Sorry everyone, I’m not clear on if there is a solution to this or not.
I’m using alexa virtual switches to trigger routines. Mostly just one directional, but I use both on and off (or open and close?) to trigger 2 different routines, to turn something on and then off again.
No resolution but a workaround exists. Smartthings is aware. @nayelyz any update? You you confirm you received information as requested to build@smartthings.com? Thanks.
Right now, the vEdge driver’s virtual Alexa switches have both switch and contacts contained in the same device, which has worked for years, but recently seems to be causing problems. As a test, I’ve put out a separate ‘Alexa Multi-trigger’ driver that uses a different approach, where separate contact-only devices are used. This seems so far to be proving itself more reliable with Alexa triggering. You are welcome to try it out.
I frankly don’t hold out a lot of hope that anything is going to be done by either Amazon or Samsung to correct this, as @nayelyz has made it clear that community-developed devices are not officially supported by the SmartThings/Alexa integration. Hopefully they will prove me wrong and the current Alexa integration devices created by vEdge will go back to being reliable.
But right now my tentative plan is to change the vEdge driver to create separate-but-synched switch and contact devices, and I will continue to make available my separate Alexa Multi-Trigger driver, which takes a slightly different approach which may meet some users’ needs.
@TAustin thanks Todd. Since you already have a standalone switch, i was wondering if a standalone contact would be easy. Then i could just change my combo switch/ sensors to set the standalone switch and standalone contact. Would a standalone contact be able to be opened or closed in ST automation actions? Thanks for all of your support btw
I could do a standalone contact, yes. But then you’d have to create the automations to synchronize the switch and contact. Maybe that’s an option I should also provide. What I was also going to do was to create the separate switch and contact devices and have the driver handle the synchronization, as well as give you options like auto-revert.
@TAustin since you’re doing the hard lifting I’m appreciative of whatever you choose to do to get us past this reliability issue. I was just thinking that a standalone contact may be a straightforward quicker fix. For me, i have about 38 combo contact/ switches, only about 10 of which i actually use as Alexa triggers. Since they are all driven by automations in st and Alexa i imagine it would be fairly easy to add assignments to set both the contacts and switches
Does this driver work for standalone contact sensors? I’ve been following this thread as my virtual contact sensors are having the same issues as the virtual switches - when triggered by a ST routine, they are hit and miss in firing the Alexa routine…
I don’t use your virtual switches for anything, but am still having issues and waiting for a fix…
@Antoine6262 if you are using the current contact sensors, they have embedded switches and are suffering the intermittent issues
A follow-up comment on your thought about having just a stand-alone virtual contact device: that really won’t work because you can’t change the state of a contact via an automation routine. It has to be done via the driver. That’s why a switch+contact device pair created and synchronized by vEdge driver is probably the best way to go. Although I appreciate the point that it could mean a lot of work to re-do existing set ups.
I’m open to other ideas.
With this Alexa mess up , has everyone else’s Alexa routines stopped working? What I mean is all of my Alexa routine don’t have a trigger now, Alexa seemed to have deleted them and readded them back. So now I need to go into every routine and check there’s a trigger there now. When I do this and readd it back, some of them still don’t work. This is all a mess. 
Yes, since the day they all disappeared and I repaired them all I’ve found some have been lost a second or even third time. Changed 12 of them over to the @TAustin 's new Multi Trigger and they work fine but even then one of them was lost by Alexa this morning and needed refreshing in the routine. But these trigger perfectly so I’m pleased with that and just waiting for Alexa to stop messing things.
BTW if it’s confirmed that 1 Multi Trigger counts as 1 device against the top hub limit of 200, I’m potentially gaining 36 spaces for physical devices which would be great.
I’ve no trust in Alexa now. I also checked my routines this morning and right at the top was a routine that I definitely did not make so not sure where it came from.
Didn’t realize that about contact sensors but being able to be set on automation. So much for my idea.
Darn auto correct … that was "not " instead of “but”
I think this is a great idea. It’s closest to the current implementation if I understand correctly. Every broken routine on the alexa side where Alexa triggers something will simply need to be replaced with the “contact only” device , meanwhile Smarthings edge driver will manage the state of that switch through the corresponding “button only” device.
@TAustin So far I have converted several of my Alexa triggers over to your new “Alexa Multi-Trigger” and so far it seems to be working reliability.
Thanks for helping us out.
@TAustin Thank you for your work on the multi-trigger. Would it be possible to change “Trigger 1” with the name of the trigger when creating a routine?
That was asked earlier in the topic and he said he’s not sure if that can be done or not.
DRIVER UPDATE NOTICE
I have what I believe is a good vEdge driver solution to addressing the Alexa integration reliability issue.
The vEdge solution (described below) is in addition to the Alexa Multi-trigger driver I made available a few days ago, which seems to have proven out the fact that Alexa is having trouble triggering off of switch/contact combo devices. Triggering is more reliable when you use just a contact device. If you prefer the Alexa Multi-trigger approach over the vEdge solution, then feel free to continue using that driver. I will continue to maintain it.
I’ll summarize the pros and cons of the two different drivers farther down below.
vEdge Solution
In order to minimize disruption to existing setups, I’m adding a device setting option to the virtual AlexaSwitch devices to create a separate contact device. (Once your vEdge driver has been updated, you should see the new option in the Settings sceen) When you enable this option, a separate contact device will be created and will be synched with the corresponding switch device. The device label of the new contact device will be the name of the AlexaSwitch device with ‘-contact’ appended at the end. (Note that if you have changed the AlexaSwitch device label just before creating the contact device, it is possible that the older label will be picked up and not your new one; this is a platform issue). You can change the contact device label to anything you want.
This separate contact device will be synched with the state of the corresponding switch device (off=closed; on=open), so no automations are required to do that.
I have also included a new auto-revert option to the AlexaSwitch devices; you can find it in the device Settings screen.
You now have a synched pair of devices that you can use for both triggering Alexa routines (use the contact device!), and trigger from Alexa routines (use the switch device).
The AlexaSwitch device continues to contain a hidden contact as it did before. If Amazon/Samsung are ever able to fix the integration reliability issue with these combo devices, it’s possible that this device can be used by itself again sometime in the future, without needing the separate contact device. So this is another reason I’ve taken this particular approach, as it allows the device to be used in either scenario.
Summary of Pros and Cons between vEdge and Alexa Multi-trigger drivers
Pros Cons
----- -----
vEdge driver * 2-way integration with Alexa * doubles the number of devices
* simple transition from existing AlexaSwitch devices
* No further driver update needed if Alexa integration gets fixed
* vEdge driver solution, so no additional driver needed
Multi-trigger driver * fewer devices due to multiple (19) switches * primarily for triggering Alexa;
supported in main device 2-way integration would require automation with separate virtual switch device
* automation screens don't show configured device labels
* yet another driver
vEdge driver Version: 2023-05-16T01:11:59.874273238
This update will be automatically installed on your hub within 12 hours.
Amazing work 
