I have read all the existing issues that seem related, but none of them seem to exactly match my situation. I have successfully used the Alexa’s alarm.com and alarm.com smart home skills for several years. Everything worked great with all my z-wave devices.
Several weeks ago, I experienced a new problem. Suddenly both skills just seemed to be disabled for me. None of my z-wave devices showed up in the Alexa app. Ultimately this problem corrected itself the next day. Due to nothing I had done, the skills both reappeared and all my devices showed back up in the Alexa app. Everything worked fine again. I assumed some sort of Amazon server side temporary problem.
A few days ago, I started to have a similar problem again. This time waiting didn’t help. My devices did not reappear. There no longer seems to be a listing for “My Skills” in Alexa, so I opened up the two alarm.com skills. Both appeared to be active, so I disabled both and re-enabled them and went through the re-linking process. Eventually devices reappeared - that is, most of my devices. The problem now is that three of my switch devices do not show up in Alexa’s devices. All my other device are there and work fine. I have tried everything I can think of, including removing and re-adding devices to alarm.com, and I cannot get those three devices to show up in Alexa’s device list. Even stranger is that I can still control two of the devices that don’t show up via the “tell alarm.com to …” method, that is to say, they are not in the Alexa device list, but they still work with the alarm.com skill but not the alarm.com smart home skill. The third missing device doesn’t work with either. I should stress that all these devices work perfectly with my control panel, the alarm.com website and with the alarm.com phone app. The only thing of significance I can think of is that the three weird devices are the ones I have most recently added to alarm.com, but they have all been working for a long time.
Any insights about this would be very much appreciated. We are certainly spoiled by the availability of these voice commands, and I am very disappointed to lose any of that functionality.
What is the brand and model number of the devices that are not showing up?
There was a recent update to the skills and users have noted some differences. One user reported that a few Z-wave devices which weren’t a common supported model were not showing up as a controllable device.
What are the names of the missing devices as they appear in Alarm.com?
The two devices that still work with the older alarm.com skill are:
Evalogik Model ZW36 called Bedroom Lamp in alarm.com
Minoston Model MP21Z V1.0 called Bar Light in alarm.com
The one that doesn’t work at all is a
Minoston MP26Z called Christmas Tree in alarm.com
As a side note, the last one is a two z-wave switch version, but despite the new support, I can only get one of the switches to be recognized by alarm.com .When I tried to add the second one, it seemed to be recognized during the device add process, but it didn’t show up as a second device in the 2gig Go Control 2 Panel list.
Minoston devices were actually reported as not showing up anymore by another user. Those do not report manufacturer info on ADC’s end. If you delete and relearn those z-wave devices from your panel now, is there any change?
I tried that. Still works fine with alarm.com, except as I noted about the double switch only working as one controllable switch, but the same situation with Alexa.
I don’t really see why Alexa would care what type of devices they are, since it only interfaces to them through the alarm.com skills. Since they work fine with alarm.com, it seems to be a problem with the skills themselves. As I understand it, the skills are developed by alarm.com.
I don’t really see why Alexa would care what type of devices they are
Alexa does not care, based on reports it seems additional info may be passed for some devices and ADC may be validating compatibility using one or more other manufacturer/model data values. Those Minoston switches were reported by another user to no longer work through Alexa.
The three devices you referred to on your system report no manufacturer data. All the other Z-wave devices do.
We are reporting the behavior to Alarm.com for investigation. If they have additional troubleshooting recommendations we will add them here, but I suspect that Alarm.com would need to make a further update to resolve this issue.
We will follow up when we hear back.
As a side note, the last one is a two z-wave switch version, but despite the new support, I can only get one of the switches to be recognized by alarm.com .When I tried to add the second one, it seemed to be recognized during the device add process, but it didn’t show up as a second device in the 2gig Go Control 2 Panel list.
Multi-Channel support is only available on Qolsys panels at this time. The control panel needs to support multi-channel devices. The 2GIG GC2 does not.
Thanks for all that information. Yes, please let me know if you hear more. I am very willing to replace my three troublesome switches if that will resolve the problem. Could you recommend some currently available switches that you know to work well across the board? I prefer switches that don’t block both outlets where they’re plugged in.
On the 2Gig GC2, do you mean the hardware cannot possibly support Multi Channel devices, or could it possibly support them with a firmware upgrade? It’s not a big deal to me either way, but I’m just curious. I know the GC2 is old, but it has worked great for me for a long time, I understand it very well and how to program it, and the thought of setting up a new control panel for all my devices is not a pleasant one.
Those devices are not likely to ever be supported on a 2GIG GC2. The standard GC2 was discontinued in 2020, and is not expected to have any further firmware updates. It would require a hardware change to support any multi-channel devices at this time.
