Amazon did it again and broke device names with latest update...

[ahwman]

As of July 20, everything was working as normal with Alexa and all of my devices. Unfortunately on July 21st sometime in the afternoon, Amazon must have pushed a new update, as several commands which were working normally now produce the response "A few things share that name, which one did you want?". The devices which seem to be an issue are used for rewind and fast forward on my TiVo and are named "right1", "right2", etc. since "skip" and "rewind" are reserved Echo words. So here we go again with having to come up with more unique names because Amazon decided to make sweeping changes for some reason...

 

Anyone else experiencing this and found a solution?

 

Thanks,

Chuck

[larryllix]

I noticed this at my son's house last night. Apparently I was calling one device "Light" instead of "lamp". I was sure I had been using "Light" since inception and it always worked with that.

 

I believe the error is reported incorrcetly, maybe as a too generic error response.

[rccoleman]

I've been getting that *a lot* lately, and it's gotten worse recently.  Things that used to work very well, like "turn on morning", "turn on night", "turn on the fan", etc. are now misinterpreted and give me the "A few things share that name, which one did you want?".  When I look at the history in the Alexa app, it's almost always because it misunderstood what I said - last night it heard "family" instead of "fan", despite the fact that the audio recording sounded fine. I've been religiously saying "no, it didn't do what I wanted" in the Alexa app when this happens, but it's not clear if it's doing any good.

 

I think it's now more predisposed to hear "light" than it was before, and there's a 50/50 chance that my "turn on night" will be interpreted as "turn on light", followed by the "a few things share that name..."

[webminster]

I'll +1 this, and I've sent a few feedback forms to Amazon to this effect.  The number of "clarifications" it asks for has gone up dramatically, and it acts more hard-of-hearing for other things as well.

[rccoleman]

I'd almost prefer that it just beeped or buzzed or something so that I can try again without having to pretend like I'm having a conversation with a robot. Once it misunderstands, it takes so long to recover that I might as well keep walking until I hit the next Dot/Echo and try again. For some reason, swearing at it doesn't make it reconsider what I said

Edited July 31, 2017 by rccoleman

[webminster]

To me, Echo has become rather useless.  Any more, it often spins lights and otherwise doesn't respond (say anything, let alone do anything).   When it does, the "a few things share that name" happens.  It's becoming a lot faster to just pick up my phone and use Mobilinc, like the good old days.

 

I did get an answer to one of my feedbacks from Amazon.   They suggested I do a factory reset and reconfigure my Dot from scratch.

[rccoleman]

Yeah, I got something similar from support. I've been meaning to re-do the voice training to see if it helps, but I haven't gotten around to it yet (it takes a while).

 

For what it's worth, I find eKeyPad to be much faster than Mobillinc from app launch->turn a device on or off. It takes a few seconds for Mobilinc to check my devices and sync status before I can do anything, while eKeypad is ready to go almost immediately. Echo used to be faster and better than both of them because it's easier to walk and speak than walk and type, but the tide is turning. Now, I really need to stop in front of my Echo and speak directly at it to have a good chance of it understanding me.

 

Rob

[stusviews]

It's true. Sometimes a spoken that's been working is suddenly confusing for Alexa. Fortunately, in our case it's not often, but it is frustrating. My solution is to add an additional spoken. Usually after using the new spoken a few times, the old one works, too.

[rccoleman]

That's a good tip.  Last night, I tried to turn on my whole house fan with "Alexa, turn on the fan" and it gave me the typical "there are several devices with that name..." line.  It turns out that it heard "turn on the fans" (with an "s"), and it couldn't figure out what I wanted.  I have exactly one device called "fan", so there's really no excuse for it not to be able to figure it out.  Not being able to understand a word is one thing, but being unable to deduce intent in a case like that just seems silly.  I do have 1 Google Home device and I've never had it misunderstand me, but I use it less often than the Dots spread around the house.

[larryllix]

I got fed up with Alexa sitting there thinking about every command for 20 and 30 seconds only to ignore me, give the multiple device excuse, or finally do what I asked. 

I loaded the setup app and deleted every skill except the ISY 2 skill and it works like new with very quick responses.

 

It makes sense that the Alexa firmware has to search through, not only your ISY devices, program, scenes and variables but all your other skills to see what fits the best.

 

I could never remember the vocal syntax of all those cool skills, so good riddance to them.  Welcome back decent  and cool ISY control, again.

