Alexa Italian: Rollershutter voice commands suddenly stopped working, percentage still works and Position label appears in Arabic

Apps & Services Amazon Alexa
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1

Hi,

Environment:

  • openHAB: 4.3.5
  • Alexa integration: official openHAB Alexa Skill
  • Alexa language: Italian
  • Echo devices language: Italian
  • openHAB regional settings: Italian / Italy
  • Item type: Rollershutter
  • Alexa device type: Shutter

I am experiencing a strange issue with all my rollershutters exposed to Alexa through the openHAB skill.

The issue appeared recently. These voice commands had been working correctly for a long time and I have not changed the Alexa metadata of the rollershutter items.

For example, one item has the following Alexa metadata:

Alexa Device Type: Shutter
Language: Italian
Inverted: false

Action Mappings:
Close=DOWN
Open=UP
Lower=DOWN
Raise=UP
Stop=STOP

The strange behavior is the following with Alexa set to Italian:

  • “Alexa, solleva tapparella soggiorno” (“raise the living room shutter”) → works correctly. openHAB receives UP and the shutter moves up.
  • “Alexa, imposta tapparella soggiorno al 10%” (“set living room shutter to 10%”) → works correctly. openHAB receives 10.
  • “Alexa, apri tapparella soggiorno” (“open…”) → does not work.
  • “Alexa, alza tapparella soggiorno” (“raise/lift…”) → does not work.
  • “Alexa, abbassa tapparella soggiorno” (“lower…”) → does not work.
  • “Alexa, chiudi tapparella soggiorno” (“close…”) → does not work.

For the commands that do not work, Alexa answers (in Italian) that it doesn’t know how to set the device to that setting, and no command/event reaches openHAB at all.

This seems important because the communication path itself is working: Alexa can still send both the UP command when using “solleva” and absolute percentage values to the same item.

There is another strange symptom which appeared at the same time.

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In the Alexa mobile app, the position control page of every rollershutter now displays the Arabic word:

الموضع

above the percentage slider. This means “Position”, but my Alexa app is configured in Italian, my Echo devices are configured in Italian, and the openHAB regional settings are Italian / Italy / Europe-Rome.

The rest of the Alexa UI on the same page is correctly displayed in Italian (for example, “Percento”).

Alexa also reports these devices as “Connected via openHAB”.

The actual shutter control through openHAB/KNX works normally, and percentage commands from Alexa work normally as well.

Has anyone else, particularly using Alexa in Italian, noticed this recently?

Could this be a recent Alexa localization/utterance regression affecting Shutter devices rather than an issue with the openHAB Alexa metadata?

I can provide additional logs, item JSON/metadata or screenshots if useful.

Thanks in advance for any help or feedback.

2

I’m having the same problem, too.

In addition to what’s already been described:
If I ask Alexa to raise or lower the blinds, she asks me, “To what position?”
If I say a numerical value (I’d expect her to ask for a value between 0 and 100%), she starts playing music.

I have the same setup as described by Andrea_Mori.

Thanks in advance to anyone who can help us out!

3

Hi there!

I experience the same issue, my OH is 5.2.1.

Cache cleaned.

Any controls via OH are fine (both switches ad rollershutters).

The only controls not working anymore are the ones related to rollershutters and fired with VOICE thrugh ALEXA.

I just noticed that the Italian word ACCENDI (English TURN ON) triggers the UP command and the opposite word SPEGNI (English TURN OFF) triggers the DOWN command.

4

Hi Matteo,

I can confirm exactly the same behavior on my setup.

I just tested it and:

  • “Alexa, accendi tapparella soggiorno” (“Alexa, turn on the living room shutter”) → openHAB receives UP and the shutter goes up.
  • “Alexa, spegni tapparella soggiorno” (“Alexa, turn off the living room shutter”) → openHAB receives DOWN and the shutter goes down.

Very interesting finding — I hadn’t noticed this before! :slight_smile:

So Alexa is still able to send the correct UP and DOWN commands to the openHAB rollershutter, but for some reason the Italian voice mapping now seems to treat the shutter like an ON/OFF device for these commands.

