I contrast to your recent experience, for the past three days all of my smart devices have worked instantly with Alexa voice commands. I've seen this happen before - works as it should for a few days then gets sluggish again for a few days. Other times it works great for a few hours and then get sluggish for a few hours. No pattern to it all.

Spoke too soon. About an hour ago I issued an Alexa voice command to turn off a lamp. The device (HS103) responded immediately and the lamp turned off but the Echo show device that issued the command reported "Device unresponsive". I then opened the Alexa app and went to devices to check the status of the device I had just operated. It said "There was a problem". That was about an hour ago and the Alexa app is still saying "There was a problem". Seems to me that TP-Link's engineers and Amazon's engineers need to get together to sort this out.

  @Dr_Mono 

The router provided by my ISP is a Hitron CODA-4589.

I was never happy with its anaemic Wi-Fi coverage so I had to add a couple of Wi-Fi extenders.

That improved coverage somewhat but still not great.

So, about six weeks ago, I turned off the Hitron's Wi-Fi radios and connected one of its LAN ports to a TP-Link Deco X60 AX3000 Whole Home Mesh Wi-Fi System.

Now every corner of my house and even outside on the deck has a solid, fast Wi-Fi.

Awesome system. Really impressed.

 

..Lloyd

 

Dr_Mono wrote

  @Noell One more observation. If I don't open the Alexa app for many hours/days, I get an alert with a list of Kasa devices that "went offline." However, this does not match at all the router's log - all of these devices have been very much connected to the internet. And as I mentioned in an earlier posting, everything seems to work fine. Perhaps Alexa is registering the timeouts as "offline"?

  @Dr_Mono 

I can't recall ever seeing a list of devices in the Alexa app that "went offline".

The messages I see very frequently in the Alexa app are "Device is unresponsive" and "Something went wrong".

Even when I see those messages, I can still control the device manually in the Alexa app or manually in the Kasa app without any problems.

 

  @Riley_S 

Who knows?

Hopefully someone can figure this out.

To that end, other than a couple of us end users surmising what may be wrong, is anyone at TP-Link/Kasa listening? Is anyone working on a solution?

 

 

 

 

 

  @Dr_Mono 

I now think it is a problem with the Alexa interface to whatever brand.

And here's why I think that - I have a friend using Gosund Smart plugs and he is having exactly the same problem - often slow responses with Alexa voice commands.

I borrowed one of his Gosund devices and set it up alongside my Kasa devices.

They behave exactly the same - instant response using their respective apps but often a delayed response with Aexa voice commands with Alex reporting "device is unresponsive" whether Alexa operated the device instantly or whether Aexa operated the device after a  period of time.

I get the feeling no one is trying to fix this.

I wonder if a post on some Alexa forum or other might be a better way to go.

 

 

 

  @Riley_S 

Thanks, Riley.

I read with great interest the link you sent earlier re the Matter Protocol'

It does indeed seem the right way to go to solve this this slow response issue.

Hopefully it will be implemented sooner rather than later.

 

Best regards,

Lloyd