Alexa Smart Home Skill - No devices found - Solution

Apps & Services openHAB Cloud
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The items files contains only the 5 rows.
Here is what I found with tags via https://myopenhab.org/rest/items/

{"link":"https://myopenhab.org/rest/items/AlexaCtRsKueche","state":"0","editable":false,"type":"Rollershutter","name":"AlexaCtRsKueche","label":"Rollladen Kueche","category":"blinds","tags":["Switchable"],"groupNames":[]},
{"link":"https://myopenhab.org/rest/items/AlexaCtRsWC","state":"0","editable":false,"type":"Rollershutter","name":"AlexaCtRsWC","label":"Rollladen Bad","category":"blinds","tags":["Switchable"],"groupNames":[]},
{"link":"https://myopenhab.org/rest/items/AlexaCtRsWohnzimmer","state":"0","editable":false,"type":"Rollershutter","name":"AlexaCtRsWohnzimmer","label":"Rollladen Wohnzimmer","category":"blinds","tags":["Switchable"],"groupNames":[]},
{"link":"https://myopenhab.org/rest/items/AlexaCtRsSchlafzimmer","state":"0","editable":false,"type":"Rollershutter","name":"AlexaCtRsSchlafzimmer","label":"Rollladen Schlafzimmer","category":"blinds","tags":["Switchable"],"groupNames":[]},
{"link":"https://myopenhab.org/rest/items/AlexaCtRsHaus","state":"0","editable":false,"type":"Rollershutter","name":"AlexaCtRsHaus","label":"Rollladen Haus","category":"blinds","tags":["Switchable"],"groupNames":[]},

Best regards
Timmi

62

@Timmi

Ok. It’s looking good.

Maybe the type “Rollershutter” is the problem. Please try “Switch”.

(EDIT: type “Rollershutter” is ok, and can be tagged with [ “Switchable” ] )

63

Hi Alex,
removed all items except one and changed it to switch. Still Alexa is not able to find any device.
The exceptions in the log are also still present.

Best regards
Timmi

64

Sorry. Now I’m out.

Could you please reconnect Alexa Skill with myopenhab.org

65

Hi Alex,
thank you for your help.
Still not working.
Maybe this will be fixed in the new release 2.4 which supposed to be released next Monday.
Best regards
Timmi

66

Hi @Celaeno1

it looks like that the amount of items in the REST API is a problem for the Alexa Skill.

Best regards
Timmi

67

Hi guys, i just couldn’t get no sleep till i solved my problem. My Rest API is about 400 items long, i didn’t get a working Alexa Smart Home Skill, too. The last step before deleting anyting and get a beer was to check up every items label. After two hours i found some items without a label (my fault!) and some items with special german characters (öäü). Some of these characters came from my own, but several are made by the system. The last voice command of Alexa in die kitchen was saved with an special character and the astro binding brings a german translation with special characters, all theses can be found in the rest api.

I just renamed some files and everything works fine, the plugs to control the christmas tree are now able to control by voice.

1 Like
68

Dear All, I need some help - and I am exhausted:
Two weeks ago I configured openHAB as a test on a Win10 system. Finally Alexa found my Max! items and the heating control was available via Alexa voice commands.
As Win10 systems are not perfectly shaped for 24/7 openHAB operation I set up an openHABias-Raspi in order to take over.
I configured the Raspi as identical as possible to the Win10 system (which obviously failed) and used the same “.items”-file. Control from Paper UI is working but Alexa does not find any of my Max! items. I tried: Turning off “simple mode”, deleting items and channels, looking fo labels, fully resetting the Raspi and set it to german-language in a very early setup-stage, testing myopenHAB linkage, etc. … nothing worked.
I even managed to fully erase my Max!cube programming by a “little accident” and had to re-setup the whole Max! environment from scratch.:face_with_symbols_over_mouth:
Needless to say that the Win10 configuration is still operable when started and Alexa reliably finds the items …
Currently I am running out of ideas what else to try. Any help is highly appreciated.