This seems to further suggest that the issue may be related to Alexa’s current Italian voice interpretation/device classification rather than the actual rollershutter control in openHAB.

I also tried contacting Amazon Customer Service about the issue. Unfortunately, they told me they couldn’t investigate it because they don’t see any smart home devices connected directly to Alexa on my account. My devices are exposed to Alexa through myopenHAB and the openHAB Alexa Skill, so Amazon Support told me they couldn’t do anything further and suggested that I contact the openHAB community instead.

This is a bit unfortunate, especially since the fact that the non-working voice commands never reach openHAB at all seems to point to something happening on the Alexa side before the command is sent to the openHAB skill.

I think @LightCycleSpartan (Lorenzo) findings reinforce this possibility as well: in his case Alexa reacts to the rollershutter voice command by asking “To what position?”, but then fails to correctly handle the numerical answer and starts playing music instead. This also seems to happen at the Alexa voice interpretation/conversation level, before openHAB has any opportunity to handle the requested shutter command.

So we now seem to have several different symptoms, on independent setups, all pointing to Alexa’s handling of Italian rollershutter voice commands.

Maybe they moved all of Alexa’s (limited) intelligence over to Alexa+… :joy:

Thanks for spotting this!

5

I’ve noticed something else that might help clarify the issue.

It seems that when Alexa asks “To what position?” (“In quale posizione?”), she is not referring to a numerical position or percentage.

Instead, she seems to be asking which room/group of blinds should be controlled.

I also discovered that the wording of the command now makes a difference.

For example, to raise the blinds in the living room, I can no longer say:

“Alexa, raise the living room blind.”
(“Alexa, alza tapparella sala.”)

Instead, I have to use the plural:

“Alexa, raise the living room blinds.”
(“Alexa, alza tapparelle sala.”)

With this wording, Alexa correctly understands that I want to control the blinds in the living room.

Even stranger, if I want to send a general command to all the blinds, I now have to say:

“Alexa, raise blinds blinds.”
(“Alexa, alza tapparelle tapparelle.”)

So it looks like Alexa is now interpreting the first “blinds” (“tapparelle”) as the device type/action target, and the second one as the name of the group.

This would also explain why Alexa asks “To what position?”: she appears to be waiting for the room/group name rather than for a percentage value.

This behaviour is different from before, when the simpler commands worked correctly.

Has anyone else noticed the same change? It looks like something may have changed in how Alexa resolves device names, rooms and groups in smart-home commands.

6

Hi Lorenzo,

I can confirm your latest findings on my setup as well.

I tested the same command variations and I get the same behaviour:

  • “Alexa, alza tapparella soggiorno” (“Alexa, raise the living room blind”) → does not work.
  • “Alexa, alza tapparelle soggiorno” (“Alexa, raise the living room blinds”) → works correctly.
  • “Alexa, abbassa tapparelle soggiorno” (“Alexa, lower the living room blinds”) → works correctly.

And, surprisingly, I can also confirm the strangest case:

  • “Alexa, alza tapparelle tapparelle” (“Alexa, raise blinds blinds”) → works for the general blinds group.

I have also tested my awnings (“tende”), and they show the same behaviour: the wording and singular/plural distinction now seem to affect whether Alexa correctly resolves and executes the command.

So this does not appear to be limited to a specific rollershutter or to the Italian word “tapparella”. I can reproduce the same type of issue with different cover devices as well.

Your observation about Alexa apparently distinguishing between the device type and the room/group name therefore seems consistent with what I am seeing too.

This is particularly interesting because these simpler commands used to work correctly before, without any changes to my openHAB configuration or device names.

Together with the other symptoms we have already observed — the unusual Arabic “الموضع” (“Position”) label in the Alexa app and the unexpected ACCENDI/SPEGNI (“TURN ON”/“TURN OFF”) mapping to UP/DOWN — this increasingly looks like something has recently changed in Alexa’s Italian Smart Home language interpretation.

Thanks Lorenzo, another very useful finding! :+1: