Aircoookie/Espalexa

Have lost all discovery ......

Opened this issue · 8 comments

chrisgimson commented

The story so far .... Some weeks ago, I build a new controller using using the same hardware and firmware that I have used in 8 other identical modules already working around the home with voice control and other tasks - all 100%.
The new device despite being identical in build to the others and working fine with its own functions, would and still will not allow itself to be discovered (house Alexa system = 2 generation 2 Dots, 1x 1st generation Dot and 1 x first generation Echo Plus). In the course of debugging I have systematically upgraded the board manager and your library to their latest versions. During debugging, I made what I now know in hindsight to be a bad decision and deleted all of my house devices on the Alexa app only to find that now NOTHING of the Espalexa devices are discoverable.
I then sidelined my firmware and simply tried the EspalexaBasic sketch on my hardware and a standalone NodeMCU 1V0 and this is also not discoverable so I can eliminate any of my hardware and firmware.
I see similar issues by others dating back a while so have followed the threads carefully but without success.
In your notes you suggest going to the "/espalexa subpage to confirm all your devices are defined" but I cannot find any link to tell me where that actually is? I am far from a NOOBIE but am feeling like one at the moment :). Do you have any further advice re debugging and for sure where do I find those subpages? Many thanks ... Chris

leoyamasaki commented

Try turn off all Alexa systems and turn on again while the ESPAlexa devices is on. I have the same problem and this solve and discover again.

Porklaser commented

I'm having the same issue. If you use the app to forget a device it becomes impossible to discover again.
Debug mode sees the discoveries. The sub page shows the devices defined. Turning off all of my echo devices does not seem to help.

chrisgimson commented

Am I correct in assuming that support on this library has effectively stopped? I posted this problem at the end of June and I see that others have subsequently posted similar problems of lose of discovery mode yet nothing seems to have happened in terms of constructive feedback. Since my OP, I have added a 3rd Generation ECHO to my collection in the hope that it might bring a solution but it made no difference. A friend monitored the wifi traffic during discovery and commented that the esp interaction stopped after only one attempt to communicate - I cannot expand on that but it does seem that the response to discovery mode is weak based on mine and others experiences - has anyone actually suffered this and managed to fix it beyond the usual actions of re-powering/resetting devices?

eos1d3 commented
Aircoookie commented

Lately I didn't have time to look into the issue reports and I'm sorry about it.
The amount of times the library has not worked has been increasing the last few months and I know for sure that by now it doesn't work with a lot of Echo devices anymore.
I have now added a disclaimer to the readme so that nobody will expect anything from the library that it can't provide.
Hopefully I can improve upon the service state and reliability again in the future, but I can't promise it at this point.
Sorry for the inconvenience and thank you for your understanding!

@eos1d3 oh, Rainmaker sound interesting! Still sadly not an easy to use Arduino library though and no ESP8266. I have high hopes for CHIP as well though, seems like all major players are on board and in an ideal scenario we might get local voice control that works from all Apple, Google and Amazon assistants.

eos1d3 commented

@Aircoookie Zigbee Alliance... Let's see. They never make a good stuff after a decade of promoting Zigbee.

Rainmaker supports Alexa, Google Assistant and Home Kit. Apple allows Home Kit for non-commercial use now. And no need to wait and is ready to use now.

barneyz commented

the fauxmoESP-library based on parts of an older version of ESPalexa-library has the same discovery issue and it seems they found a solution.

edit: (unique device id must be 12 hexdigits = 6 bytes long (fauxmoESP discovery branch).
edit: change now also in master release.

vintlabs/fauxmoESP#120
https://github.com/vintlabs/fauxmoESP/branches
https://github.com/vintlabs/fauxmoESP/compare/discoveryIssue