Amazon Echo Club

[booklover6]

Originally Posted by OtinG

Besides the FW fiasco, mine cannot hear a stick of dynamite go off 10 feet away. It is as deaf as Hellen Keller. Even putting my mouth a few inches from the mic I have to nearly yell to get it to hear me.

Ooooo my precious Alexa, the very first baby with the volume ring on top, was doing that. I thought she was dying! Then the ring stopped working for volume control! Unplugging her set her to rights, though. That Alexa is my #1 favorite, due to the ring which I don't need light or voice to adjust! Perfect when I'm lying in bed trying to sleep!

[OtinG]

Originally Posted by booklover6

Ooooo my precious Alexa, the very first baby with the volume ring on top, was doing that. I thought she was dying! Then the ring stopped working for volume control! Unplugging her set her to rights, though. That Alexa is my #1 favorite, due to the ring which I don't need light or voice to adjust! Perfect when I'm lying in bed trying to sleep!

I’ve tried several attempts at unplugging, updating firmware, etc. Apparently I got a bad unit out of the bunch. Thankfully I don’t need to talk to the Show 5 much since I use it mostly as a clock and occasionally to listen to music so I can see the lyrics as the song plays. But most of my asking Alex to do stuff gets asked of my Echo Plus 2 or one of the Dots.

[booklover6]

Now the Show 5 doesn't constantly slide show the nature photos, it goes to sleep and has a dull screen with the clock, until I touch it to wake it up. Before this fiasco, it was on constant slide show mode. Annoying that now I have to touch it. Small potatoes in the stream of life! But I do love the pics. They flash by faster now, too, I think.

[DiapDealer]

Lost Alexa control of 3 TP-Link KL125 Multi-color bulbs this morning. I turned them off last night with voice control, then as of this morning... nothing. Zip. They all three work fine, however, with the Kasa app on my phone.

Alexa sees them, but just can't control them. It doesn't seem to be the Kasa Alexa skill/integration because all other TP-Link lights, plugs and switches still work normally via Alexa and multiple Echo devices. Just these three bulbs. All smart bulbs, switches and plugs in my house are TP-Link.

If I delete them from Alexa, they are undiscoverable when trying to add a new device. If I delete them from Kasa, Alexa will discover them (after I set them back up in Kasa), but once again, can't control them. Change their names in Kasa and Alexa will pick up the name change, but still can't control them ("There was a problem").

Neither the Kasa skill (nor the Kasa app on my phone) nor the Alexa app have updated recently. All three lights have the most recent firmware (and have for a long time). I don't know if the there was an Echo update last night, but I doubt it would matter since it seems to be an Alexa problem and not an Echo problem.

Guess I need to try disabling/enabling the Alexa Kasa skill after work today (even though all other Kasa skill-controlled devices are functioning properly). At my trouble-shooting wits-end for the morning.

[OtinG]

Originally Posted by booklover6

Now the Show 5 doesn't constantly slide show the nature photos, it goes to sleep and has a dull screen with the clock, until I touch it to wake it up. Before this fiasco, it was on constant slide show mode. Annoying that now I have to touch it. Small potatoes in the stream of life! But I do love the pics. They flash by faster now, too, I think.

With the Show 5, "life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you will get..." Wait a few days and it will likely change to doing some other fresh hell. Every time those idiot developers touch the FW they make it worse.

I think they probably use contractors who don't hang around for long, so there probably isn't too many staff developers who keep track of the code. We had that problem when I worked at IBM in the 1990s. Contractors were basically walking through a revolving door. It took longer to correct their mistakes than if we had just used actual IBMers to code it in the first place...

[OtinG]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Lost Alexa control of 3 TP-Link KL125 Multi-color bulbs this morning. I turned them off last night with voice control, then as of this morning... nothing. Zip. They all three work fine, however, with the Kasa app on my phone.

Alexa sees them, but just can't control them. It doesn't seem to be the Kasa Alexa skill/integration because all other TP-Link lights, plugs and switches still work normally via Alexa and multiple Echo devices. Just these three bulbs. All smart bulbs, switches and plugs in my house are TP-Link.

If I delete them from Alexa, they are undiscoverable when trying to add a new device. If I delete them from Kasa, Alexa will discover them (after I set them back up in Kasa), but once again, can't control them. Change their names in Kasa and Alexa will pick up the name change, but still can't control them ("There was a problem").

Neither the Kasa skill (nor the Kasa app on my phone) nor the Alexa app have updated recently. All three lights have the most recent firmware (and have for a long time). I don't know if the there was an Echo update last night, but I doubt it would matter since it seems to be an Alexa problem and not an Echo problem.

Guess I need to try disabling/enabling the Alexa Kasa skill after work today (even though all other Kasa skill-controlled devices are functioning properly). At my trouble-shooting wits-end for the morning.

I've got 7 Kasa bulbs, mostly color but some or white. Occasionally one will quit being responsive for a while where in neither the Kasa app nor the Alexa app can control it. Much more rarely, multiple ones will go offline at the same time. If I physically turn the contrary bulb off for 20 seconds then turn it back on, that usually corrects the issue. Sometimes if I just wait a while, they will come back online by themselves. Though not always in either case. I have an older one that is first gen and it is the one which is most problematic.

But in my particular case, I think my issue is my old 2012 Wi-Fi router not being able to maintain constant communication with them. I have the same issue with my 2.4 GHz Amcrest security cams occasionally going offline too. So in my case, I most likely need to get a newer router with greater range and more up to date Wi-Fi capabilities.

