Amazon Echo: changing smart switch resulted in phantom device name

Devices & Integrations Connected Things
1

Our master bath has a triple gangbox for 1) room lights 2) shower can light & fan combo and 3) vanity lights.

I had a Monoprice dual-relay add-on connected to the #1 room light and #2 shower light/fan. I changed #1 room light to a GE 12724 Dimmer, and connected the relay to the #3 vanity lights.

Prior to making any changes, I renamed the Master Bath Light to Master Vanity Light. After changing the relay to the vanity lights, I installed the GE Dimmer and named it Master Bath Light (same name as when it was previusly connected with the dual-relay).

After running Discovery on the Echo, then trying to turn the light on, Echo replied “I found more than one device with the name Master Bath Light. Please give them unique names, then run discovery again…”

In the Echo app, I chose “Forget” on the Master Bath Light, then ran Discover again. Then, as expected, Echo could not find Master Bath Light when I tried to turn it on.

However, when I added the Master Bath Light back into the Alexa ST app, ran Discovery, then tried to turn it on, again I got the reply that there is more than one with the same name.

How can I get the old “phantom” device out of Echo?

2

Echo works from the device list given to it by the device controller, in this case smartthings. There’s no way to add a device directly to echo, although as you noticed you can “forget one” there.

Anyway, the point is that you may have the duplicate on the smartthings side. I would start by going to the IDE and checking your device list there. You can sort by name to make it easier to review.

So I would check that first just to see if there are two similar names there.

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3

It was not listed in the IDE twice.

However, the issue is resolved, but not sure if Echo did it on its own, or if the steps I took “cleared out” the phantom duplicate name:

  1. In Echo, forget the device
  2. In the ST IDE, I changed the Device ID from “17” (auto-assigned) to “GE-12724-1”
  3. In Echo, ran Discovery, which found the switch
  4. Attempted to control the switch with Echo, but no response
  5. In the ST IDE, changed the Device ID back to “17”
  6. In Echo, ran Discovery again
  7. Attempted to control the switch with Echo - SUCCESS!

Weird, but seemed to resolve the phantom duplicate name for me. YMMV, as Lloyd says, “ahh laht!”

4

I’m glad you fixed it, but it’s really not a good idea to change a Z wave device ID, which is assigned by the network at the time of pairing. You can end up with damaged address tables as well as a device that can’t be controlled.

Previously you had said you were just changing the name of the device, which is fine. That’s the name that you gave it anyway, so you can change it as often as you want.

Zwave device IDs, though, should be left up to the network to manage.

Just a head’s up for the future.

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5

Ahh, good to know. Thanks for the tip!

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