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    Alexa Intergration: No Device or Event Discovery

    Hi, I've got an open support request that's going nowhere fast so I thought I'd post here.

    I'm 100% stonewalled with regard to making Alexa pickup any of my devices or events in HS4 on Ubuntu 20.x

    This worked for a couple of weeks after initial install, but now we're completely stymied. Events have never populated at all, but devices had previously, but are not now. Devices which I'd previously scanned for and picked up are working, but I can no longer add new ones, and if I remove a device from the Alexa webGUI, it will not re-populate after successive scans.

    I've done all of the standards:
    • Un-linked and re-linked the Amazon Alexa skills (both of them)
    • Turned off voice activation for all but a single device
    • Set that single device to an extremely basic name and voice command, just one letter "A"
    • Set that one device up as "Is a light"
    • Ensured there is a local HomeSeer username and password with Admin privileges that matches my MyHS.homeseer.com account exactly
    • Logged into my MyHs.homeseer.com account and verified changes to the local HomeSeer service are echoed in the cloud service (they are)
    As I understand it, and do correct me if wrong, but Alexa is a one way connection between Amazon and MyHS.homeseer.com. Alexa is never interacting with my HomeSeer service directly, (as I'd have to setup NAT and Firewall policies if it were). Alexa is interfacing with MyHS and MyHS is communicating with my actual local server. You can see this in the startup logs when HomeSeer makes its initial connection to the MyHS service (which is successful).

    So that said, I would have to assume there are log files on the MyHS.homeseer.com side of the equation that show what is happening when Alexa tries to do its scan to pickup devices and events.

    I dunno, I feel really helpless here but this is a really big deal feature to have work so poorly. I hope there's a solution here. Does anyone have any thoughts or suggestions?

    thank you in advance,
    AJM

    #2
    I am in a similar situation, only I am currently running HS3 (I tried HS4 when it was first released and didn't like it)

    Everything was working great, I have about 61 discovered devices in the Alexa app, but a couple of days ago I added a dimmer to my system and wanted to also add it to Alexa, but the system could not find the new device. When I had problems in the past like this, I would basically do what you outlined - disable the skill, delete discovered devices, re-enable the skill, relink, and then rediscover. I was pretty shocked to find out that when I tried to re-link the skill, I kept getting an error message that the account could not be linked, so I opened up a support ticket.

    I have to say that we kind of rely on these voice commands, and it has been a day or two since without any response, so tonight I decided to just 'go for it'. I logged into the 'myhms remote' web, page, clicked on manage account and under Systems and Users, I deleted my existing system. I then had to re-register for a new account, using the same email address I had before and I could see and access my old system through the web page. I then enabled the Alexa skill (the one with the shorter name and only about 34 reviews) and fortunately for me, it discovered almost all of my devices - 59 out of the 62 I had previously, but at least everything appears to be working for now. Still waiting on support though

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      #3
      Same....

      Open ticket... HS4... Every step possible..

      Remote support logging in and making suggestions... No success.

      I have slowly been recreating every device in node red for voice controk

      Sent from my SM-G960U1 using Tapatalk

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        #4
        Same here ... I gave up .
        Using now a couple of months HA-bridge, works very well with HS4 and Alexa and easy to install.

        Cor

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          #5
          This is disappointing, I'm just about to ask for a refund on my HomeSeer license over this. It's a core feature that apparently just doesn't work. Buyer beware! I'm willing to give support a full month, which I'm getting close to, but don't have much optimism over.

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            #6
            Originally posted by Corvl1 View Post
            Same here ... I gave up .
            Using now a couple of months HA-bridge, works very well with HS4 and Alexa and easy to install.

            Cor
            Hi Corvl1, is there any documentation out there for setting up this integration? I'm not at all familiar with "HA-Bridge" but I'm happy to go down that route if it's a viable option/workaround. Would love to hear more about it!

            Thanks,
            AJM

            Comment


              #7
              Originally posted by amikolajczyk View Post

              Hi Corvl1, is there any documentation out there for setting up this integration? I'm not at all familiar with "HA-Bridge" but I'm happy to go down that route if it's a viable option/workaround. Would love to hear more about it!

