Alexa executing scene even though says not responding

I have HA running in a container on a NUC for many months now. I’m using NubuCasa for Alexa. I have several scenes setup, and I usually execute them with Alexa. Recently, things are acting strange. For example, I have a “Dinner” scene that announces “Time for dinner!” on all the house speakers, along with a couple of other tasks. Been working great forever. However, now what happens is:

Me: Alexa, start dinner
Alex: Dinner is not responding
HA: Executes the dinner scene

This happens with all my scenes. It doesn’t happen with lights, etc.

I did try deleting all the devices/scenes in Alexa and then re-syncing from NabuCasa, but the behavior is still the same.

What happened?

I’m running the latest versions of everything.

Dave

Several threads about this, but no solution:

…and there’s a (long) Github thread here which suggests the problem was fixed some time ago (although it clearly wasn’t):

For what it’s worth, a friend who has Alexa and Hue lights but not HA reports the same problem.

I think this may be a problem with Alexa itself. I get the same response (xyz not responding) even though the action executes. This goes for things on HA and off. To my uneducated mind, I figure it to be a timing problem of some sort, as if Alexa is not receiving a response within a set time.

  1. Alexa given order to switch on device.
  2. Alexa executes order.
  3. Alexa does not get a response from device within a specific time.
  4. Alexa announces that device is not responding (even though it is)

I could be wrong, but that’s my thought on it.

No I think you’re right. According to some of the Alexa forums there is a timeout of around 10 seconds, which can’t be changed for “security reasons”. Variations in network traffic would explain why the problem comes and goes.

10 seconds sounds plenty long enough. In my case, HA executes the scene within a second or two. Often Alexa is saying “Dinner is not responding” while all the speakers in the house are announcing “Time for dinner!”.

I just have submitted a PR that fixes this. (I think my issue is the same described by @gobigdave).
When I tell Alexa to activate Movie, it actually activates it but it says Movie is not responding (in spanish)