Following because I also have several Minoston plugs and dimmers that have worked fine for over 2 years. After the alarm.com skills update I can still control them from the panel or app but they no longer show up in Alexa. Tried removing them from the panel and adding back. No change. Here are the models MP31Z, MP31ZD, and MP22ZD
Thanks for the additional info. I’ll add your account as an example, it looks like a universal issue with those switches. We will update this thread with any updates from ADC.
I have a little additional information to provide. I have purchased two types of Z-Wave plugs since I reported the initial problem. I have used neither of these in the past. The first was a NEO Z-Wave Plus mini plug. This is not listed on the Alarm.com partner list. As with others, this one works perfectly with alarm.com and is not picked up by the Alexa app no matter what I do.. Then I bought a Shelly Wave Plug. This company is on the partner list of alarm.com. Lo and behold this one was picked up by the Alexa app. I haven’t done any further testing but wanted to report this result. It is also noteworthy that the Shelly plug does NOT report the manufacturer when it is added, but it still works with Alexa. Now I am really baffled. Is alarm.com just refusing to report devices to Alexa if they’re not in their partners list, even though they work perfectly well with alarm.com. If so, that’s pretty ridiculous. And how would they even know this is a Shelly plug if the manufacturer is not reported to the panel?
I also have a Qolsys QZ2101-840 Z-Wave Plus IQ Smart Plug on order. Qolsys is also in the partner list, and I want to see if these work with Alexa. For anyone interested, this plug is available on ebay for less that $10.00. I’ll report as to how it works when it arrives.
Thank you, Diamond Dog, but I had read that post before my first one. It is not applicable to my issue. The current problem is that some alarm.com Z-Wave devices are not being reported to Alexa at all. As far as Alexa is concerned, the devices don’t exist. This despite the fact that they work perfectly well in alarm.com.
I’ve pushed this issue to Alarm.com again and emphasized the details that have been reported regarding brands and the official hardware list.
The Alarm.com skills had to be updated due to the previous version support being dropped by Amazon Alexa. It’s unclear if this compatibility issue is an intentional or unintentional effect. I would guess it is unintentionally caused by certain changes in the V3 skills.
I’ve requested ADC look into the update and find out what is causing this behavior. Once we hear back we will post here.
Thank you for staying on top of this. It really looks like a straightforward alarm.com skills programming bug. I hope that’s the case, and that they fix it soon.
I have a Minoston MP31ZD, and Alexa is working for me. I usually don’t use Alexa, but when I saw this thread I thought I’d test it. If I ask her to turn on, off or ‘set to 50%’ etc. it does work.
For whatever that is worth. I’m using the “Alarm.com” Skill (not the “Alarm.com smart home” skill).
EDIT: An update on this. After playing with this a little more, I think I stumbled on to something. The Alexa skill only seems to work if the device’s name is 2 words or less.
I renamed this MP31ZD to something with 4 words and it wouldn’t work. I kept playing with it and realized if I used the chat feature in the Alexa app (rather than voice) the error that comes back is “Sorry I didn’t find a group or device named XXX XXX” - and that’s when I realized it was only capturing the first two words of the device name!
Jury is still out on this one, but this may be the limitation… still testing. But once I renamed the offending devices to something with 2 words, they all worked. (I also had to make sure they were unique, of course)
The users originally reporting this issue had mostly 2 word names for devices which were not working, so that doesn’t seem to be the original issue.
That’s good to know however and important to call out, there seems to be multiple limiting factors.
For whatever that is worth. I’m using the “Alarm.com” Skill (not the “Alarm.com smart home” skill).
One of the users reported that a couple switches did work in the standard skill but not the smarthome skill. If you are willing to try the smart home skill do those work or not?
Thank you to getoffmylawn for your input. As Jason said, I had two devices that continued to work via the alarm.com skill but not the alarm.com smart home skill. That is, they worked if I said “Tell alarm.com to …” They still did not show in the device list for Alexa. I would be interested to know if yours showed up in the Alexa device list when you are only running the standard alarm.com skill. It is just another data point. I think they might and that adding the alarm.com smart home skill prevents them from appearing in the device list, even though they can be accessed through the alarm,com skill.
Also, I said I would report back with the results with my new Qolsys QZ2101-840 switch. It works perfectly everywhere. When I added it to alarm.com, it showed up with a manufacturer code and not the actual name. I guess that counts as reporting the manufacturer. If it does than I have to revise my earlier post. The NEO Z-wave Plus switch I added also reported a manufacturer’s code, not the name.
I’m fairly pleased to find a switch that works well and is from an alarm.com supported company for less that $10.00 before tax and free shipping. It took a bit to arrive. Apparently UPS delivers by mule train, but it came and works fine.
Unfortunately I’m not an Alexa expert, but I only have the alarm.com skill enabled at the moment. I have none of my alarm.com devices showing the Alexa device list at all. (I didn’t even know they could show up?!) They only work if I use the ‘ask alarm.com to’ commands.
I’ll try enabling the alarm.com smart home skill and report back…
If I’m missing something please let me know. Happy to help.