HomeKit 16.4 Home upgrade still not ready for prime time

[ebika]

It's pretty baffling that the advanced architecture upgrade re-release in 16.4 is still flakey (for me at least). I'd like to take advantage of the newer architecture's faster response times. I even bought a HomePod Mini for this. I can't believe my setup is that weird that they just wouldn't support it, but I guess maybe?

My setup is a HomePod Mini, an iPad Mini (I know, they're not going to use this as a hub going forward), and an AppleTV (not a 4k). I have it set as two "homes," one home for all my lights and things, and another home for the garage door bridge that I can share with my neighbors. It all works fine right now with the devices, hubs, sharing, and two "homes." It refuses to upgrade to the new architecture. I presume that's because the new architecture can't use one HomePod Mini for two homes. Maybe I'm missing something though. I think this is going to mean I can't use Matter devices, which if true, sucks.

Is anyone else running into this?

 

[HiVolt]

It throws a very generic error for me and refuses to do anything. I have two Homepod mini's and a garage door opener accessory that's it. I have updated the hompods to 16.4 just fine.

 

[Itinj24]

Check your device list in iCloud settings and see if the HomePods actually updated to 16.4. I’ve had this issue all throughout iOS 16. The Home app says they’re on the latest software but iCloud says otherwise. This gave me an issue when trying to apply the iCloud Advanced Data Protection and I discovered that iCloud was reporting the HomePods to be on a previous OS version. Had to factory reset them for the changes to apply as a reboot didn’t work. Very annoying.

 

[digitalfx]

Your HPMini must be updated to 16.4, and yes you must have a HUB at each home.

 

[HiVolt]

Check your device list in iCloud settings and see if the HomePods actually updated to 16.4.

Thanks, I just did that and they both report as 16.4.

 

[ebika]

Your HPMini must be updated to 16.4, and yes you must have a HUB at each home.

I just verified iCloud agrees my HPmini is on 16.4. The confusing part is my setup is functional now prior to the new architecture. If the new architecture requires a discrete hub per home where it currently doesn’t, I think that means I’d have to also set up a separate intranet because hubs get pooled per network. I wish I could find some Apple support documentation that describes the architecture less opaquely. I have a sneaking suspicion that if I upgraded the arch for a single home then added a second home, it would probably work, and it’s just their upgrade process that isn’t very robust.

 

[digitalfx]

previous versions required a hub...its always been a requirement. The only difference with 16.4 is the elimination of iPads as hubs.

 

[dotme]

previous versions required a hub...its always been a requirement. The only difference with 16.4 is the elimination of iPads as hubs.

Old architecture only required a hub if you wanted to run automations or have out-of-home control. Although not having one really just limited users to being able to push buttons in the Home app - a glorified remote control with no "smarts"

 

[ebika]

For posterity, I did finally find a path to upgrade the HomeKit network. It turns out that the new architecture does change requirements. Previously, home hubs could handle multiple "homes" on the same network. The new architecture requires a home hub to have one home. Maybe they documented this somewhere, but I couldn't find it. For me, this is what I did:

1. delete my home that I used to share the garage door
2. upgrade the home architecture of my remaining HomeKit home
3. create a new home and add my garage door bridge to it. this results in a local-only home that has no home hub and cannot be accessed from outside the home network
4. in Settings for my Apple TV 4th gen, choose its room as being in the shared home. this moves the Apple TV out of the primary home as a home hub and sets it up as the home hub for that shared home, allowing for remote access
5. invite my neighbor to control the shared home

In the end, my HomePod Mini is the home hub for my primary home configuration and devices (now including Thread ability). My Apple TV is the home hub for my shared home configuration.

tl;dr: you need a home hub per HomeKit home now, whereas before home hubs could handle multiple homes on the same network.