Alexa keeps complaining about "Device is not responding" but everything is working

I still get the “Device is not responding” Message from Alexa for every Item I try to switch. The Problem presists now for months and is pretty anoying. Is this still something I need to wait for the developers to fix?
I have Openhab 4.3.0 and I’m from germany.

I’m not convinced this is purely an OH problem. I recently added a Matter switch and asked Alexa to switch it and I got the ‘device is not responding’ even though it switched just then. And that does not use OH at all.

Nonetheless, as an alternative, anyone could try the new Matter binding that is being developed. Use the bridge functionality to expose an OH Item and link Alexa to that Item. Then see if you get the not responding issue. This does not use the OH cloud or the Alexa OH skill, it should be direct from the local Amazon Echo to OH (other than voice processing in the cloud).

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Interesting.
I changed most of my Alexa voice commands to the Matter binding and have not heard that message again.
But I only had the error message intermittant …

That is an interesting point. Generally the performance of Alexa seems to have degraded over the past year, it seems to generally take longer and longer for Alexa to process commands. I can see that also outside of openHAB, for example when processing commands for Sonos.
However, the “device is not responding” error I have heard only with openHAB devices, though to be fair, the vast majority of switching devices we have are controlled via openHAB.

Sorry for the late update. We are still working on identifying the root cause.

So far it appears that it is coming from the myopenhab.org service where some of the skill requests are randomly hanging especially when there are bunched up such as a command sent to a group endpoint with several items or mass state update requests triggered by the Alexa app. We have deployed additional debugging tool on the cloud connector side.

We will keep you posted when we have more information. Until then thanks again for your patience.

Using the Matter binding, you are technically still using OH. Keep in mind that the “device is no responding” is the default error response. So if the Echo device paired with your device via Matter doesn’t receive the expected response, it could still respond that way.

I can confirm that as well, along with my interaction with their developer support team and their lack of attention to feedbacks. Amazon is struggling with getting their Alexa platform into the GenAI era. They made an announcement back in September 2023 but never released anything to the public since then. Each time I inquired about it, they kept saying it will happen soon.

I was not using the Matter binding for this test. Alexa can directly access Matter devices. That is what I did. I added a Tapo Matter switch via the Alexa app, then asked Alexa to turn it off and on. This works without any OH interaction. But once out of many tries Alexa said not responding. Interestingly I get very fast switching this way, but often the swirling blue green light ring lasts for many seconds on the Echo Dot, long after it has already switched.

I am also separately trying the Matter binding method to expose Items to Alexa. This also works, but I don’t have enough runtime with it to say whether it is better or worse than the Alexa skill to OH. I think it is probably better, but not sure yet.

Understood.

I haven’t looked into this either but controlling devices via Matter should be faster than going over the skill stack. However, I would think the device capabilities via Matter might be limited compared to the skill. So for simple devices, Matter should be sufficient but for more complex one, going through the skill might be best. Although, don’t quote me on that.

That’s true, but the development of the Matter binding is moving along rapidly. Dan adds new capabilities very quickly. The basics are there now. If you have a specific device or capability in mind, you should ask in the Matter forum topic. I can view and operate the same device via Alexa, Google Home and OH - it’s very cool.

Went through the entire post and can’t find any fix for this.
Just tried to upgrade vom 4.1.3 to 4.3.2 for the third time.
As soon as the update in live, like 70% of my devices in Alexa work fine, but alexa keeps stating they are not responding (and this 100% of the time!).
As soon as I revert back to 4.1.3 everything is back to normal.

Did 4.2 or 4.3 change something in the way the oh instance communicates to myopenhab and alexa or why does this bug only exist in >4.1 instances? If it is purely a server side issue in aws, should the same bug exist in 4.1?

My openhab is deployed via docker on a fedora server, using myopenhab and the default alexa cloud skill. Based in Germany if that matters.

As I can reproduce the issue on 100% of my commands, are there any logs I can provide to help fix this issue?

Is this based on your interaction with the Alexa app or voice commands? How many Alexa devices have you setup?

This is a complicated issue that we aren’t clear exactly where the root cause is coming from. Some have reported having this issue on 4.1 version as well. It may not actually come from the Lambda function running the skill.

Are you running the network binding? Also, are you exposing the host network to your docker container? If so, how many interfaces are accessible to that container?

I am asking because there is an open issue related to the network binding causing slowness since 4.1.3 that has yet to be resolved. I am just wondering if the underlying issue for this one may have something to do with this issue. I had mentioned about it back in September.

For anyone still experiencing this issue, can you please report the following information?

  • Issue based on your interaction with the Alexa app or voice commands?
  • Number of devices exposed to Alexa.
  • OH version you started to experience this issue.
  • OH version you reverted to that resolved the matter if you rolled back.
  • System on which your server is running on.
  • Are you running the network binding?

Hello!

I was experiencing this issue back in October 2024. Then it just stopped happening in November 2024 and hasn’t come back since then (I though it was resolved for everybody). I’m using OpenHAB 4.2.1 since I’ve upgraded from v3 to v4 (in August 2024), so, nothing has changed on my side. It looks like the same version that does not work for some, works for somebody else. OpenHAB is installed via openhabian, so, no Docker on my side.

Best regards,
Davor