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alexa-skills-kitalexa-voice-service

Alexa uses the video skill "invocation name" which conflicts with the device name…

(Please, note that my issue happens in French and I didn't try English)

My video skill is called "Kodono Smart Home".
The "invocation name" is "freebox".
My skill controls a TV device that is called (by default) "Freebox".

Since the beginning of May, Alexa has a strange behavior:

  • if I say "switch TV CHANNEL on Freebox", or "pause Freebox", or "Launch Netflix on Freebox" she replies: "I can play it on Freebox or Freebox, what do you prefer?", and then she loops on this answer;
  • if I just say "switch TV CHANNEL" or "Launch Netflix or "Pause", then she executes it without issue on the only video device called "Freebox";
  • If I say "switch TV CHANNEL/launch Netflix/pause on Living Room", then it works because the Freebox device is in the Living Room;

Obviously I don't have any other device called "Freebox". And I reset my Echo Dot.

Now the interesting part: I deleted the Freebox device, renamed it to "décodeur", then added it back to Alexa.
This time, all voice commands work normally!
However, if I say "Do this on décodeur", she replies "I do it on Freebox"… And if I say "Do this on Freebox", she replies "I don't know Freebox".

So at some point Alexa thinks that "décodeur" is "Freebox", but she's not able to find "Freebox"… Crazy, no?!

I looked at my Discovery payload that is sent to identify the device:

  • "endpointId": "freebox-123",
  • "friendlyName": "décodeur",
  • "description": "Freebox Révolution (123)",
  • "manufacturerName": "Assistant Cloud pour Freebox"

There are occurrences of the "Freebox" word, but if Alexa was using one of them, she would say "Assistant Cloud pour Freebox" or "Freebox Révolution" or similar.

After searching around, the only hard-coded reference to "Freebox" word is in the Developer Console in the "invocation word" field. I cannot find any other reference of it.

So why the hell Alexa is now using that invocation word for a Video Skill and mixes it up with the device name?!

Solution

  • I contacted the Alexa team using https://developer.amazon.com/alexa/console/contact-us and they told me they passed the issue to an internal team. A few days later, the bug seems to have been fixed on their side!