Anyone else seeing issues with Harmony activities and Echo?

(Brad Langhorst) #1

My Harmony activites seem to have stopped working a few days ago when trying to use them from Amazon Echo. I’m not sure if it corresponds with the last hub update or not. Now, for every Harmony activity, Alexa says “Sorry, {activity} is not responding. Please check its network connection and power supply.” If I manually trigger the activities in the SmartThings app, they work fine so it appears the SmartThings to Logitech connection is working fine. Any ideas? I am able to trigger my ceiling fan (which is connected to SmartThings with a Monoprice relay) via Echo, so it just seems to be something with Harmony.

(Dan) #2

I discovered problems this morning also. When I ask Alexa to perform a device discovery she says she found 14 devices but including my Harmony hub items there should be 23. In the Android Amazon Echo app it shows the right number of devices found but the Harmony devices show as (offline). I also find I cannot remove the Harmony smart app from within the Smartthings app. It gives an error.

Having said all that I did install the latest Alexa Helper app this morning too. I hope it’s not related.

(Brad Langhorst) #3

I have the same issue - Alexa discovery says she finds 26 devices but the app shows 40. The Harmony devices don’t show as offline in the app; however, I have 9 or 10 Harmony activities added and I’m sure like you, Alexa isn’t finding them on discovery now but they’re not being removed from the app. I’m sure it has something to do with Harmony Connect but I’m too afraid to try removing it at this point.

#4

I would definitely report it to support. It sounds like there may be a device class issue.

If there’s a polling expectation, you can’t poll a virtual device, so that would result in what you’re seeing. (I’m not saying that is what you’re saying, but that’s one possibility. )

Tagging @MichaelS @slagle

(Micheal ) #5

I usually delete everything in the Echo app before running a discovery…cleaner that way…

(Michael Hess) #6

I get this every few months, just reboot the hub in question. It works fine with the smartapp or it’s own remote, but not ST, a reboot of the harmony clears it right up for some reason. Actually it’s only one of my three I have to do that with now that I think about it…

#7

I am seeing this new today for both smartthings virtual switches and wink shortcuts (which are the equivalent of virtual switches in some ways). It’s not just virtual switches associated with harmony, it’s all virtual switches. So I’m thinking that Amazon has added a polling step to device discovery which will fail for virtual devices.

Report it to echo support as well as smartthings. You can reach echo support through the echo app.

(Dan) #8

Hated to have to do it but I needed to do a cleanup anyway. Deleted all Smartthings references to Harmony things including removing from smartapps. Deleted the Harmony app and re-installed. Things are working again but this had better not become a regular thing.

Michael Hess - I tried the cycling of the hub and it didn’t make any difference but thanks for the suggestion.

(Brad Langhorst) #9

Thanks everyone - everything seems to have started working again without any further action on my part.

@JDRoberts - yeah, I have a virtual momentary switch which turns my computer on through SmartThings and I noticed it didn’t work through Echo this morning either, but I assumed it was an issue with Event Ghost and didn’t think anything about it. For what it is worth, that virtual switch is working fine now with Echo as well.

#10

I heard back from Amazon: they are aware of the issue, are working on it, and will get back to me once a fix is deployed. :sunglasses:

(Derek) #11

So I’ve been having similar issues too, I have 6 activites and only 3 were being recognized. Turns out when you link SmartThings to Alexa, at that moment you grant access to the specific activities that were setup on the SmartThings hub. Once you’ve changed the names of any activities on SmartThings or made adjustments to them (delete an activity but create a new one by the same name), Alexa will no longer discover them.

Nothing need to be changed on the SmartThings hub or its settings. Just remove the SmartThings hub support in the Alexa app and re-install it. It’ll then ask for permissions and you’ll see all your devices and activities being listed.