OpenHab Alexa SmartHome Skill: "Hub is not answering"

Apps & Services openHAB Cloud
1

Hi,
I have problems getting to the root cause for a problem, I experience with the OpenHab Alexa Smart Home skill
Please see the description of my problem below - do you have any ideas how I should analyse this behaviour any further - or even better: do you recognize it an know what’s causing it?
Cheers
Bastian

Setup

  • OH 3.2 running in Docker image, connected to OH cloud
  • OpenHab Alexa Smart Home Skill & multiple Alexas at home

Symptoms

  • when telling Alexa to do something (switch on, off, etc.) with an OH-controlled device, Alexa responds “The hub controlling this device is not answering, try restarting the Hub.” (these are not the exact words but a rough translation, my setup is German).
  • the addressed device is not responding to the command
  • in the OH openhab.log I can see that some time prior to this occuring, the CloudClient had to do a reconnect. I do not know (nor am I interested), why the connection was disconnected in the first place: the setup should be robust enough to handle a reconnect without this kind of problem.
2022-10-24 14:02:11.843 [INFO ] [io.openhabcloud.internal.CloudClient] - Disconnected from the openHAB Cloud service (UUID = xxxxx-xxxxx, base URL = http://localhost:80)
2022-10-24 14:04:27.011 [INFO ] [io.openhabcloud.internal.CloudClient] - Connected to the openHAB Cloud service (UUID = xxxxx-xxxxx, base URL = http://localhost:80)
  • this happens maybe once every few weeks

Workaround
The following will make Alexa commands on OH devices work again. Still, I don’t want switch on my PC to restart the CloudConnector every time, neither do I want to setup an automated restart of CloudConnector like discussed here), without at least trying to understand what is causing this.

In the OpenHab Karaf shell:

openhab> restart org.openhab.io.openhabcloud

leading to these log-messages:

2022-10-24 20:32:12.426 [INFO ] [io.openhabcloud.internal.CloudClient] - Shutting down openHAB Cloud service connection
2022-10-24 20:32:12.427 [INFO ] [io.openhabcloud.internal.CloudClient] - Disconnected from the openHAB Cloud service (UUID = xxxxx-xxxxx, base URL = http://localhost:80)
2022-10-24 20:32:12.762 [INFO ] [io.openhabcloud.internal.CloudClient] - Connected to the openHAB Cloud service (UUID = xxxxx-xxxxx, base URL = http://localhost:80)
2

You need OH cloud to be connected in order to have the OH Alexa skill working.

If the cloud connection is not enabled you can also go to settings and save your connection details, what we’ll trigger a reconnect

In summary that’s not an Alexa issue but more a oh cloud connection issue

3

See also this thread:

4

Thanks for your input, especially @jswim788 for pointing me to that thread.
This confirms for me, that the culprit is the OH cloud connection and not the Alexa Smart Home Skill.

From what I understood (this is for reference only - no questions nor solutions regarding the problem):