Issue with Alexa, Z-Wave Devices, and Emulated Hue

Configuration
1

I’m experiencing an issue with Alexa that I’m hoping that someone can help me with. I’m currently running HASS.IO (or whatever it’s called now) v108.3 in a VM on ESXi.

Background: I’ve recently moved to a new place. Prior to moving, I excluded all my z-wave devices from my network. Most, but not all, are GE light, dimmers and fan switches. Once settled into my new place, I added back the switches, gave them all the appropriate names, and went on my way.

Then, I went to setup Alexa to work with the new devices. I went into my account and “forgot everything”. Then I went to “Discover Devices”. When it discovered the devices, they all still had the old names. What gives…?

So I went through troubleshooting, and went so far as to rebuild the VM that’s running HA. I’ve reset my Z-Stick, which gave me a new Z-Wave network ID. I’ve re-run the configuration/naming process again, and even the Z-Wave IDs are different for each device. Yet when I tell Alexa to rediscover devices, it still finds the old names.

Is there a way to get Alexa to discover the correct names, and stop discovering names that don’t exist? Or is this an Amazon account issue?

2

You’re looking at the wrong end. Alexa is the problem. You might have to factory reset it. Either way, you can verify that hass is sending the new names by looking at the api url listed in the docs. Take that and paste it into a json formatted online and you’ll be able to clearly see your new names.

3

So would I need to reset ALL of my devices? I have multiple devices in my household.

4

I don’t know. I gave up on emulated hue with alexa because of the caching issues alone. I moved to Alexa Smart Home Skill.

It seems as if the issues are prevalent because of 2 reasons:

  1. We are emulating a gen 1 hue hub.
  2. Our emulation communication process may not be correct and all we can do is continue to reverse engineer the protocol.