How to diagnose "Hmm, doesn't seem to be responding"

[simonmason]

My Alexa seems to work about 1 in 3 times with my devices. I have not been able to integrate it that closely into my house setup because it is so unpredictable. Just this morning it turned the stereo on fine, and then a minute later would not turn it off - device not responding.

I also have my Alexa talking to my virtual-HA bridge which is running locally on my network - talking to my Harmony Hub - and that works most of the time.

So I am assuming that the communication issues are because of the various network hops it needs to make?

How do I diagnose this? I only see something in the homeseer log if the command gets through. Are there any other logs I can be checking to figure out what is going on here? If I am not able to diagnose and solve this I might have to put my Alexa up for sale - so far the only value it has provides is as an overpriced shopping list keeper.

[jon00]

MyHS was down this morning. I suggest you subscribe to this thread: https://forums.homeseer.com/showthread.php?t=188065

[simonmason]

Thanks Jon,
That is reassuring that I have done nothing wrong, but also not very reassuring that there is a single point of failure that is beyond my control. As I said, it is something that happens a lot - making the Alexa interface unreliable. No one in the house will use it as a result.

I am not devastated by this - controlling everything with an on or off, or "tell homeseer to" was not working for the family members anyway. I recognize that is a limitation of Amazon's architecture.

I wonder if the Google home will afford more flexibility?