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Alexa "x device is not responding"


Don Cohen

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I have been using Alexa to turn on my Theater and Family Room TV for a couple of years: "Turn on HBO Max," "Turn on Theater Netflix," etc. In the past it worked without difficulty probably 90 to 95% of the time, with the occasional glitch. This is with the Control4 native driver, not 3rd party.

Previously, every once in a while, after a few second delay, Alexa would say "Sorry...HBO Max is not responding" but immediately after it said that, the device would turn on. Annoying, but no big deal.

For the past couple of weeks, it says that the device is not responding essentially right away, and then the device does in fact turn on. So no more delay in the erroneous message, but this is now happening each and every time. This is annoying.

I have unlinked Alexa to Control4, then rebooted the Controller, finally relinking Alexa. Then rediscovered Devices. No change in the problem. I have tried a number of variations on this theme, unlinking and relinking without a controller reboot, just a controller reboot, etc. The problem persists.

I saw there were some outages a couple of days ago, but these are now reported as fully restored. Am I the only one experiencing this? I could deal with the 1 out of 10 times when it mistakenly said this, but every time is pretty ridiculous. Other Alexa commands (close the garage doors, turn on a light, etc.) function normally without any 'non responding' message. So seemingly, just the AV gear is showing this issue.

Thoughts?

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This behavior remains unchanged.

Is no one else seeing this? Hard to believe it's just my system, since it's worked well for so long without this quirk.

And any suggestions on how to 'reset' this beyond Controller reboot, and/or Unlinking/Relinking the Alexa-Control4 connection, both of which I've done?

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My Alexa integration also is not working today but I assume it is just an outage. I have learned to wait 24 hours before making changes as they usually restore the C4 integration. 
 

As far as the other glitches you describe where it says it is having trouble but then does what you say, I have also experienced that intermittently with no real rhyme or reason. In general, I would say the Alexa integration works about 99% of the time. When it is t working, I use Siri with Homebridge integration. Mainly for global commands like “Siri, goodnight” - all lights go off, doors lock, gates close and home alarm sets, etc. 

Hopefully the Alexa integration returns soon!

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Thanks for the reply @Atrunco. In general, I would agree with you. There have been past incidents, outages, etc., which were reported at the Snap One Status page, with resultant Alexa problems, which would resolve within a day or so.

The thing is, while some outages were reported on Jan. 19, there have been none reported for the past 3 days. So definitely long enough for things to 'clear.'

And even with past problems, I would have the occasional "x device is not responding" from Alexa, while most of the time it would still actually trigger the correct action. But for many days now, every command to my AV system in Theater or Family Room is accompanied by "hmmm....x device is not responding" even though it actually does. Each and every time.

So this is worse than in the past, longer lasting, and somewhat different in the nature of the problem.

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I’ve been seeing this with my Alexa Echo for about a week. We ask her to turn on the living room tv and she immediately says living room Echo not responding but the TV and sound all turn on as normal. Shutting off the room gives the same false negative response from Alexa. 

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33 minutes ago, dinom said:

I’ve been seeing this with my Alexa Echo for about a week. We ask her to turn on the living room tv and she immediately says living room Echo not responding but the TV and sound all turn on as normal. Shutting off the room gives the same false negative response from Alexa. 

Thanks. At least I know it's not something misconfigured in my system alone.

It's always hard to know if it's on the Amazon or Control4 side of things...

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OK, now I’m very embarrassed. When this outage appeared, like I said, I just assumed it was like any other in the past. When it continued into this morning I finally pulled up my Alexa app and saw that the skill said that account linking had “expired.”  I had never seen that message before. I attempted to re-link multiple times by inputting my Control4 username and password but it was unsuccessful. 
 

I just rebooted my C4 controller and tried to account linking again and it worked fine. So reboot your controller and re-link the account in the Alexa app and it should resume. Cheers!

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1 hour ago, Atrunco said:

OK, now I’m very embarrassed. When this outage appeared, like I said, I just assumed it was like any other in the past. When it continued into this morning I finally pulled up my Alexa app and saw that the skill said that account linking had “expired.”  I had never seen that message before. I attempted to re-link multiple times by inputting my Control4 username and password but it was unsuccessful. 
 

I just rebooted my C4 controller and tried to account linking again and it worked fine. So reboot your controller and re-link the account in the Alexa app and it should resume. Cheers!

I appreciate the reply, and glad you solved your problem, but if you read my original post, you'll see that I've already done that. Several times in fact. My Control4 account was already linked when this started, no "expired" or other message like that. But despite that, I've unlinked manually, done multiple Controller reboots, then successfully relinking Control4 to Alexa, but the problem persists. I tried again this morning with no success.