Just checked the log:

2019-01-15 00:52:36.994 [INFO ] [io.openhabcloud.internal.CloudClient] - Connected to the openHAB Cloud service (UUID = fec5de79-2880-4567-ace6-5f57a48de706, base URL = http://localhost:8080)
2019-01-15 00:52:41.900 [WARN ] [.core.internal.folder.FolderObserver] - Error while opening file during update: /etc/openhab2/items/heizung.items
2019-01-15 00:52:45.631 [INFO ] [thome.model.lsp.internal.ModelServer] - Started Language Server Protocol (LSP) service on port 5007

Obviously openHABian doesn´t like the .items file which was created using Win10. Just as simple as that.

Cheers Frank

69

Could you please post your .items file here?

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Thanks Alex, for the incredibly quick response.
To cut a long story short: It´s working now.

Checking the log I saw that openHAB reported errors while trying to read the .item-file.
Obviously openHAB refuses to read the Windows-created .items-file - although ist appears to be correct on the Raspi when viewed by “more” or “nano” (probably there are some invisible ctrl-characters in the file, which openHAB does not like). Therefore I have reedited the same file using “nano” based on a natively created Linux-file. :crazy_face:

And now everything is fine. Eventually I can control my MAX!-environment using Alexa voice commands.:sweat_smile:

Thanks to you All for your contributions! So helpful! :cowboy_hat_face:

Frank

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71

Worked For me, thank you

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72

Sorry if I happen to be a bit dumb here… I still have the same problem. I have not enabled Simple Item Linking. But I found this Tag: “TargetTemperature” but with a label. I don’t actually understand how I can fix this now. I temporally disabled the items with this tag, and there appearing https://myopenhab.org/rest/items/ not anymore, but Alexa still can’t find any device. Sorry for not understanding… I already searched for Umlaute but didn’t find any. From my understanding, every thing with tags or in rules has to have a label as well? And there is a special case for the “TargetTemperature” tag? But when I removed the things with “TargetTemperature” Aleca still not find any other, what am I missing, please?

I also noticed that most of my lights do not have tags but Labels, they do need tags, right? I try to add them the “[ “Switchable” ]” tag.

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Every light that you want to control with Alexa need a tag [ “Switchable” ] or [ “Lighting” ].

EDIT: for lights, please use [ “Lighting” ]. But a simple turn ON/OFF of a light, you can also use [ “Switchable” ], but I would not recommend it.

Begin with only ONE tag for ONE item. Then check https://myopenhab.org/rest/items/
if it’s there. If so…

…then seach again with Alexa.

74

OK I added this tag to several lights now. I looked at https://myopenhab.org/rest/items/ it got there. And it works so I was just missing the tags very cool, thanks for the quick help dude <3. I will try to add my Homematic things (with the “TargetTemperature” tag) again to see if that breaks the finding of the items.

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75

You cannot use [ “TargetTemperature” ] standalone.
You have to create a group with tag [ “Thermostat” ]. And then you need child tags.

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I know I’m on i :slight_smile:

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If you are using Alexa Smarthome Skill v2 then use this tagging.

78

OK thanks, everything seems to work.

1 Like
79

It seems like you don’t have to delete the items if you don’t want to (At least on the tp-link kasa binding) once you’ve turned simple mode off.

If you create a new mapping in the items file and don’t delete the auto generated one it will link the channel to both the old and the new item, I’ve not yet noticed any ill effects in doing so, and it saved re-writing my sitemap (I’ll probably do it eventually to clean things up.)

In the Hue binding it might make more sense to do so as you end up with a load of “Brightness” items in alexa from where simple mode auto created channels.

80

This is a very old topic. In the meantime, many things have changed. The Alexa Smarthome Skill has been adapted to V3 and while auto-linking items, the pre-assigned tags now all have a predefined label. The labels were necessary that Alexa could find the devices. If this is different now, good to know. Thanks for the hint.