device unresponsiveness and different device names in app vs online

[marklyn59]

I'm not sure if I have one issue causing my post or several.
I installed all of my Alexa devices Aug-Sep 2020.  Everything worked well. Everything named.  It all just worked.
Until now.
In the last few weeks I started to notice a device here and there being described as "unresponsive..." by alexa when I give a command. First is was my corsori toaster oven, then a light here, a switch there.
So after a couple of weeks of putting up with this I voraciously read everything I could regarding troubleshooting these devices that Alexa said was unresponsive or she didn't know that device.  After a couple of days of trying everthing I've read and no real progress in removing and trying to re-add stuff, I called Amazon Alexa support.
The knowledgeable lady spent 90 minutes with me on the phone, repeating all of the troubleshooting steps I had already done and some new ones, still having issues.
Here is a quick breakdown of my issues:
* Some devices that were working fine suddenly are listed as unresponsive and can't be controlled.
* Some devices that I've removed via the app, I'm not able to re-add (Hue lights for example)
* Some devices that I finally re-add are showing up under a generic name after a new discovery yet they now also show up as unresponsive.
* Some devices continue to work as if nothing happened (maybe 50%).
* 90% of my devices are zigbee devices that directly pair with Alexa; 10% need an app to connect to Alexa but devices from both of those categories were affected.

The nice Amazon support lady did finally chat with her manager and did say that what is happening is apparently a known issue and "they have engineers" working on it, but couldn't describe what "it" was.  Based on what I have been experiencing it appears to be on their back end.

Is anyone else experiencing these issues over the last couple of weeks?

[wkholi]

I am having a similar problem , where my Echo is not responsive.
It works if I put my iPhone on 4G and talk through it.
I am sure it is a router setup issue.
I spent 3 days not, about 60 min each day .
No fix yet!!
Did you find as fix?

[DButchart51]

Ok, this is interesting.  I'm using a Universal Devices ISY box (ISY994i) which enables control over Smarthome devices.  Control of device and scene switches and plugs, scheduling of devices and scenes, etc.   Universal Devices created an Alexa skill that allows you to add voice control and have Alexa respond appropriately and tell the ISY device to issue the appropriate commands.

It's been acting intermittently for quite a while now.  I've consulted with UD support and it looks like a DNS name resolution issue.  The big question is between which devices?  The UD interface on my PC never has any problems communicating with the ISY.  The Skill is the one that keeps cutting in and out.  One moment it starts working and may work for days before then cutting out - then it will be unresponsive for an hour or several days, then come back.  Error message (vocal) from the nearest Alexa device is:  ""Sorry the hub that device XXX is connected to is not responding, please connect the power supply."  When I go into the PC interface, I see the portal on the ISY is showing as registered but offline.  But the PC can interact.

The Skill does not require any of our PCs to be on - so the communication has to be between the Alexa skill and somewhere in the cloud and back to my ISY unit.  Looking at the ISY log something is trying to communicate with my.isy.io - pinging shows that this resolves so someplace running in AWS:

C:\Users\dbutc>ping my.isy.io

Pinging portal-nlb-762d8181e4d497aa.elb.us-east-1.amazonaws.com [44.198.244.63] with 32 bytes of data:

The requests time out, as I expected - not responding to pings is a good security measure.  But other requests complete.

Any thoughts and other things to try?  Anybody also a Universal Devices customer?

Thanks,
Dave

[adelphiaUK]

The first thing to note is that the hub is used LOCALLY by your PC but your Alexa devices have to access it via the Internet, like it does for every command, even the simplest of them like "what's  the time". Ask Alexa that when you've lost Internet connection and she'll tell you just that, "I'm having trouble connecting..." etc.

Your best bet is to get this resolved LOCALLY by getting the hub to show as "online" constantly; the issue is definitely with the hub/hub setup and communicating with the outside world via your router and not AWS.

I have downloaded the user manual for the device you said you have, the 994i, and I can have a look through it for you if you still haven't got this resolved but I don't want to go through what appears to be a comprehensive document if you've already got it sorted so please let me know by replying here.