Alexa Skill - No devices discovered

Problem description:
Alexa skill does not discover any openHAB device

Environment:
openHAB 3.3-M4
raspBerry 3+ B
Alexa Metadata defined in UI - not configuration files - according to new syntax

I read through the forum already, but did not find any hint what I could do. So I decided to create a new post.

I had deleted a device, that was integrated through the hue-binding and also deleted it from Alexa. After that I added a new device to openHAB through the deCONZ-binding and defined the necessary metadata (a light). When I started discovery in Alexa no new device was found. I decided to remove all openHAB devices from Alexa and remove the skills. I also removed the link to the skill in myopenhab.org.
Reinstalled the skill and activated. Result: No devices found anymore, even those not that worked before. Removed the new one and tried discovery with no success.

What did I do wrong and how can the problem be solved?

Thanks for any response.

Have you gone through all the troubleshooting steps? Make sure your server is showing online on myopenhab.org. Also, have you ever got an openHAB device discovered in Alexa before?

https://www.openhab.org/docs/ecosystem/alexa/#device-not-found

Thanks for reply.

Yes, I had all devices discovered before. Thought it was the last one added and removed the metadata again, but no success.

If all your Alexa-enabled devices in openHAB aren’t discovered or getting updated:

  • Check that your server is available.DONE: Server is available
  • Look for any relevant errors in your openHAB server logs. DONE: No errors in openHAB Log
  • Check the spelling of your Alexa metadata configuration. It is case sensitive. DONE
  • If only new devices aren’t found, make sure your last Alexa-related config changes are valid. DONE: Removed the last added item, but all others, that had been discovered before, were not discovered anymore
  • If necessary, stagger the discovery process by adding a couple devices at a time to isolate the culprit. DONE

I went through these steps. Perhaps I could check the log files again,

What changes did you make since the last time your devices were discovered?

Installed new bindings (EnOcea, deCONZ, Renault)
Removed one Binding (myStrom)
Upgraded to OH 3.3-M4
Removed a HUE Smart Plug from the HUE binding and added it to the deCONZ binding. Defined metadata for Alexa and tried to add. Before I had removed this from Alexa. When discovery did not work I removed the metadata again.
When I could not get it working I removed all OH devices from Alexa. Deactivated the skill. Removed all Alexa cnnections from myopenhab and reinstalled skill and connected it. Tried to discover devices again without success

Have you tried removing all your existing Alexa metadata configuration, start with a simple device and stagger changes from there? Also, some folks have indicated resolving this matter by clearing the OH server cache. Maybe you could give it a try. Last, if you want to confirm if the skill is able to communicate with your server, increase the cloud connector binding log level to debug and you should see the REST API requests in your server logs when triggering a discovery.

Set log level to DEBUG. Could see the REST API requests. But its a huge amount of information …
Removed the last two devices I had defined metadata for, kept the rest - discovery shows no success
Cleared the OH cache, no success

Meanwhile also upgraded to 3.3-M5

Can you provide the http requests that you are seeing in the logs?

Unfortunately, my recommendation is to remove all your existing Alexa metadata and start from there. A stale bad configuration may not be apparent until you are trying to discover new devices which sometimes can linger for quite a while. Other than that, there isn’t much I can help with other than what has been discussed previous in this forum.

Thanks @jeshab . I will try during the next few days and get back here when done.

I also noticed that you are running your OH server on a Raspberry Pi. It could also be an issue with degraded performance.

Thanks again.

I have these devices, I also indicate the status getting them working with the Alexa Skill
3 Sensative Strips Guard - all discovered and working
7 FIBARO Single Switch 2 - all discovered and working
1 Shelly HT Sensor - discovered and working
1 HUG Smart Plug via deCONZ - discovered and working

I could not get any of my
2 FIBARO Roller Shutter 2 or
6 FIBARO Roller Shutter 3
working

However, I had them discovered and working before. Prior to deleting and adding the HUE Smart Plug

Can you please share how you configured these items?

This is how I defined the metadata. I also tried shutter instead of blind. I use all default values, except the device description, which I edited.

I don’t see anything wrong.

Well, it worked before, perhaps I should not have deleted all items. But there must be a way to get it working again.

Is there a limitation in the nr. of devices?
Are there parameters elsewhere, like time out period or anything else, that needs to be modified?

What happen when you add a new dummy switch item? Does it get discovered? Also, have you tried to rename your items?

On the Alexa side, it seems to be 1000 devices overall based on this post:

Renaming helped and resolved the problem, at least for the first RollerShutter. I also cleaned the cache once again, perhaps that also contributed, although I had done that before.

Thanks @jeshab for all the help provided.

1 Like

For later reference let me add my learnings regarding this topic:

I was facing that issue this week (running OH 3.3 in docker): I did some reconfiguration of an rollershutter item (Alexa actionmappings) and that was not updated in the skill - the old actionmapping persisted and Alexa always made use of the old mappings.

So I deleted the element in the Alexa skill, but I was not able to rediscover it.

Renaming of the item did not solve it, so I changed the entire chain:

Thing name, item name (with new channel) and also the ‚name‘ metadata for alexa. After waiting some time for sync (not sure how fast new items get populated), it appeared.

I did not modify anything in the skill itself (beside the initial removal).
BTW: I also did not clear the cache.

Hope, this will help others later on.