[SOLVED] Unable to expose new items with tags for Alexa, Exception thrown

[idkpmiller (Paul Miller)]

Hi all,

I am running the new 2.4 release.
I have many Alexa items somewhere in the order of 200 or so.
I am trying to add a new light bulb this is the first of its kind in my install.

I can turn on the light through OH basic UI.

.items

Switch LR_Reading_Power				"Reading Light" 		(MF_Living, chartpersist)		["Switchable"]		{channel="miio:generic:0442EE3F:power" }

Every time I do a ‘Alexa, Discover Devices’ I get exceptions in my OH log see below.
LOG
Unfortuantely the extract was too large for the post limits so I have uploaded it here

Log Entry

Can someone point me in the correct direction, Thanks!

Paul

[vzorglub (Vincent Regaud)]

["Switchable"]

A quick search though the forum would have revelaed that switchable doesn’t work anymore and that you’ll need to replace it with ["Lighting"]

[idkpmiller (Paul Miller)]

After your response,
I searched again through the forum, and still came up empty for an exception being thrown and the only thread I found was from snapshots in November.
I could find what a switch should now be tagged with to be exposed to Alexa. I have also checked the release notes (AGAIN!) in case I missed it there too, searched for Switchable, Lighting, tags - Nothing.

so please can someone point me to the post chain that assists me with solving my issue, and if it is in the relase notes advise where as I am not finding it.

Thanks

Paul

[sihui]

@idkpmiller

so please can someone point me to the post chain that assists me with solving my issue

[Hue Emulation] Items with Switchable tag are not discovered

Amazon is slowly fading out local Hue support apparently (and especially now as they have Echo Plus etc). Some devices can still recognise Osram Plugs, others can’t. There is no pattern. Workaround is of course to change the tag for Switchables to “Lighting”.

or use this as a workaround:

[Hue Emulation] Items with Switchable tag are not discovered

This hadn’t worked for me, so I’d changed ‘Switch item tags’ from Switchable to Lighting. After seeing your post, I tried again and it still didn’t work. Then I noticed you didn’t have a space separating them, and it worked. So for others using this workaround, don’t put a space between the tags!

[idkpmiller (Paul Miller)]

Hi thanks, I wondered if the hue emulation issue was being mistaken for mine as they sound so similar.
I do not have Hue Emulation running on my system.

It would seem I have some additional time today so I will investigate further and advise my findings for others.

Thanks so much for the responses.

Paul

[sihui]

@idkpmiller

I do not have Hue Emulation running on my system.

That was not obvious from your questions.

[idkpmiller (Paul Miller)]

yep very true, didn’t know there was a big issue going on with hue emulation and/or amazon so did not know what to say was not in my configuration.

My initial tests have revealed some improvements

I checked the number of ‘offline’ devices in the alexa app and I have 162 all seem to be via openhab, switchable and lighting it does not matter.

I cannot add new devices as previously stated.
Everytime I do a discovery I see the exception I posted in the post; this does not help me locate the issue.

I then renamed my alexa.items file to alexa.items.0 and ran a rediscovery.
now it discovers the new items, and the total offline count has fallen dramatically from 162 to 56.
If I add it back with the correct name it returns to 162 offline devices.
I still get my exception though so it would seem there are multiple item files that are not liked after the upgrade, at least thats my current suspicion.

I will carry on later as I need to do some other task now.

but I am on my way.

Thanks

Paul

[idkpmiller (Paul Miller)]

After some more digging nothing that was one hundred percent conclusive however here are my findings.

This issue is to do with the AmazonEchoControl binding and the defined items.

After following the process below I no longer have an exception thrown when I perform a discovery.

1. check my echo device thing definitions
2. Removed all unnecessary item definitions for each of my echo devices.
3. Remove all otems defined for a single echo device then go into paperui and unlink any outstanding item from the thing channels.
4. Check each item defined and add them back in the files.
5. Rinse and repeat for all echo devices.

A particular note it was observed that using a mixture of the serial number and the thing name seemed to cause issues, I finally settled on using the name format as it was more human readable. See below:

// SERIAL No. Version
String BR3_Echo_TTS                	"Text to Speech"					(BR3_Alexa) 			{channel="amazonechocontrol:echo:account1:G090LF11801518WN:textToSpeech"}


// MODIFIED		
String BR3_Echo_TTS                	"Text to Speech"					(BR3_Alexa) 			{channel="amazonechocontrol:echo:account1:BR3_Echo:textToSpeech"}

After these changes Ia discovery no longer throws an exception and new items can now be discovered. I do not know if this was a database issue during upgrade, a code change affecting behaviour or something else only what I have found here.

Regards

Paul