Alexa refresh command

I recently had my Osram LIghtify bulb turn on to 100% in the middle of the night (in the nursery - my 9-month-old really appreciated the wake up) with no effort on my end. As it turns out, it looks like Alexa was sending refresh commands to it all night. Does anyone know a) why this is happening - the refresh commands) b) why is it turning on my devices and c) how to stop it?

I’m sure that was really annoying! :rage:

I’ve never heard of echo itself doing that. Did you check the history in the Alexa app to see what actions it had recorded there? If the history does show activity, then I would get in touch with Amazon support to see if they can see anything from their side.

Meanwhile, by any chance do you have askAlexa or EchoSistant installed? Those could definitely send commands depending on how you had them set up.

Also, what did the event logs for the Osram device itself show in the SmartThings mobile app?

HA! Definitely not annoying at all. I think the random events are part of what make home automation so fun…and my wife DEFINITELY loves the random alerts and lights on/off :wink:

I checked my alexa app immediately to make sure something didnt happen and sure enough, nothing happened.

I do not have either of those installed.

Attached are the SmartThings logs. there are so many events that I can’t actually get to the one that was at the specific time. But it looks like a lot of pinging and refreshing…so fun!

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Wow! Definitely report that one to support right away. Something really goofy is going on. :scream:

https://support.smartthings.com/hc/en-us

For the record, I see these refresh commands from Alexa all the time. Never managed to figure it out.

So you think maybe the problem is the Osram reacting to the refresh by turning on rather than the refresh to begin with?

I really don’t know. I don’t have any Osrams. I get the refresh from Alexa on all sorts of devices.

I do have random turn ons and ST basically denies there’s anything wrong in code and blames it on hardware. I also have ons and offs reporting in logging when the devices themselves do not actually physically turn on or off and again ST blames on hardware. I don’t believe any of this is related to the refreshes.

It remains a mystery.

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I’ve been seeing this behavior in one of my GE/Jasco switches, and it’s the only one in a house that’s loaded with them. It’s a newer Z-Wave Plus model that was installed to replace a failing older version that was not a “Plus” type. On monitoring the API site, I noticed something when looking at the devices. Replacing the old switch with a new switch (rather than removing the old device) didn’t replace the firmware version and feature set. So it essentially showed the specs for the old model in the “raw description”.

I removed the device completely and re-added it, and it came up as a device with different versioning that would indicate that it’s a newer Z-Wave Plus model.

I also removed all devices from Alexa and then had Alexa rediscover them.

So far, it seems promising, but I am not sure what the long term result will be. I should know by end of day.

So far, I’ve gone for several hours and Alexa hasn’t made a peep.

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Technically you should only use the zwave replace for a device of an identical model for the reason you saw. :sunglasses:

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Jasco doesn’t actually do much to differentiate between the models. The SKU is the only major identifying factor besides the Z-Wave logo. Even the product ID is the same. Personally I think that SmartThings should rebuild the device features in its database upon replace. There is no guarantee that, even with the same “model number” that the ZWave chipset and associated firmware are going to be identical.

Any average person would look at the two boxes and not see any discernible difference. I happen to know what to look for simply because I write automation software.

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Oh. And this also is something that wouldn’t be easily noticed without Alexa. When Alexa is turned off in the SmartThings app, there is no such behavior. All is quiet.

You will see some debug data in the web site if you monitor the logs, but none of this appears in the actual notifications on the SmartThings app. Z-Wave inquiries occur on some devices without reporting to the notification log.

So it tells me that Alexa is learning something different than expected from SmartThings, so this causes Alexa to keep sending refresh requests because SmartThings gave it bogus data in the device discovery process.

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Alexa doesn’t talk directly to the zwave device, though, it’s only talking to smartthings. I don’t think it even knows it is a Z wave device, it just knows it’s a “switch” That is controlled by smartthings. I’m sure you’re right that the bad device description was causing some issues, but they would all be on the smartthings side.

As far as model numbers, they should be different if you went from Z wave classic to Z wave plus. The older zwave classic devices from Jasco with the GE brand All start with the model number of “12.” The zwave plus versions start with “14.”

I get it. I know the differences. I’m jut talking about the average Joe. I also doubt that it’s common knowledge that a replacement doesn’t replace everything.

I saw another thread on the subject, where someone removed the devices. I just don’t think that anyone gave an actual explanation of the problem, which I hope I’ve been able to do.

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It’s a very good point.

It can vary from platform to platform, but the standard zwave replace utility doesn’t update anything—it just tells the new device to use the same Network ID as the old device. Nothing else is changed.

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I also see refreshes a lot but I doubt that isn’t what turns it on. Are you sure there wasn’t a power blip that cuasd it?t

I get this ramdom OSRAM behavior all the time. Have been for a long time. Its constantly getting complained about on here and on the smartthings facebook group. Osram Bulbs just turning on or resetting to default 100% brightness warm white spontaneously without a power failure. Its infuriating. I’ve seen echo refreshes as a possible cause.