So Alexa went stupid on me this morning

I find that all of these problems seem to have to do with the smart thing/echo integration, not echo itself, with one exception.

Occasionally, Amazon adds new words to the list of reserved names that echo uses for its own controls. Once it does, it will no longer recognize that as a device name even if it used to do so.

For example, for the first six weeks of the SmartThings/echo integration I had to switch named “power” and I could say “Alexa, turn off power” and echo would tell SmartThings to turn that switch off.

Then echo used that as its own word and if you said “Turn off power” the echo itself would turn off and it wouldn’t send anything to SmartThings.

Had to change the name to “shutdown” so I say “trigger shutdown” now.

But other than that, everything has been fixed by reconnecting on the SmartThings side.