon Echo Built-in App to Amazon Alexa/servers this week. I notice that it’s disconnected every morning when I wake up and I’m unable to control lights, etc. until the hub is rebooted.
Alexa app shows ALL devices from HE as unresponsive until the reboot. Once rebooted, everything is responsive again.
As a side and potentially-related note, I noticed the hub was encountering intermittent issues the past few months with devices in general such as localized motion sensors, intermittent rules working, etc. I installed a 3rd-part reboot app over a month ago in which I schedule a reboot every evening at 3 AM in order to get things working properly (which it had.) It’s been working fine and now this. While I realize this isn’t the best solution (something was probably leading up to intermittent issues and I think it’s likely related to a deprecated LG ThinQ App,) it was something that was a stop-gap solution. Whether or not this is related to this Echo issue now remains to be seen.
In the meanwhile, I’ve been removing unused apps, unused drivers, rules, groups, etc. with the hopes of slimming down the C-5 memory and also to avoid any potential conflicts moving forward.
Thanks. I had no idea about this issue. I was wondering if it was more related to an internal memory leak related to an old app (and another issue which I didn’t mention but am mentioning below.) Now I know it’s more systematic and likely firmware-related.
There also happened to be a VERY weird issue with my networking which may or may not be related: I had a NETGEAR Orbi Satellite which I had directly connected to the C-5 HE. It worked fine for a couple of months.
Then, my Wi-Fi signals on numerous devices on various devices went from excellent to suddenly intermittent around the same timeframe mentioned in the thread you referenced. I was actually rebooting my entire network as a result. Then I noticed I couldn’t even access the HE interface locally via IP unless I rebooted the C-5. BUT, I was able to sometimes control lights with my voice (via Echo/Alexa,) although the GUI wasn’t available.
A couple of nights ago, I took this C-5 off of the Satellite and moved it directly to a network switch versus making extra steps. So far, I can connect directly to the HE GUI once again and it’s more reliable. But, the Cloud connectivity (as you mentioned) is still intermittently disconnecting.
If I had to wager, there’s some sort of memory leak related to internal networking of the C-5 which is causing flooding my network related to DNS. I am now bypassing my PiHole and for simplicity sake using 1.1.1.1 in the HE DNS (Static IP of course) settings. Will see if it suddenly starts to “behave” again but there’s something more underlying which is causing this to still happen.
Further update (and I feel like an idiot but don’t want to mislead anyone): I discovered tonight that my satellite had been disconnected by one of my cats. It’s entirely possible that some of the intermittent access could have been due to my cat crawling behind the couch and somehow snagged herself on a power cable. The power brick was completely separated from the outlet.
BUT, I still have the hub on a different switch since a couple of nights ago that connects to my main router. It still doesn’t explain the communication dropping with Amazon/cloud. I’ll have to wait until the morning in order to see if it repeats again.
Update 3: hub has been stable ever since I made a few changes on my end. No FW updates since I posted. The C5 had been presenting numerous issues sometimes multiple times a day but they’ve disappeared. Devices and scheduling apps are working much better. I am running a reboot app daily.
Removed the LG ThinQ (no longer supported) HE app and drivers and swapped it out for the Echo ThinQ App integration for more direct notifications. It had been spamming log warnings which are related to handshaking with the devices (washer and dryer) to see if they were online.
A Trendnet 2.5 gbps switch was responsible for creating ghost Orbi satellites. Replaced the switch for another and the ghost satellites disappeared. Apparently, people have known about this issue for years. Not sure if it had any real impact and had been running fine for a year prior.
Reenabled 20/40 mhz coexistence on my systems. I was able to disable this for over a year without issues and speed increases but only recently devices started dropping. Enabled it and the connections have been solid once again. I suspect that maybe something changed with the hub and this might have been a culprit, although it’s been Ethernet to the C5. Both those issues occurred around the same time.
Update 4: Last night I had to revert my C-5’s firmware to 10 days ago. I still encountered lights dropping off the Echo communications and the hub acting flaky. So far, so good.
