New SmartThings Alexa skill (2020)

Do we have to switch to this new skill or can we just keep using the old one until it stops working?

There hasn’t been any kind of migration plan announced. So for now you can keep using the Classic skill until you are forced to the new one.

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PM:ed you for additional info

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As I have mentioned before, we are 3 housemates with somewhat different home automation setups. We also have lots of different people coming through the house, even these days, because of health aides.

We simply cannot use a system which does not allow us to select which devices are exposed to Alexa. :scream:

Is this a permanent change? (All or nothing for Amazon integration.)

The official supportbase article still says you can select individual devices, so I am hoping the current state is a bug. But it also indicates device selection now has to be done in the Alexa app, not the ST app. That would be ok for us, although not as good as what we had before.

https://support.smartthings.com/hc/en-us/articles/205275404

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I’m having issues with a Simulated Garage Door Opener not triggering a routine in Alexa now. I would have my goodbye automation in ST open the garage door, which would trigger an Alexa routine to start the Roborock vacuum. It’s no longer working. Can anyone else replicate this?

The SmartThings Classic integration is now “not available” in the Amazon skill store, nor in the ST Classic app. Consider this a warning if you disable it, you may not get it back.

The above-referenced documentation now also tells you to disable devices by marking them as disabled in the Alexa app, so it looks like the new SmartThings method of “send everything to Alexa” is here to stay.

This is wildly frustrating for me as most of my ST stuff already has native Alexa integrations (Hue, Caseta, etc). The only control I really need the ST integration for is my Samsung TV, but now I’m faced with doing everything via Alexa->ST, or disabling 60+ devices in Alexa’s torturous smart home app.

(As a sidenote, it seems that it’s not possible to ever completely erase Alexa’s knowledge of your Hue devices, even after revoking access from both sides, and using the REST API to remove all tokens. So I have several outdated Hue devices that appear in Alexa every time I discover devices. The whole Alexa smart home system is truly infuriating to manage. I can’t imagine using it for anything beyond simple voice control.)

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Yet another thing forced upon us without thinking it through thoroughly. Or maybe they have and we’re just SOL.

Tiresome.

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Yeah concur with everyone re. being able to select what devices you want Alexa to control. Disabling them via the Alexa app is utterly torturous. Please ST, bring this feature back!

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maybe someone already mentioned this, but Groups don’t seen to be working right. I have two zigbee rgbw devices grouped together in Alexa. Telling Alexa verbally to turn off the group returns a “the skill linked with XYZ is not enabled”, yet addressing the devices individually works just fine.

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Robot vacuum integration also doesn’t work with the new skill.

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My process of using a Simulated Garage Door in ST to trigger an Alexa routine to turn on the Roborock still isn’t working. Deleting the device, adding it back, logging out of the Alexa app and back, deleting the Alexa routine and recreating it… Nothing works

As I’ve been saying for five years, For those of us who depend on home automation and don’t just play around with it as a hobby, the most important thing is that stuff which worked on Monday continues to work on Tuesday. If it’s going to change, we need advance and specific notice of what that change will be.

In the case of the three friends that I mentioned, all three of them have now independently decided just to stop using smartthings. Alexa is the heart of their home automation at this point, and they just want stuff to work and keep working.

The two who have smart locks are choosing different solutions. One of them also has the ring protect system and they are going to move their Z wave lock over to that. It’s one of the approved models and Amazon support is walking them through the process.

The other one has an August lock which works independently with Alexa, so they’re just going that route.

They are using various combinations of ring sensors, very inexpensive wyze sensors ($6 per unit bought in a set of four) and Hue sensors to replace their existing smartthings sensors.

None of this was my suggestion: it’s all stuff that they came up with on their own and through talking with Amazon, August, and SmartThings support.

As one of them said “I have enough stuff in my life that’s unpredictable right now. I don’t want my smart home to be one of them.” :disappointed_relieved:

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Did they switch to the new skill or were they having these issues on the old skill?

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One switched to the new skill but isn’t sure why or how. The other two were still on the old skill when they first reported the problem. Some Other people in the thread also reported having problems with the old skill. If I recall correctly, it was mostly with groups and things which used to be viewed as a light not being viewed as a light anymore.

Here’s a post from somebody else With the same problem with the old skill. But again, This problem also occurred for my friend who did switch to the new skill

https://community.smartthings.com/t/new-smartthings-alexa-skill-2020/191101/56?u=jdroberts

I will try to prune this topic and create a separate thread for issues witht the original skill. For now, please keep posts in this thread about the new skill.

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To clarify, do you mean groups created in SmartThings or groups of individual devices created in Alexa? My Alexa groups work, so wondering if you mean SmartThings groups?

I mean groups created in Alexa. If you say “echo, turn off the lights” devices which used to turn off now are not turning off even though they are in the correct group and the user has not changed anything. Other people have reported the same issue.

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I also mean groups in Alexa. I have an Alexa group called “Deck railing” that groups together “Deck Railing 1” and “Deck Railing 2” so I can turn them on/off together by voice…which doesn’t work. But the individual devices by voice does.

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I guess I’ve been lucky. I am using both the new and old skill at the moment, along with Smart Life, Kasa, and Vera Controls. All but the Vera skills have been pretty flawless for a few months now. All my groups are currently working in Alexa which are a total of 8 groups. I wonder why it’s flakey for some and not others?

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Same here. Everything seems to be working properly. OR, maybe I’m just not looking in the right places…