Your issue with the Kasa bulbs sounds much more complex. I know all this Home control stuff is still rather flaky at times.

[ApK]

Originally Posted by OtinG

Your issue with the Kasa bulbs sounds much more complex. I know all this Home control stuff is still rather flaky at times.

From DD's description it seems that it has to be related to the Alexa/Kasa skill integration.


I think I now have all my stuff controlled by the Hubitat hub, so I only need the Hubitat skill enabled in Alexa to control the different brands.


It's reliable, though still not 100%, but at least I only have one integration to work with so I usually have no doubt where a problem lies.


ApK

[DiapDealer]

What's worse is the Alexa app on my phone can see the current status of those three bulbs (on/off, brightness, color) it just can't change any of the settings. I've done a hard reset of the three bulbs, and relinked my Kasa account with no luck. Everything but these 3 bulbs are working correctly. I'm about to blame the electromagnetic storm over the weekend!

[DiapDealer]

All 3 bulbs are getting an ip address from the router and are ping-able from any device on the home network. The mystery deepens.

[OtinG]

Probably not related to your issue, but I use the Kasa widget on my iPhone and iPad. The last few days whenever I press a scene on the widget to execute it, the scene does execute but then the widget goes blank and no longer displays the 6 scenes which is has set up to use. Swiping from one Home page to another, then swiping back repopulates the scenes in the widget. It has never done that in the past unless it lost contact with the Kasa app. Not sure why it is happening now. Maybe Kasa has made some updates that are not playing nice with Alexa and/or iOS and iPadOS.

[ApK]

One of our kasa smart plugs stopped responding for a little while tonight. It came back after trying different control methods for several minutes. Could there have been some rolling firmware update or something causing various problems?

[DiapDealer]

That's what I suspected, but I've done no firmware updates for a long time. I check periodically, and I've had no updates for months. Neither Kasa nor the Alexa app (including the Tp-Link Kasa skill) have been updated for weeks. I can't swear that my Echo Dot didn't update its software that night since there's no easy way to tell when they update, but it's not a likely culprit anyway (since multiple alexa apps and multiple Echo devices--including an ancient one--are unable to control these 3 bulbs). Yet all other tp link devices in the house are working fine. It's baffling. My troubleshooting abilities have been completely exhausted. All I can do is wait and see, I guess.

[DiapDealer]

Well after a little more than 24 hours, the three bulbs started working with Alexa again. Absolutely nothing, that I can see, changed from last night to today. All apps, skills, firmware, Echo software versions are the same as before.

The only thing the remotely makes sense to me is something wrong with the TP Link/Kasa Alexa skill. Something entirely in the cloud. Though other TP Link/Kasa devices in my home were working fine, there's clearly some sort of external communication between my Alexa account and my TP Link account (otherwise how could I remotely control these devices from any network with Alexa) that was on the fritz.

I hate that there was nothing I could do locally to affect the situation, but I'm happy its working again. This represents the first significant "fail" I've had with controlling Kasa devices with Alexa/Echo.

[OtinG]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Well after a little more than 24 hours, the three bulbs started working with Alexa again. Absolutely nothing, that I can see, changed from last night to today. All apps, skills, firmware, Echo software versions are the same as before.

The only thing the remotely makes sense to me is something wrong with the TP Link/Kasa Alexa skill. Something entirely in the cloud. Though other TP Link/Kasa devices in my home were working fine, there's clearly some sort of external communication between my Alexa account and my TP Link account (otherwise how could I remotely control these devices from any network with Alexa) that was on the fritz.

I hate that there was nothing I could do locally to affect the situation, but I'm happy its working again. This represents the first significant "fail" I've had with controlling Kasa devices with Alexa/Echo.

This is exactly what I described occasionally happening to two of my TP-Link bulbs in post #4656 above. They rarely stay offline as long as yours though. One occasionally will stay offline for several hours, but not days. The other is usually offline for only a few minutes.

Considering we are dealing with the FW in the bulbs plus the FW in the device using Alexa plus the FW in the device using the Kasa app plus the Alexa app code and the Kasa app code plus the Wi-Fi network plus the internet connection plus the Alexa servers plus the TP-Link servers, well it gets rather complex, and there is a lot of pieces to this Rube Goldberg association that can have issues.

ETA: Probably a good thing the Apollo space crafts used a gillion simple toggle switches. Sometimes simple is better, or at least more reliable. We need to do that "we are not worthy" bow before a statue of the person who invented the simple On/Off switch!

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by OtinG

This is exactly what I described occasionally happening to two of my TP-Link bulbs in post #4656 above.

You did call that. I should have acknowledged that. Sorry.

Originally Posted by OtinG

Considering we are dealing with the FW in the bulbs plus the FW in the device using Alexa plus the FW in the device using the Kasa app plus the Alexa app code and the Kasa app code plus the Wi-Fi network plus the internet connection plus the Alexa servers plus the TP-Link servers, well it gets rather complex, and there is a lot of pieces to this Rube Goldberg association that can have issues.

Agreed. Though in my defense, I WAS able to rule out nearly every bit of that except "the Alexa servers plus the TP-Link servers".

I just never expected it to be so device-specific: all of the KL125 bulbs in use and nothing else.

Ah well. They're making it harder and harder for me to use these devices without the internet, but for the time being, I still have a local-only solution using a HomeAssistant server that I can use to turn on/off Kasa devices without any internet service.