Alexa refresh commands every 10 min

I had the same thing happen to me about the same time. However I had just recently removed my Arlo cameras because they stopped functioning properly and was sending them off.

It all happened about the same time. I’ve tried almost everything that you did except the last one. But I don’t have any cameras not to select. I’ll try just selecting everything manually and see. I believe the refreshes caused one of my automations not to run because the refresh hit the same time as the automation.

Did some checking. Mine started the day after I removed my cameras from Smartthings.

This is happening to my Wemo devices. I unchecked them in the Alexa integration smart app to put a stop to it. However that also means I’ll have to train the kids to use the wake word for the Ask Alexa I’ve set up.

And it looks like two of my virtual switches are getting this too.

I did a forget everything yesterday and then this started happening. This isn’t the first time I’ve done a forget everything though.

Here is an interesting curve. It was originally doing it on all my Zwave non battery devices. It does not happen on any of my battery devices.

After going in and turning off allow access to all devices and selected just the specific devices that I use with Alexa. Of the devices checked, it appears some of the devices have stopped receiving refreshes while others continue to receive refreshes. Does not make a difference what type of device it is???

I’ll see what happens tonight.

FYI Mine did not start with doing a forget everything. However I have done that since, while talking to support.

Took a picture of my mobile no refreshes after removing the cameras as of a day ago…:
Uploading…

Still can’t figure out WTF is going on and why this randomly came up, after a forget all/refresh… Which just so happened after an Alexa refresh

Hello,

Thank you for finding this issue with Refresh commands being sent to your devices every 10 minutes. However, this is a part of the heartbeat mechanism we use to work with Alexa, and is expected behavior. We send refresh commands to lights/switches, if we do not see any last activity from the device beyond a certain time, and this heartbeat check is done every 10 minutes.

What is not expected is, the refresh commands were sent to ALL the devices instead of a certain subset of Zigbee/Z-wave switches/lights. We have identified the issue in the code for this, and this has been fixed. This change should be deployed to production tomorrow afternoon.

Also, we have name spaced the logging messages to reflect as “[Heartbeat]” messages, so it is more clear from the logs that it is specific to our SmartApp.

Please let us know if you have any other questions/concerns.

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Is there any way to create a check box in settings to silent/hide these (background them) I feel like they are extending the time greatly when trying to find the last actual status change of a device. Example: Motion or sound on cameras or on/off of a light switch.
This activity seem like something that should be not presented to the user as they are more informative and not necessary for user troubleshooting or day to day workings of devices.

If it fails or there are issues with the heartbeats defiantly let the user know but it’s adding a lot of un-needed static to the logging for devices.

Glad I found this thread. I had lost control of a number of devices and removing Alexa’s access to them fixed the problem immediately.

The issue is still occurring and its now more frequent than 10 mins. For one of my lights it nearly a minute and sometimes multiple time per minute.

This issue is occurring for me as well and the fix in code you have applied has not improved the situation. The refresh is only going to devices that are Singled A-19 dimmable lights. The other brand lights connected to my system do not experience the issue.

I estimate the refresh from Amazon Alexa occurs about 6 times a minute. Please advise.

glad i found this thread, this morning i woke up to my osram bulb being on.
looking at the logs alexa is polling it constantly.
is there anyway to stop it turning things on ?
ive removed access to all devices from alexa app just now

I received an email today.

I think the problem was solved…

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It looks like my Sengled Element Classic A19 bulbs picked up there old bad habit again this time completely randomly looks like after the bulb turned on last night (11/01) from automation “on at sunset”. This is all after the full reset days ago and these have always been visible to Alexa through the smartthings app:

On top of that it’s happening twice every 5 min instead of once every 10. SO EVEN MORE UNNEEDED LOG SPAM. Had to scroll down for a full 10 seconds (with a free scroll wheel) to find the last time the bulb was turned on.

The title of the alert has not been changed to “heartbeat” and still showing up as a refresh. Although simply changing the name will not fix the underlying issue.

Edit:
Is there any way to get Debug logs to send up? or allow support to log in and troubleshoot?

thanks for that, i might turn alexa back on now :wink:

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Again removing them from the smarthings app via the “Amazon Alexa” SmartApp and then re-adding them back in resolved the issue based on previous attempts this is likely very short term and a huge PITA to manually manage a system that is suppose to automate this stuff for you.

  1. Log into Smartapps on your phone
  2. click Automation
  3. click “SmartApps” in the upper right
  4. click Amazon Alexa
  5. Slide the slider to the left for “Allow Alexa to access all devices and Routines”
  6. Click “switches” and check devices you would like Alexa to see

When the heartbeats start you need to go back in and uncheck the devices with the refresh
Then:
7) Click Next
8) Click Save
9) Wait 5-10 minutes and confirm that there are no more heartbeats

Follow steps 1-6 and recheck device then follow 7-10.

Repeat steps every time the devices decide to do refreshes.

Alexa automatically executing refresh was causing a bunch of problems with a bunch of my DTHs, but it looks like they finally turned off that feature. I haven’t seen any refresh events from it in over 8 hours.

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Has this fix been pushed to everyone? I’m still having the problem with frequent “Amazon Alexa sent refresh command to …” my devices. These messages are occurring more frequently than every 10 minutes. I am not seeing the “Heartbeat” messages. I have also randomly discovered bulbs turning on.

I couldn’t take it no more. I had so many duplicate devices in the Alexa App, all of the refresh commands, all 3 of my harmony hubs going wack-o and finally a bunch of misfires…

I took the weekend just deleting everything Alexa and harmony and redid my setup. Day 2 and I am still putting the pieces back together. This was such a pitta.

So far, I’ve been good. Although I had to re-discover my devices 20 at a time. I guess 144 devices was too many for Alexa to discover all at once…

Good Luck. This really sux.

My problems began yesterday afternoon after installing a new Echo 2nd Generation along with my ‘old’ Echo Dot 2. Before the dual setup, Alexa was working with my 60+ Harmony activities, but afterward Alexa voice commands would not work; neither would “Alexa, find my devices” work. And instead of the activities appearing under Devices in the Alexa app, they appeared under Scenes. Furthermore, all activities under Scenes were listed as [Offline]. Clicking the Discover button didn’t find any new activities/scenes. Rebooting the Harmony hub had no effect.

I finally deleted the Harmony skill, reinstalled it, and then asked Alexa to find my devices once more. This seemed to fix my problem, as all my Harmony Activities were found, none were marked [Offline], and Alexa is now responding to voice commands for Harmony activities.

I am back having issues. Alexa refuses to find any more of my devices. I got up to about 140 and she will not find any new devices. I got about 10 more to go. I even deleted some and she will not find those again either.

I think something broke on the Amazon side of things. After months of no issues, in the last couple of days, all hell has broke loose.

Dang.