 

I wonder when the new octacore Amazon Echo with active cooling will be released?

[stusviews]

Which skills did you eliminate? I, too, try to keep it to a minimum; Ask My Buddy (thanks, Teken), Harmony, Ecobee, ISY and Insteon. Except for the first skill named, my primary only purpose for the Alexa device is voice control.

[larryllix]

All of them

 

Sent from my SGH-I257M using Tapatalk

[stusviews]

Which skills did you eliminate? I, too, try to keep it to a minimum; Ask My Buddy (thanks, Teken), Harmony, Ecobee, ISY and Insteon. Except for the first skill named, my primary only purpose for the Alexa device is voice control.

 

All of them

 

Sent from my SGH-I257M using Tapatalk

 

You had every available Alexa skill enabled? Or was my query too vague? If the latter, then which specific Alexa skills did you disable/eliminate?

[G W]

He's like me. I only have ONE skill on my device

 

Sent from my Nexus 6P using Tapatalk

[larryllix]

You had every available Alexa skill enabled? Or was my query too vague? If the latter, then which specific Alexa skills did you disable/eliminate?

I had about a dozen skills. the only ones that come to mind were 20 questions, a drink mixing skill, and the rest I can't remember. I don't think it matters which ones except the more word seraching involved with any skill, the mre CPU time it shoud take to check if your command belongs to that particular skill.

 

 

None of them were useul as I could never remember the vocal syntax without having it written down somewhere. That isn't going to happen.

[stusviews]

Interesting theorem, but I suspect that the syntax in and of itself minimizes the search time. For example, when I say, "Alexa, tell Harmony to ... ," then only the Harmony skill gets searched.

 

OTOH, Amazon added a Fire TV ability that doesn't require a skill. It works like reserved words do, asking Alexa to raise/increase the volume changes the volume on the Echo device, but there's no separate "Echo" skill. Of course, since volume is reserved for the Echo device, it doesn't work for the TV volume.

[Ajax]

This is really starting to get frustrating. I had a scene called "Some" , which worked great for turning on some lights when I walked into the house, but now I get the dreaded " Found several devices that share that name..... Any fixes yet?

[rccoleman]

They've started contacting me when I report that Alexa didn't understand me (even when I don't check the box), but I don't know if that's due to increased interest from customer service or my long history of reporting these issues.  Amid a sea of words, the two meaningful suggestions that they've made are to re-do the voice training that I did some time last year and to rename the problematic words to a more distinctive term (they suggested "night mode" rather than "night", which often conflicts with "light").  They also said that my devices were still under warranty and could be replaced for free in case they're defective, but this doesn't seem to be a hardware problem.

 

Swearing at it makes me feel a little better (and results in the humorous "Sorry, I can't find f<beep> you"), but it doesn't help it respond correctly

 

Rob

[stusviews]

There'll never be a fix for words that Amazon reserves. I've also had to change some spokens. For example, we have over and under window coverings (that's a trade term for a double motorized rod). We have a sheer and a blackout. Amazon took away sheer, possible because it's a homonym for share, so now we use curtain.

 

They recently added Amazon Fire TV control, so there went pause and play (which is fun when watching Fire TV). I haven't tried fast forward nor its counterpart yet.

 

Just think of it as an opportunity to become creative

 

Edit: I don't have any difficulty with "night light" nor "bright light."

Edited September 1, 2017 by stusviews

[kohai]

I ran into this when I first got my dots 7 months ago.  I was hoping over time these issues would get better.  I have had to disable commands which is annoying.  I can turn lights off but not back on.  If I enable both commands neither work.  I have to choose which I want more.

 

Maybe I'll come up with code words like 'purple elephant' for turning the lights on and 'blended trees' to turn them off.

[stusviews]

If a command works for a scene, then both On and Off should work. Or are you controlling a program? Which spoken(s) is/are giving you a problem?

[larryllix]

I find only the first word very significant. If the second word is garbled at all, then the first word is the only one that counts.

 

I have discovered it is best to avoid conflicting devices like "ceiling lights" and "ceiling bright lights" with the same first word. If the words after the first words, are not clearly understood then Alexa will report multiple units found.

[kohai]

If a command works for a scene, then both On and Off should work. Or are you controlling a program? Which spoken(s) is/are giving you a problem?

 

Yeah, mine are isy programs that call a network resource for the lights.

[stusviews]

Yeah, mine are isy programs that call a network resource for the lights.

 

Post your program.