Alexa cannot find any devices

[metkhoo]

Hi, This used to work but stopped so I removed all the devices one by one on my iPhone Alexa App and disabled the skill

Then re-enabled the skill expecting Alexa to find all my devices...

However, it finds nothing.

What am I doing wrong (other than expecting it to work)?

[Rupp]

Try disabling voice control for all devices, this can be done by using the check box and drop-down list directly under the words Device List, as seen in the screenshot.

Once you use the check box to select all devices, you will want to use the drop down menu to select Disable Voice. Then, you will want to go through your device list and click the checkboxes for the devices you would like to control. There are two rules about enabling voice control:

The device must have controls on the right hand side
The device must be on/off, dimmable, or thermostat controls.


For the device above, you would only want to enable voice control for the HomeSeer HS-WD100+ Switch Multilevel child device.

Once all appropriate devices have been selected, you will want to select Enable Voice from the drop down menu, then unlink and relink Alexa with HomeSeer.

[metkhoo]

SOLVED
Yes, this solved it for me
In HomeSeer - turning off Voice for all devices
In HomeSeer - turn on Voice only for control devices I choose
In Alexa app - remove the HomeSeer skill
In Alexa app - add the HomeSeer skill back in then scan.

The previously voice enabled devices are now seen by Alexa and can be set up in the Alexa app.

Rupp - Thanks!

[Timon]

This is nuts! I just tried this and no joy. I’ll try it again but I’m not hopeful.

This is what I think is happening. There has got to be some data that MyHS uses to know if it should send device data during an add. I think this data isn’t getting cleared out when a device has its voice enable cleared. We need a way for us to force MyHS to forgot all stored Alexa information and start over.

PLEASE HOMESEER! Join these conversations and help us figure this out. Heck, you have my permission to check my database on MyHS to see what blocking the add devices.

[Timon]

I've been going back and forth with Matt on this issue. What was found is that once one gets into the state where is won't pickup devices you have to get forget all devices on Alexa and remove the voice flag on all devices you have to do the same thing for events. If forget just one event nothing will be found. I don't know if Matt agrees with me but I still say they have a bug in their code that needs to be found.

They need to add something that will clear all of the flags that are used but allow the actual device voice flags on devices and events to be ignored so it's quicker to fix the issue.

I told Matt that we need a way to easily find events that have the voice and other option flag that are set much the same way you can find what events are using a given device.

My suggestion for everyone is to make a Event group that contains all of your voice triggered events. I'm not saying move the actual events there just a simple two line event that set to manual trigger and a run event which points to your original event that had a voice flag. This will make it MUCH easier to find and fix voice since you only have to look in one place.

[Timon]

Well, there is still an issue. I added to Events so they can be imported to Alexa. I entered the Voice string and checked the voice inside of the event. I did a device discovery and nothing got found. What I'm worried about now is when I get ready to add another WD200 dimmer it's not going to be found. There is still something wrong. We'll report back once I finish testing this.

[Timon]

Here is the latest update on adding events as devices too Alexa.

I turned off event voice checkbox and I can still add devices. However I 'm still not been able to add events as voice devices to Alexa. This used to be able to add them but no longer can.

One thing to note however Alexa/HomeSeer will NOT update device names as far as I can tell. I find the only safe way when making changing to existing devices is to forget the device you've changed than rename them then add them back in.

I'll report this to Matt tonight so he can check it out tomorrow.

In the meantime I'll keep looking after I watch todays NASCAR Cup Race

[Jayhawk]

I have 72 devices and 30 events (scenes/Routines) discovered and working with echo for several months. Added 2 devices couple days ago... no problem. Created 3 new events yesterday (properly voice enabled) and cannot achieve discovery after multiple attempts. Reported to support today.

[Timon]

I have 72 devices and 30 events (scenes/Routines) discovered and working with echo for several months. Added 2 devices couple days ago... no problem. Created 3 new events yesterday (properly voice enabled) and cannot achieve discovery after multiple attempts. Reported to support today.

Yep, something has changed. As I said I had working events set with Alexa but was forced to remove them ignorer to get devices working again. Now Events won't connect again.

Anyway, back to playing with my system.

[Timon]

I've been working with Matt and we, actually Matt, figured something out. Special characters in the voice tag can cause issues. I normally make a copy of the Event Name and put it into the Voice field. Since I use a lot of Alexa routines to trigger HS Events I didn't worry about any special characters ini the voice field. That was a bad idea. I had my Names for events triggered by Alexa all starting with "Alexa: Name of event". Well, that ":" apparently really messed up the whole process. I have been able to use a "-" in the voice tag but Matt was saying better to not use anything to be safe.

So check your voice tags in your events for any special characters and if you have any remove them and try again. There is no issue having special characters in the Event name as long as there aren't any in the voice tag.

I suspect the same rules apply for devices which is why I now make sure to ALWAYS fill in the voice tag and NEVER depend on the device name to be used as the voice tag.

[Timon]

One more thing, even after making sure there were no special characters I still had some events that would not load into Alexa. Finally I tried making a copy of the problem event then deleted the original and renamed the new one back to the original name. This time it did discover the event.

I think something gets messed up in the event and the only way to fix it is to make a copy.

[IanIreland]

My system has been fine for a while. A couple of weeks ago I changed a dead 2 channel micromodule. I told Alexa to forget the dead devices. I then enabled voice control on the new device and rescanned, to my delight Alexa found the 2 new devices.

This week I changed a plug-in module as an Insteon module was not receiving commands reliably. I swapped it for a TPLink WiFi plugin module. I enabled voice command and rescanned, but Alexa is not finding this device.

I have been through the sequence of disabling all voice commands, unliking and re-linking the skill, re-enabling voice command for that device and rescanning. Alexa is still not finding the device.

Any suggestions?

EDIT - contacted HS support; In the Status Graphics tab for this device you will see that there are Control Use drop-down menus for each control option. These must be set correctly (Control Use of Off for OFF controls, for example) in order for Alexa to know what to do with these devices.

That worked :-)

[Timon]

Well I thought this was fixed but I guess not. I just added a voice tag and set the voice command checkbox for a simple dimmer and Alexa cannot find it. I don't remember changes anything else so without going though every single device YET AGAIN and turning off voice and adding them back in one by one this is not going to be easy to find.

I really wish there was a way we could see each device scanned so we could see when it fails. We need a MyHS log page on web site where we can see this and thus tell when it fails.

PLEASE HS HELP US!!!

[rwenner]

I followed the recommendation to "Forget" devices in my Amazon Alexa account; disable all the voice commands; re-enable all the voice commands; and re-discover devices in the Alexa App - - went from 87 devices in Alexa to 6 (the discovered devices all have separate skills in Alexa - non of the HomeSeer devices were discovered). Anymore progress?

[Timon]

Well is my face is red! It's something I saw before and reported it but ending up forgetting that I did. It's something that you should try if having this problem. Look through the scenes that haven't loaded into alexa and disable them one by one. As soon as you find the one that's failing then make a copy and delete the old one. It should now load.

What seems to be happening is that scenes are getting corrupted in some way that you can't see when you open the scene but if you make a copy and delete the old it fixes the problem.