Can anyone make sense of the way this works (or doesn’t)? I’m tempted to throw all my echo device into the hopper out of frustration.
For the past week (predating the Cloudstrike update outage), my old Amazon Echo Tap device has only been able to play CNN on TuneIn, and my custom music lists. But whenever I ask it to play, say, MSNBC on TuneIn or C-SPAN, Alexa informs me that it “isn’t available right now”. That “right now” has lasted for the past week with no change despite several device restarts and even a reset to factory settings and a reconfiguration process. To make it even worse, the last reset has resulted in only being able to wake the Tap device by pressing the mic button - saying “alexa” is being ignored. So, I ask, how does this make any kind of sense?
Also, I can’t even send MSNBC on TuneIn to the Echo Tap via the Alexa app: it still responds that it “isn’t available right now”. Plus, accessing the Tap device settings through the Alexa app results in the “Wake Word” never fishing “Loading…”.
Sounds like an issue at Amazon. The “can’t reach” response seems to mean it tries to get there, but something is missing (i.e. the path to the destination is missing one or more links). That could be a Crowdstrike secondary/tertiary issue that needs to be fixed by Amazon. I am seeing a difference between historic programs/systems and more current ones, with the historic ones failing because they lack the current technology.
This has actually been happing on and off for the past year at least. And why it would only affect some of my echo devices at different times and not others remains nonsensical to me.
Sounds like “updates” (Amazon? Or their software suppliers?) fix one thing and break another. Multiple software suppliers, each applying their patches = lots of confusion, so who knows what does/doesn’t work after each patch?
Are all your devices the same? i.e. The same model (not Dot vs Echo or not two Dots with different chips or different software/firmware versions)?
I don’t follow the Alexa devices, but I am keenly aware that different Sonos devices and Apple devices suffer weirdnesses as softare updates regularly work/don’t work against hardware differences. Particularly with iPhones & iPads it is common for the next update to address something that did not work uniformly with a previous update.
I have a very eclectic mix from all different epochs. In order of acquisition, they are a:
Tap (smaller cylinder which doubles as a portable speaker and has a rechargeable battery)
Echo (largish cylinder, not portable, no battery)
Dot (hocky puck sized)
Show (has a screen)
I have them all set to use different “wake words”, and the problematic “Tap” only allows the “Alexa” wake word to be used, though it’s unresponsive now.
So, different software updates for the presumably different versions of the OSes these devices use could be part of the problem, but if so, I may have to refrain from bashing Apple’s software so often!
I happen to have a Tesla and see this issue in spades. Back during 2020 and 2021 Tesla like many companies had issues getting chips. So they rewrote the OS to deal with fundementally different computer chips – think Intel vs Apple. Add to that different years and models in the same year have different hardware differences. I see people getting some functionality months different from other people both with the same model and/or same model year. It really is amazing they deal with it as well as they do.
Well, inexplicably, now, several weeks later, my Amazon Echo Tap is finally able to play MSNBC and C-SPAN, although it still doesn’t respond to the wake word “Alexa” (I have to press the mic button). I have not reset the device “back to factory settings” but have restarted it several times. Perhaps some software update was finally installed? Who knows.
Yeah, thanks. I had tried that weeks ago, but the option didn’t even exist. But now it does. Go figure. The Alexa app still says the device is “unresponsive”, which now makes no sense at all. Stoopid software…
And BTW, there is still only the one “Alexa” wake word available on the Tap, versus other Echo devices that allow alternative wake words, like “Ziggy”, and “Amazon”. You’d think a simple software update could easily fix this.
