HomeKit HomeKit Help Needed

[dotme]

Long time HomeKit user. For the past 5 days I've had issues with Hue Dimmer switches no longer triggering their HomeKit scenes... Unless one of my two AppleTVs is the HomeKit hub. Then they work great, as they have done for years.

Problem is, one of my HomePods inevitably takes over as the hub, and while all timed automations (and Siri commands to the HomePods) continue to work, those switches don't work any more. Frustrating to hit a switch when you walk into a room, only to have the room remain pitch dark.

You can see the tile wiggle in the Home app on the iPhone, so the switch is registering a button push. But nothing happens. Last night, I removed all HomePods and AppleTVs from the home and my iCloud device list. Painstakingly set them all back up as new. This did not resolve the issue. And since Apple won't let me disable Hub functionality on HomePods, I'm left with a broken HomeKit any time a HomePod becomes the connected hub. Since I have 13 HomePods and only two AppleTVs, HomePods are hubs over 80% of the time.

Besides removing and re-adding all hubs, I've performed all the usual steps of deleting and re-adding the scenes for the switches, power-cycled all WiFi access points etc. I'm out of ideas, so any suggestions would be welcome. FWIW, all the troubles seem to have started the same day Hue pushed out their Adaptive Lighting update. WiFi consists of a flat network with three Extremes and a Gigabit wired backhaul to each.

 

[bennetbecker]

I actually don’t see adaptive lighting as a part of the software update release notes for HomePod - which seems odd to me. What version of iOS are you running on the HomePods? do you have automatic updates configured in Home Settings?

 

[Itinj24]

How’s the battery on the Hue Dimmers? Had similar issues in the past and a battery swap usually fixed it. I personally think Hue is overpriced garbage in general tho. Had my whole house outfitted with Hue bulbs and dimmers and it never worked properly.

 

[dotme]

14.2 on all HomePods and AppleTVs. iConnectHue says dimmers are all 100% battery (Hope it's accurate). This stuff was rock solid on OS 12 and 13, so it's a head scratcher for sure. I can tell Siri on the connected HomePod to execute the scene and it happens instantly. My iPhone sees the button press on the Home Screen, and when I test the button press in the home app, again the scene happens instantly. That seems to rule out my WiFi network. Not all button presses control Hue lights either. Some activate Lutron Casetas. Same issue there.

I'm down to giving most of my HomePods bad gateways to prevent them from being Hubs, which isn't ideal. As for the Adaptive Lighting, I did get a Home app pop-up after the Hue Bridge did an auto-update on the 27th, and I declined to use it. That all seemed to go well, but I do wonder about the timing - my troubles began on the 27th as well, after that Hue bridge update. If I could downgrade that firmware update, I'd do it in a heartbeat. But it's reportedly not possible.

 

[Alfie]

I've been talking in another thread here about how 14.2 broke Homekit for me. Sounds like the same thing might be happening to you. I have the same experience that things get really bad when one of my homepods takes over as the hub. I think my situation is even worse in that asking a homepod to complete a smart home task fails about 90% of the time. I can use Siri from my phone, watch and Apple TV and it works, but not from the homepod.

One thing that I did was to update my Apple TV's to the 14.3 beta. After I did that, one of my Apple TV's took over as the hub and hasn't given it up yet. I assume the system sees the 14.3 as the newest and defaults to that? You could give that a try and see what happens?

 

[dotme]

Thanks - If nothing else, I'll kill updates on the HomePods so when 14.3 releases, the AppleTVs will get it and hopefully take over. My issue is specific to HomePods being hubs. Regret buying so many of them at the moment for sure.

 

[Alfie]

Thanks - If nothing else, I'll kill updates on the HomePods so when 14.3 releases, the AppleTVs will get it and hopefully take over. My issue is specific to HomePods being hubs. Regret buying so many of them at the moment for sure.

I agree that homepods on 14.2 don’t do a good job acting as hubs. I am hoping that there will be a 14.3 for the HomePods that will improve things. I don’t realize how much I’ve come to rely on those things until they don’t work.