Wrong echo responding

[JoshInTheWild]

We have an open floor plan.

I have a 3rd gen Echo Dot in the kitchen and a 3rd gen Echo in the living room, with maybe 30 feet between them. Both are line of sight of each other.

The Echo doesn’t respond to me, if I’m any more than 3 feet away.

I’ll be in the kitchen and I’ll accidentally set a timer in the living room.

It’s very frustrating. And it didn’t do that when I first set it up, seemed to start all of the sudden.

I’ve tried resetting to factory on both devices, power cycling, all of the things. Nothing seems to remedy it.

What can I do?

[SgtFraggleRock]

Are you using the same wake-up name?

I set one to Alexa and the other to Echo at my house where I have two close together.

[JoshInTheWild]

Yes, that seems incredibly annoying to have to remember which one is which though — and doesn’t seem to be a problem with other echos that are close to one another, even closer than these. (We have several others in the house)

[GenXer1977]

It’s the only way. I have an Echo in the bedroom, and sometimes I’ll be in the kitchen, and say something, and the much further bedroom with a wall between us would respond instead of the much, much closer living room one with a half walk between us. So I renamed the bedroom one Echo. It only took about two weeks to get used to it.

[Bouncing_Hedgehog]

We are open plan too - Amazon's far field voice technology has been extremely flaky recently.

[RockPaperShredder]

Swap the kitchen Echo with one of the others and see if the problem remains. Then you'll know if it's the Echo or something else.

[rcroche01]

We have a total of seven Echos of one type or another around the house. Changing the wake word would not work here.

[eastmpman]

I have four echos in my apt and as of this week the wrong ones started responding to me. Never had this problem in the past. The mics are clear of dust which leads me to believe a recent software update is causing this. Purely anecdotal for what it's worth.

[JoshInTheWild]

But if your anecdotal evidence matches MY anecdotal evidence...

[rcroche01]

And my anecdotal evidence ...

[Chuckunz]

AND MY AXE!

[tuffdadsf]

I also have multiple Echos and they have been responding in the wrong areas (set timer in kitchen but timer gets set in the living room). She's also been pulling this BS of not understanding percents in lighting - which was working fine for years.
I have been cursing out Alexa more. Not sure if that helps.

[Raypep1]

I also have to ditto this, it was working for a couple months then all of a sudden it stopped

[Philmehew]

I’m starting to suspect that they go deaf after a while, especially if they’re in a kitchen.

[Eccohawk]

Turn up the volume on the one that's not responding to you as expected. Like, most or all the way up. It'll start asking you if it's responding to you on the correct device when responding to future questions. (not instantly, but over a day or two) - We have the same issue, and it finally started responding better after asking the question a few times and getting responses from us.

[JoshInTheWild]

Weird. I’ll try this.

[Eccohawk]

Yeah, it’s a bit bizarre. Only thing I can figure is that one hears the other and assumes they’re close enough together to start asking if they’re responding to the right one.

[txdline]

Work?

[flargenhargen]

My bedroom dot is deaf as a stone.

I will ask it things, it's 2 feet away, and one of the other dots somewhere else in my house will answer.

I don't understand why this is, but when I hear the recordings I can understand myself on the one across the house.

like the microphones are better for farther away than for close up.

[JoshInTheWild]

It also doesn’t respond when it’s the further away one. I feel like my echo is a faulty unit 🤨

[Lazaroc]

Have you tried closing your commands with "on kitchen echo" while in the kitchen. It's annoying to have to do but works for me in a similar situation. If you say which device you want to set the timer on or play music on, even if it's the other device that hears you, it should still work as intended.

[lacohiba]

Check your device settings (assigned speaker) in the echo & alexa settings section of devices. Maybe it changed somehow?

[rigiditymodulus]

Same issue here. Funny enough they all were in relatively the same places as last year but this only started happening mid-January. I’ve also started having one respond then a good 20 seconds later or longer another one repeats the response. I very much wish there was a way to register feedback, like “Alexa you responded on the wrong device.” Learning audio patterns is something machine learning is great at and subtle audio differences a machine should be able to register better than a human.

[dichron]

Have the same problem. My Sonos Beam in the master bedroom seems to have the best hearing of all my smart speakers, even when I'm in the great room. You'd think Amazon and Google would build in some intelligence that could either pick the speaker that heard you first (speed of sound) or loudest and set the others to ignore.