              Thanks,
              AJM
              https://forums.homeseer.com/forum/ho...rol-of-devices

              Comment


                #8
                I got mine working today

                HomeSeer support wanted to me to 'bulk edit' all my devices and use the 'disable voice' command. I was a little hesitant to do so, but I bit the bullet today and did it. I then went through and manually enabled the voice command on each device - and note, this should only be enabled on devices you can actually command (light switches, dimmers, etc). I then did the delete devices, disable the skill, enable the skill and relink routine and this time it picked up the new dimmer switch that I added last week. So at this point, Alexa has discovered all the Voice Command devices and everything appears to be working. Hope this helps someone else... I currently have (40) devices that show they are "connected via HomeSeer" in the Alexa app and about a dozen other devices connected by different skills - thermostat, printers, ip cams, etc

                Comment


                  #9
                  Originally posted by 2Fast View Post
                  I got mine working today

                  HomeSeer support wanted to me to 'bulk edit' all my devices and use the 'disable voice' command. I was a little hesitant to do so, but I bit the bullet today and did it. I then went through and manually enabled the voice command on each device - and note, this should only be enabled on devices you can actually command (light switches, dimmers, etc). I then did the delete devices, disable the skill, enable the skill and relink routine and this time it picked up the new dimmer switch that I added last week. So at this point, Alexa has discovered all the Voice Command devices and everything appears to be working. Hope this helps someone else... I currently have (40) devices that show they are "connected via HomeSeer" in the Alexa app and about a dozen other devices connected by different skills - thermostat, printers, ip cams, etc
                  Before you bulk edited ALL devices to disable the voice command, did you happen to first try just a handful to see if they would come back? Conversely, after bulk disabling voice on all of them did you try enabling voice on one or two and then try re-discovering? Did they get picked back up? Support is stuck on this and I'm more nervous to 'bite the bullet' than you were on this one! If I can't get everything back, I'll be in the doghouse for sure.

                  BTW - When I go into amazon.com/alexa I only see my Alexa hubs and no devices whatsoever.

                  Comment


                    #10
                    Originally posted by avpman View Post

                    Before you bulk edited ALL devices to disable the voice command, did you happen to first try just a handful to see if they would come back? Conversely, after bulk disabling voice on all of them did you try enabling voice on one or two and then try re-discovering? Did they get picked back up? Support is stuck on this and I'm more nervous to 'bite the bullet' than you were on this one! If I can't get everything back, I'll be in the doghouse for sure.

                    BTW - When I go into amazon.com/alexa I only see my Alexa hubs and no devices whatsoever.
                    No, I didn't try it with just a couple of devices. I have about 40 devices with voice commands, and I just went through them one by one and made sure everything was correct and then enabled the Voice Command option.

                    Now, with that being said, I recently made some major changes to my home network and I am back to square one with this. The computer running HomeSeer is on one subnet, and the WiFi that the Alexa devices use are on another subnet. The Alexa app is not detecting any of my HomeSeer devices, but voice commands are still working. I need to play around with it some more - using pfSense as my firewall/router. (I had it working before like this but then I moved pfSense to some new hardware)

                    Comment


                      #11
                      Originally posted by 2Fast View Post

                      No, I didn't try it with just a couple of devices. I have about 40 devices with voice commands, and I just went through them one by one and made sure everything was correct and then enabled the Voice Command option.

                      Now, with that being said, I recently made some major changes to my home network and I am back to square one with this. The computer running HomeSeer is on one subnet, and the WiFi that the Alexa devices use are on another subnet. The Alexa app is not detecting any of my HomeSeer devices, but voice commands are still working. I need to play around with it some more - using pfSense as my firewall/router. (I had it working before like this but then I moved pfSense to some new hardware)
                      If I remember correctly, about a week or more ago the MyHS portal was offline for "maintenance." I wonder if something went FUBAR? It would be helpful if support would weigh in on this. I have an open ticket that is in limbo. surely they must have their own Amazon account for testing? I even offered access to my account to get this fixed and they did not respond to my offer.

                      Comment


                        #12
                        avpman - Did you ever get any feedback from your ticket? I just put one in as well for this same problem. One thing I found was that even tho my alexa app is connected to myhs, the app says that the skill is not enabled. See the attached screens. Do you see the same thing?
                        Attached Files

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                          #13
                          I havent had a chance to try what they suggested yet. I'm in the process of moving so it's going to be a while for me to test. They suggested bulk editing all devices and disableing the voice commands, rediscover and then re-enable to voice commands, rediscover again.

                          Comment


                            #14
                            Originally posted by noopara View Post
                            avpman - Did you ever get any feedback from your ticket? I just put one in as well for this same problem. One thing I found was that even tho my alexa app is connected to myhs, the app says that the skill is not enabled. See the attached screens. Do you see the same thing?
                            Have you tried using the other HomeSeer skill? the one with the shorter name and only 48 reviews? That is the one that I have been using

                            Click image for larger version

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                            Comment


                              #15
                              avpman - I have done what they suggested many times without any luck. A lot of other users are having the same problem. I think Amazon made changes to the alexa app which has created this problem.

                              2Fast - I have tried both skills several times without any luck. Have you added any new devices recently with success?

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