Snap One Status shows no problems for many days, so if there is a problem on their side, they seem unaware of it. And I am unaware of any way to check the status of the connection on Amazon's side. So my problem remains, for a week or more now. Each and every time I give a command involving AV gear, the system responds even though Alexa says it's not responding.

Quite frustrating. Anybody else seeing this or not seeing this?

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I have somewhat a related problem that has persisted for many months, although Snap One keeps telling me that the problem is still under investigation. Using Alexa to control projector, retractable screen and theatre lights works perfectly at (unpredictable) times during the day, but, seemingly at random, there are also periods of time every day where Alexa indicates that the devices are unresponsive and none of the Contol4 devices respond at all. I've gone through all the usual steps of rebooting, relinking etc. but none of these measures have any effect. I am losing hope that Control4/ Snap One is even working on the problem and I only wish that there were an alternative to Contoll4 that I could switch to.

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Interesting. As I indicated, in the past I would occasionally have the "x device is not responding" even though it does, randomly, and relatively infrequently. Now it's all the time.

What Control4 OS are you on? I updated to 3.2.4 not too long ago, and have experienced an occasional glitch in conventional Control4 programming at times, unrelated to Alexa.

It also may not be coincidental than there have been some recent changes in how Control4 interacts with Amazon servers to improve connectivity (or something along those lines, I forget the details). I'm not sure if my problems originated from when those changes occurred, but it does make me wonder if this fixed some things while breaking others.

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I am still on OS2.10   I had asked the people at Control4/Snap One  if upgrading would solve the problem, but they did not think it would make any difference  However, I will contact the dealer and see about moving up to 3.2.4 and see if that helps.  

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4 hours ago, Don Cohen said:

Interesting. As I indicated, in the past I would occasionally have the "x device is not responding" even though it does, randomly, and relatively infrequently. Now it's all the time.

What Control4 OS are you on? I updated to 3.2.4 not too long ago, and have experienced an occasional glitch in conventional Control4 programming at times, unrelated to Alexa.

It also may not be coincidental than there have been some recent changes in how Control4 interacts with Amazon servers to improve connectivity (or something along those lines, I forget the details). I'm not sure if my problems originated from when those changes occurred, but it does make me wonder if this fixed some things while breaking others.

I have also had this happening over the last two weeks. Before, it seemed like the first time I'd use Alexa on any given day it would be slow to respond and give me the "device is not responding" message, but then work on subsequent commands The last couple of weeks, I've been getting the "device is not responding" every time and with essentially all commands. Luckily, the action still seems to be working every time so more of an annoyance than a complete loss of function. 

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4 minutes ago, rea said:

I have also had this happening over the last two weeks. Before, it seemed like the first time I'd use Alexa on any given day it would be slow to respond and give me the "device is not responding" message, but then work on subsequent commands The last couple of weeks, I've been getting the "device is not responding" every time and with essentially all commands. Luckily, the action still seems to be working every time so more of an annoyance than a complete loss of function. 

Appreciate the post, and while it sucks for you, at least I know now that it's not something just in my system.

How does one bring this to the attention of Control4 staff to investigate?

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1 minute ago, Don Cohen said:

Appreciate the post, and while it sucks for you, at least I know now that it's not something just in my system.

How does one bring this to the attention of Control4 staff to investigate?

don't you work for a dealer? you should know how to contact control4...

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Just now, msgreenf said:

don't you work for a dealer? you should know how to contact control4...

Yes, and I could do that. My situation is a bit unique though, as a part-time post-retirement relationship, and I try to avoid taking their time away for issues that might only be impacting me. But yeah, I should probably go through those channels.

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I've been having the issue this week of Alexa saying ok and not actually doing anything.  It seems fairly intermittent as I can say the same command 3 times and then it triggers on 3rd time for example   I'm using the Epic driver for most of my Alexa commands but some use the native Controls driver.

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7 minutes ago, ashD said:

Still getting feedback that ‘device’ is not responding but still does what I have asked. I have rebooted the EA3, check Alexa app, rediscovered etc. 

dealer is still looking into the issue. 
 

Same for me. 

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26 minutes ago, Neo1738 said:

Mine works right now but does occasionally get where says not responding w c4 but still does what was asked.

That's the way it's been in my system all along. Perhaps 10% of the time I get the not responding reply, while it actually triggered the correct response 95% of the time.

But for the last week or two, it's been 100% of the time - I get the not responding reply essentially at the same time as the command is correctly executed. I also rebooted my Router this morning, out of curiosity, but no difference. Same behavior.

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