That sort of setup is bound to be laggy. After you say the magic word, a few seconds of your speech is sent to amazon for decoding, then amazon's servers contact Tuya's IoT servers, they have to check whether your devices have a connection from your house to their servers, and if so they send a turn on/off command halfway round the planet to your house.
Normally, ie until recently, the response has been all but ‘instant’ ( note quotes). Certainly not long enough to make you think Alexa hadn’t heard the instruction / there was a fault etc. Now there is a very noticeable lag. I’ve not tried to time it.
Also, it seems to have been a step change - not a gradual slowing down.
I find all smart plugs, even Amazon ones can lag. Seems totally random, so I would imagine it is partly to do with the routing going on, as it is not a local process. I did try a TP Link one, but not only do you need a PhD in chinglish to set one up, but they are unreliable and drop off the network, normally needing part of the set up which needs 2 apps, to be run again. I sent all mine back and got a refund. Brian
One other oddity about lady a is that from time to time program ducking stops working completely and the only way to restore it is to unplug the A lady and plug her back in and wait. It also sometimes says stuff like having problems contacting your music, please try later or, I'm having trouble hearing right now then cuts off any music which is playing and sulks for a few minutes before it works again. Its within 10 foot of the router!
I say the command, if Alexa recognises it, the OK is followed a fraction of a second later by the on/off. The delay between the command and the OK is when my speech is processed, that delay can be extended if my command is not recognised, or if it doesn't easily recognise it. The delay between Alexa's OK and the action never varies.
The only annoying problem has been the plugs appear to crash or loose contact, simply not respond to any commands. What ever state they were in, is the state they remained in, annoyingly until I happened to load the app and noticed a Smart Plug was greyed out.
I was unable to find a way to have Alexa let me know there was an issue, so found a Windows app, which could ping each plug, then email me a warning if a ping failed twice. I have the app load as Windows boots, so it is invisible and runs all the time my laptop is on - which is good enough.
None of the things controlled are crucial, but they could become crucial if they are not operating for several days unnoticed.
Interestingly, I have not lost contact with any plug, during the time I have had the app running...
One of the items which was responding slowly is a Hue bulb - we have one Hue, one Tradfri bulb ( we have others but the system won’t recognise them and repeated attempts at reseting don’t work), plus various Tuya switches.
From memory, the Hue bulb was our first Smart device - it came with the Echo ( the tall one with the Zigbee hub), a Xmas gift.
The Hue bulb is in my bedside light. It tends to be the most used Smart beast. I’d forgotten it was Hue as most of the other lights are Tuya - although those were also slow.
Given two different ‘systems’ were slow, it suggests the problem was the common element - the Amazon part.
Both Hue and Tuya seem back to normal this morning. I tried Tuya ‘direct’ via a Tuya app, that was ‘instant’ this morning. Ditto via Alexa, the Ok and action are all but instant. There is one switch which is slow but it always has been. No obvious reason although, while the Wi-Fi signal should be good there, it is near another switch which is prone to dropping off the system occasionally. Even with a ‘mesh’ system, I have some strange dead spots in odd places.
(Coverage by the Hue bulb is very good. )
I’m not impressed by the Tradfri bulbs. The one which works is fine but I bought several and only one of 5 or so still works as a Smart bulb. The others did initially but dropped of the system and can’t be reset etc.
Hue is fine but only equivalent to 60w, the Tradfri is 100W. Like most houses, the majority of our wall switches don’t have a live wire and the choice of Smart switches which work without a live ( and no capacitor) is limited.
I run three always on routers/wifi access points, to ensure decent coverage everywhere, then a fourth router just for printers in the small bedroom. That router and the printers are controlled by a single Smart Plug.
The router is the WAN device that talks to your ISP, you normally have just one (unless you have a service with 4G failover, and that is normally incorporated into the same device anyway). The other devices are probably LAN switches.
Yeah, likely just some glitch in the internet service or with the alexa system back at amazon.
Yeah, that is a significant downside and so is the lack of any led panels.
I don't use any wall switches at all, I use movement sensors almost exclusively and voice commands for the night time shutdown of everything and the first thing in the morning startup which also delivers the weather forecast etc.
The Hue kinetic switches need no wires at all and so can be located anywhere.
I have four mesh disks. Even so, there are some odd dead spots. Not sure why, the house is mainly normal block walls, a few stud walls. Disks are wired to the router.
The above dead spot is only a few metres from a disk- less than 4 at a first estimate.
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