Renaming Ring Cam Breaks Alexa & Echo Show Integration

Products Ring Integrations
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TL/DR: Re-using device names when replacing Ring devices seems to confuse Alexa, even when those old device names are no longer present in either app.

Here’s my scenario:

  1. I physically moved a 1st gen Ring flood light cam from my back yard to side yard and renamed it accordingly in Ring (“Back Yard”->“Side Yard”). That name change propagated correctly to the Alexa app too.
  2. I installed a new Ring Flood Light Cam Plus in the Back Yard location (I wanted the higher-res camera there) and named it ‘Back Yard’. Name was set in Ring app and propagated over to the Alexa app just fine.
  3. Went to my echo show and said “Alexa, show me back yard” and got an error of “Back Yard doesn’t support that”.
  4. Went into Alexa app device settings and renamed the Flood Light Cam Plus from “Back Yard” to “Deck Camera”. Asked it to show me Deck Camera, and it worked just fine.
  5. Error is reproducible, in that if I rename it back to ‘Back Yard’ it won’t work, but any other unique name will. No other devices in Ring or Alexa are called ‘Back Yard’, so it shouldn’t be a conflict.

Anyways, I can live with a different camera name if need be, but found this interesting. Just curious:
has anyone found a way to somehow clear Alexa’s cache of old camera names so they can be used again?

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Thanks for the idea. So that didn’t work, but cracking open the skills list to implement your suggestion reminded me that SmartThings was also integrated w/Alexa and had the old names for the cameras as motion sensors. (Ring devices can integrate with SmartThings directly as well, then SmartThings integrates with Alexa.)

I had all the SmartThings versions of Ring devices disabled in Alexa, but that apparently isn’t enough. Renaming them or deleting them entirely in SmartThings and Alexa, however, seems to prevent any conflict.

So in a roundabout way, you solved this one for me. Thanks!

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