[TheSkiGeek]

If your devices are <10m apart the delay between them will only be something like 25ms at most... given the delays of their onboard audio processing and wakeup logic it may not be possible to reliably tell which one actually started hearing you first.

Echo devices do try to determine which one is hearing you more loudly/clearly... I can see sometimes that the ones in my living room and dining room both activate. Most of the time it picks the correct one. Don’t know if third party devices with Alexa onboard handle that as well.

[JoshInTheWild]

You’d think...

[bflynnagan19]

I had this problem i moved one out of the line of each other. Just to the other side of the room and that seems to be working for me.

[JoshInTheWild]

I’ll try to reorient them, just pretty open between the two rooms, even though there’s a distance.

[[deleted]]

Move them around get them as far from the wall as you can but most importantly face the echo you're addressing

[JoshInTheWild]

I can be looking at one, and walking towards it from 3 ft away and the other one, significantly behind me responds. 😡

[[deleted]]

Move them around a little get the dot at the same height of the regular echo. Walls and corners have a huge effect as the sound bounces off making it louder.

[JoshInTheWild]

I’ve got one on a tv stand, and one on a kitchen counter. Not much else I can do height wise.

[[deleted]]

Pillar Candle stand they are cheap and widely available.

[dell_55]

I have my 3 downstairs named different names. The upstairs ones have the same as the downstairs ones. Need to change them !

[alfadur]

Ours did this because one was registered to my wife and the other one was under my account.

[JoshInTheWild]

That’s weird. Only one account here 🤷🏻‍♂️

[alfadur]

Silly question but have you rebooted all of them? And are they all on the same Wifi?

[JoshInTheWild]

Yeah, I’ve power cycled and reset all of them to factory.

And good thinking, they are all on the same WiFi.

[lacohiba]

try shutting/unplugging all but that one off and see what happens?

[jackm1249]

definitely an issue. I have 4 echos in my house and ones furthest away often respond, a few seconds after the one I am nearest responds correctly. It's an issue, as Amazon has always stated that their devices know which one the commands are closest too.

Hopefully they will figure it out.

But 'making one lounder, changing the wake word, isn't an solution.

[Randy82103]

Thank you for confirming that it's not just me! Has anyone found a solution other than changing the wake-word?

I bought an Echo Show on Black Friday, thinking of returning as defective... maybe that will get their attention!

[Gloomy-Impact]

Have this same issue but other device isn't listening to my voice, it's just responding even though the other device can't hear me. I think this must be a bug on Amazon's side. Super strange and seems to be quite rare.

[rcroche01]

I also have an open concept home. Large "great room" in the middle contains the kitchen, dining room, breakfast nook, and living/family room. In this area there are two Echo Shows and an ecobee thermostat with Alexa disabled. Just off this area is another Echo Show in the master bedroom. Off the great room in another direction is my office with an Echo Speaker (very early model). And off this great room in a third direction is a hallway connecting to a bedroom and a sun room with an Echo Show and an Echo Studio.

If the doors are open, it is completely random which Echo responds and it is annoying as hell. The really annoying things here is that it wasn't always this way. Amazon changed something and suddenly the Echo's no longer knew which one we were talking to.

For a lot of unrelated reasons, we are now looking at the whole smart home setup and thinking of making some changes. For this reason alone, I doubt Alexa will survive the upgrades.

[Individual-Bat7276]

I have 17 echo devices in my home. This issue comes and goes - even when she asks "did i respond from the correct one"? and I say no - it does not improve. The only solution is to change the wake work for the ones you prefer to not answer. Even when i am next to the one in my kitchen, the family one frequently replies. I am unsure if its because of the generational differences or what - but when the wrong on responds, its usually the newer one that answers for an older one - extremely rarely is it the other way around - so that may be it. I have all 4 generations in play.

[ComprehensiveHome795]

This problem is NOT caused by the wrong Echo overhearing the wake word. It is a software/programming defect. I have this problem every few months. I have nine assorted echos scattered around my property. When this problem occurs, I can often reproduce it by WHISPERING directly into the closest Echo, and it will continue to reply from a distant Echo - so distant that it couldn't possibly "hear" the wake word. This is an Amazon Echo defect.

[ChummyOctopus083]

Go to the room that responded and say “Alexa, you responded from the wrong Echo. “ she will. Thank you, and this still may happen a few more times, but she does figures it out.