Time for Alexa and Google Assistant Updates

I am truly getting sick of hearing error messages from Alexa when a device isn’t responding and also seeing the device show offline in Alexa. I figured this was across the board with most automation systems, but now seeing it to be more and more a problem with the old Vera skills.

I’ve been testing Alexa and Google Assistant with SmartThings and found they recently updated their skills. All my connected devices report their status… including temp sensors and open/close sensors. Alexa now offers announcements over one or multiple devices when a sensor is tripped using their Routines.

My question, will we see anything get updated with the Vera setups anytime soon?

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As stated elsewhere, don’t expect new updates for the current hw generation. I’m even not sure we’ll get the 7.32 that was promised weeks ago, but Alexa won’t be updated for sure. I can’t find the post right now.

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Thanks. I thought I saw something, too about not getting anything for a while. Couldn’t find it.

Thought I’d add a note and a word of caution for anyone that comes across this. Today, I purposely left my Schlage Zwave door unlocked and asked Alexa if it was locked. Like usual, she said she was checking and to my surprise, came back with it’s locked! I tried again and got the same response.

I would much rather a response of not being able to connect than the wrong one. I plan to test further with different lengths of time left locked/unlocked and also test with Google.

Coincidentally, the other night my Vera Plus was somehow under the impression that my Schlage deadbolt was NOT locked when in fact it was. This unnecessarily triggered a Reactor routine at bedtime warning me about the “unlocked” front door.

Still don’t know where to place the blame, but that had certainly never happened before!

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I did further testing and it wouldn’t properly identity the lock state at all. Thought maybe it was because I manually turned the lock, so opened the Android app to do it there and it won’t even work (version 7.40.413).

Also, forgot Google can’t see locks within Vera…

So I’m taking the lock out of Vera this coming weekend.