Issue with Echo controlling Hue or Wemo switch

[steph280]

I bought a wemo switch after hearing about echo's compatibility in the latest release.  Got home, set it up, and it worked fine for a few times.  Later when wife came home and I wanted to show it off to her, it failed to turn on the lights.  "Alexa, turn on lights" gets me an "OK" response, yet no lights turn on.  Went to the Wemo iOS app and was able to turn on/off the switch ok, and subsequent tries with echo gets me about only 1/2 success rate.

So I thought maybe wemo is a bit flaky.  Went ahead and ordered a Philips Hue starter kit.  SAME EXACT ISSUE!  So now I am wondering if Echo is having some issues talking to these switch devices?

Echo/Hue hub/Wemo switch all resides in the same living room along with the lights.  Wifi is from an Apple Airport Extreme upstairs and an Airport Extreme downstairs, both running the same SSID and password.

Anybody know what could be causing this?  Any suggestion is greatly appreciated.

[jwlv]

Please read my post on my theory why the Echo is unable to reach Wemo switches (and a possible fix) in this thread:

http://www.echotalk.org/index.php/topic,41.msg145.html#msg145

[steph280]

Thanks for the suggestion jwlv.  I actually found this forum through googling the issue and your post was the one that popped up.  What you have described makes perfect sense, which I think could be an issue with my Wemo switch as it uses wifi.  But Philips Hue is connected directly via ethernet so the issue should not be wifi related.  All the devices are still visible at all times from their respective iOS apps, so they are visible (at least on the network) at all times.

[jwlv]

I would imagine that whether you use WiFi or Ethernet, the IP address is still dynamic DHCP. And I believe that's where the problem comes from. I'm guessing that older DHCP IP addresses tend to "fall off" and become inaccessible until something wakes it up.