Problems with Dot and AmazonBasics Sound Bar staying connected

[sparker]

I bough an Echo Dot and "AmazonBasics 2.0 Channel Bluetooth Sound Bar" and am having a problem with them staying "connected". It used to work where I just left the Sound Bar on all the time, and even if it would power itself down, the Dot would "wake it up" on any command that needed it.

But lately, I'm getting nothing out of the soundbar. I've gone through various disconnect/power off combinations, but nothing. If I ask the Dot to "connect bluetooth", it says "Already connected to AmazonBasics08" (the bluetooth name of the speaker). But still plays all it's audio through the Dot (which surprises me a little if it thought it was connected). The Dot and Speaker are about 15 feet apart with direct line-of-sight between them.

I've even gone so far as to factory reset the Dot, and re-run the entire setup process but seems to be no luck.

I don't know if it's related or not, but occasionally, I'm getting a visual error on the Dot that I can't find described on the net. I get a pulsing DarkBlue/Teal ring. In this case, the whole ring pulses, not twinkling like it can do when it's "waiting for something". The pulse cycle is about a second long, and it will do this for multiple minutes sometime. I have an Echo and another Dot in the house that never do this.

Most of this is leading me to think I should just return both devices for replacement, but I'm strongly leaning towards starting with the Dot, and then the sound bar second if that doesn't fix it.

I'm going to try to reach AWS support today, but thought I'd throw the question out here too to see if anybody has any thoughts/suggestions.

Thanks!

Steve

[mike27oct]

Next time you have this problem, unplug both devices, plug Dot back in first and then once Dot is up fully, plug in BT speaker.  Total reset was probably not necessary.

[sparker]

Next time you have this problem, unplug both devices, plug Dot back in first and then once Dot is up fully, plug in BT speaker.  Total reset was probably not necessary.

Mike,

Thanks for the tip. It's not working at this time, so I'll go give that a shot now.

Steve

[sparker]

Next time you have this problem, unplug both devices, plug Dot back in first and then once Dot is up fully, plug in BT speaker.  Total reset was probably not necessary.

Mike,

Thanks for the tip. It's not working at this time, so I'll go give that a shot now.

Steve

So here is what the problem was. Sometimes, during connections to this Soundbar (and another Dot connecting to a Bose Mini SoundLink), the DOT turns the volume on the remote device all the way down. All the way. I've learned to say "Alexa, set volume 1", then "play <some playlist>", then go to the remote device and start turning up the volume. All the way. Sometimes it took a lot of "+" buttons to get the volume where I could hear it.

I don't think I've ever had the volume down so far, so I kept telling Alexa to turn up the volume, but it was really the remote device that I had to do that to.

I occasionally do get a hard disconnect, and nave to "forget" then re-add the speaker, but at least now I know what to do about the volume.

Consider this issue "resolved"...