We have two Amazon Alexa’s in the house and we use them more than we thought we would. I’ve got smart plugs we use to turn on and off some lamps, a bedroom fan, Christmas tree lights, etc. Our grandkids love asking Alexa to tell them a bad joke or ask questions in general.
We moved into a new house about two years ago, and both of them worked fine. I don’t remember how but no problem connecting them to the new network in the house.
The one in the den stopped working. It says it can’t connect to the network. I push the button to get the flashing orange light, use the Alexa app to set it up, per the instructions. and the app looks for it for a while then says no device found. Repeated this many times. Unplugged the Alexa, plugged it back in. Thought maybe I’d delete it from the Alexa app, but the app can’t see it so I can’t deleted it. On the app it says not connected to the network, but I can’t edit the network, PW, etc. because it can’t connect. A classic Catch 22.
All I see online is unplug it and plug it in, reboot your home network, use the app, etc. I can get it into setup mode, flashing orange ring, it says “in setup mode, use the app” but the app waits, tries, “device not found.”
Yeah, I do that, get it into setup mode, then when in Setup mode the app is supposed to recognize the device and the setup continues. Problem is, it tries and tries but never sees the device.
Do you have an alternative device to use (preferably with a different OS)? For whatever reason, I often have a terrible time these days with my Pixel 5 getting new smart devices to initially connect to my network when I use my phone. Sometimes I can sort of brute force it by doing it over and over again on 2.4 and then 5 and back again, mobile data on/off, but sometimes it just doesn’t work, and in some cases “disappears” like you seem to be experiencing. In these cases I find if I just install the app on my iPad it usually connects. Then I can go back to the Android app once it’s happy.
Tangent: I have an African Grey parrot whose cage is near our bedroom. Our bedroom is all Philips Hue lights that we can turn on with Alexa (via my Sonos system). Guess who says “ALEXA TURN ON LIGHTS” all day long now? He’s such a jerk. I would say the lights turn on for him about 70% of the time.
What stinks is I can’t even remove the device from my Alexa app. It shows up on the app. When I tap on it I get Device is Offline - let’s get your device connected, tap on continue, etc.
If I tap on the settings button, top right corner, it shows the status screen, but nothing is usable (big red “Device is Offline” banner on top.)
I thought if I could remove the device from the app, and start fresh, it might work. But I can’t even see how to remove the device from the app. Even though it is currently unplugged.
I might just get one of the Echo Shows - my wife was talking about a digital picture frame now that we have grandkids and it looks like it will do that.
Just a word of warning about Echo Shows - Amazon crams them full of ads and there’s not much you can do about it. I’ve never used them as a picture frame, though, so maybe you can minimize it.
Not only that, but even after you go through and turn off all the nonsense you don’t want, they frequently add new categories and suddenly it’s a whole bunch of new junk you don’t want to see.
I have tons of Echo Dots (with clock) though. Those are great.
