Wemo Switch item sometimes detects device status?

In the tutorial (openab 2.2) it says:

“Users should bear in mind the difference between an Item used to send a command to a Thing, and an Item that reflects the status of a real-world Thing in the UI. This distinction may seem obvious, but it can be a little confusing when an Item appears not to reflect the correct status of a Thing.”

This is the behavior I see, for example, with my smart light bulbs.
However, if I instruct Amazon Alexa through an echo dot to switch one of my wemo mini sockets (for example “Alexa, turn on wemo 3”) the socket turns on and the state change sometimes (perhaps half the time) is reflected in my openhab basic GUI. How does openhab detect that the device bound to my wemo Switch item has changed state?
Thanks,
Joe

Through the binding. The binding will (or not, depends on the binding) polls the states on the devices on a regular basis. In some instances, the device will send an updated state if changed (In this case the update on openHAB is almost instant) In the polling case the update may take some time (the polling interval)

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The WeMo Bunding uses GENA events to be informed of device status changes as well as polling the devices every 60 seconds. There had been some reports that the WeMo Mini not fully works… As those devices are not available on German Market, I can not debug those issues.

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Thanks for the explanations.
Joe

I think you meant poll/polling :slight_smile:

@rekoj this is it’s important that if you’re creating your own ioT devices that it’s your responsibility to update OH of your status or have some sort of API that is invokable or "poll"able by OH.

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Thanks, corrected

Good point. Thanks.