Alexa routines can no longer set brightness on HS220 dimmer
Alexa routines can no longer set brightness on HS220 dimmer
Symptom: Alexa routines cannot set the brightness level of HS220 dimmers.
This problem started happening in the past week or so, not sure the exact date.
I have a number of routines that set lights to specific brightness for activities. Like a "watch TV" routine. Always worked perfectly. Very recently the settings for any HS220 devices stopped working. Other steps in the routines (like setting lights from other brands, etc.) continue to work fine.
An oddity is that simply asking Alexa to control the HS220 device directly works absolutely fine. Like saying 'alexa, set the dining room light to 25%'. This works just fine by itself - just not when part of a routine. Doesn't matter how many other things are in the routine and will fail even if setting the HS220 is the only action.
Another oddity is that setting the HS220 power on or off in a routine does work properly. It's just when you introduce a dimming level it fails.
Controlling the HS220 using the Kasa app works fine as well.
Controlling other brands of devices that support setting the brightness also continue to work fine as part of Alexa routines.
So the only thing that suddenly stopped working is trying to set the brightness level of the HS220 as part of an Alexa routine.
Based on the behavior it appears that there's something broken with the Kasa integration with Alexa.
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Thanks for the update. However within the past several days the problem has apparently been resolved. I haven't made any changes on my end but apparently somebody fixed the problems with Alexa integration. I'm now able to adjust the brighness from the Alexa app and existing Alexa routines that control brightness are now all working.
It would be useful to know if there was some fix made to the Kasa app (but it doesn't appear to have been updated in the past month), or some fix was made to the back-end cloud service integration with Amazon (most likely).
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And note that this problem is not related to a single HS220 dimmer. I have 4 installed and it's happening for all of them. And there has been some change that caused this problem as it previously worked normally.
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Hello,
Thank you for the feedback, we tested HS220 V1 in the lab and using Alexa Routine, (Trigger voice command ' TV ' . Action : set HS220 brightness to 100% ) and switch responds to Routines and change brightness.
Try to toggle OFF ' Increase brightness' option during test and test again , this option increase brightness gradually not instantly.
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@Solla-topee I tried toggling the feature as you suggested (it was previously off) and it makes no difference. By the way, the feature is called "Ramp Brightness" in my Alexa app - probably a language translation difference. Note that the ability to set a brightness did previously work and I have a number of routines set up that used it. The problem just started occurring recently without any changes being made to the Alexa routines or to the Kasa device settings.
Here are screenshots of all the relevant settings.
Simple Alexa routine for testing. Just turns the light on and sets to 25%.
Here's the detail of the device settings. Note that with these settings nothing happens for the device. It won't turn on or react at all. If the option to set the brightness is disabled then the light will turn on (at previous brightness) under the routine's control.
Here are the settings for the HS220 device in the Kasa app:
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@Solla-topee Some further info:
I found that if I leave the "Increase Brightness" (or "Ramp Brightness") feature enabled then the light will turn on instantly to the previous brightness. This is regardless of the amount of time to increase the brightness. If the "Increase Brightness" option is disabled then it's as before - no response from the light.
So to recap, if the routine:
Only turns light on/off - works but sets the brightness to whatever the light was set to previously.
Turn on and Set brightness (with increase brightness off) - no response from light
Turn on and Set brightness (with increase brightness ON) - light instantly turns on to previouse brightness and doesn't ramp and doesn't use the brightness setting in the routine.
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I discovered another thing related to the problem. It's no longer possible to set the HS220 dimmer brightness using the Alexa app. Manually controlling the HS220 with the Alexa app allows you to turn it on and off, but if you try and change the brightness by moving the slider the message "There was a problem" briefly appears at the top of the page and the brightness doesn't change. So it's easy to replicate this problem. Simply bring up the device in the Alexa app and try to adjust the brightness.
Note that using voice commands via Alexa devices (like an Echo Dot) works correctly and the brightness can be set on the HS220.
So the failure use cases are:
1. Can't control brightness via a Alexa routine.
2. Can control brightness using the Alexa app.
The HS220 seems to work normally using the Kasa app.
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Here is the message that appears in the Alexa app when trying to adjust the brightness of a HS220 dimmer. Note the "There was a problem" message highlighted by the yellow box. The message appears for just a couple seconds whenever you move the brightness slider. And of course the brightness control doesn't work. The HS220 can be turned on/off, but dimmer level can't be adjusted. To replicate simply try to adjust the brightness of a HS220 using the Alexa app (not via voice commands). So this along with the problem controlling from routines indicates there's some integration problem between the Kasa device/service and Alexa.
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Thank you for share the detailed steps to reproduce it, I'd like a support email TKID220606916 and escalate the case to better assist with your case.
Please check your email inbox later.
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Thanks for the update. However within the past several days the problem has apparently been resolved. I haven't made any changes on my end but apparently somebody fixed the problems with Alexa integration. I'm now able to adjust the brighness from the Alexa app and existing Alexa routines that control brightness are now all working.
It would be useful to know if there was some fix made to the Kasa app (but it doesn't appear to have been updated in the past month), or some fix was made to the back-end cloud service integration with Amazon (most likely).
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Hello @etracer
Thank you for the update and glad to know its now solved. I do not hear any related fixes with Alexa routine or integration
You might monitor the performance for now and feel free to let us know the email TKID220606916 for any observation.
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