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HomeKit After 16.2, any one have luck upgrading the architecture?

dustin_ said:
So do we have any real solution on how to get our spouse back into our shared home? Everything's updated as required, I've re-added my spouse to our Apple TV, but no matter what I do, I'm unable to get a Home invite successfully completed. He receives the invite, appears to be added as a "resident", then he just disappears & it's as if the invite was never sent in the first place. Infuriating - for someone who's technically inclined! I cannot imagine going through this as a "regular" person.
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I also couldn't get my wife back to control our home.
Then I found this instruction. After I updated all of her devices to 16.2.
The following worked for us:

0. Update all Devices
1. Remove all the invites.
2. unplug every hub in your house.
3. wait until your Home app actually says no home hubs are connected. It can take 3 or 4 minutes. There will be an alert that no home hubs are connected.
4. plug in a single hub. Wait for it to boot up.
A message will pop up that a home hub is connected.
5. send your invite. It will go through. Accept it and follow the prompts.
6. on the primary account phone, after all that, reboot phone so your invitees show in your Home app.
 
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schaba said:
I also couldn't get my wife back to control our home.
Then I found this instruction. After I updated all of her devices to 16.2.
The following worked for us:

0. Update all Devices
1. Remove all the invites.
2. unplug every hub in your house.
3. wait until your Home app actually says no home hubs are connected. It can take 3 or 4 minutes. There will be an alert that no home hubs are connected.
4. plug in a single hub. Wait for it to boot up.
A message will pop up that a home hub is connected.
5. send your invite. It will go through. Accept it and follow the prompts.
6. on the primary account phone, after all that, reboot phone so your invitees show in your Home app.
Click to expand...
Apple really needs to release and instruction manual on this. Insanity what hoops you have to go through to get this to work. Did they even test this???
 
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It's even worse on my Apple TV 4K 2022. I will ask Siri via the remote to set a scene (involving Philips hue lights), or control an individual light and it will invariably say something like sorry I can't find that in your home. I do it a couple more times and it may still say the same thing but then actually change the scene/light correctly.

In my experience, it is now worse than it was before and that is saying something. Bring back HomeKit of iOS 14!
 
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Over the weekend it has been mostly ok, with a few automations failing occasionally.
To try and overcome it I deleted some automations and re-added them, seems to have worked in most cases.

The only issue I have left is one HomePod Mini stuck saying it is configuring.
I have tried power cycling it, and have done a full reset and it it is still saying configuring.
It is one half of a stereo pair and it keeps dropping out from the pair.
I guess I will try aother full factory reset and see how that goes.
 
Just wondering if the new architecture impacts other systems like Google.

My son has a Google mini nest that he can use to control his Meross bedroom lights. The lights are also in Homekit - could the Google connection impact an update to 16.2?

I’ll be waiting until next month to try any updates. Everything works fine and I’m still on iOS 13.7 on my phone!
 
valkraider said:
I found what I think is *my* problem anyway, and it’s kinda weird but - it worked.

As always, YMMV

I have a second home that was also set up in HomeKit, all that home had was Hue lights.

I had already removed it from my Home app - it didn’t show in the app itself.

However in the “Home settings” the other house still showed up - even though it was not selectable in the app itself.

So I removed the other house from Home Settings and then I was able to do the upgrade.

Also - I had found this earlier, it didn’t seem to fix the problem but I’ll mention it here - I also had a really old AppleTV showing up on my iCloud, but we don’t use it anymore. It’s literally in a box in the closet. But iCloud showed it as on OS 15.4.1 and associated with my account. I removed it from my account. That didn’t fix the problem - but who knows.

Ultimately it sounds like two things:

The “upgrade” is *really* picky.

The error messages erroneously say HomePod updates needed when maybe it’s not actually the HomePod that needs an update.
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Thanks, removing the second home work for me!
 
I had to nuke it then rebuild. Took me about 2.5 hours to get it all back with automations, scenes, etc. Lutron Caseta, Philips Hue, Liftmaster Bridge for HomeKit, (2) TVs, (5) HomePods minis, (2) OG HomePods. I have Starling Hub for for Nest Hello and (2) Nest thermostats -- hands-down a rock-solid bridge for Nest devices. As much as I hated doing it, rebuild was the correct decision.
 
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Upgrading the architecture is an absolute mess. First the shared user disappeared and couldn’t accept the invitation, then after a few reboot of home hubs the user was finally added to the home with all sorts of problems. After that the HomeKit secure video failed to record anything, after another round of rebooting home hubs, the recording is still not back now.

I’m about to give up HomeKit. It’s an absolute garbage. It’s one of Apple’s worst software, someone should be responsible for it and step down.
 
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haruhiko said:
Upgrading the architecture is an absolute mess. First the shared user disappeared and couldn’t accept the invitation, then after a few reboot of home hubs the user was finally added to the home with all sorts of problems. After that the HomeKit secure video failed to record anything, after another round of rebooting home hubs, the recording is still not back now.

I’m about to give up HomeKit. It’s an absolute garbage. It’s one of Apple’s worst software, someone should be responsible for it and step down.
Click to expand...
Had similar issues. It's a pain to delete home and start over. Be sure to note what you had before to make rebuild easier. It's a big bag of hurt but it will pay off.
 
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I updated all my HomeKit hubs and devices to 16.2 a week or so ago, yesterday decided it was time to do the HomeKit Architecture upgrade, it seem to all go ok, but then the realisation happened, things were not rosy! First my wife lost HomeKit access to our home. Then my Eve aqua was not working could not see it in active device list, many devices sitting at "updating". When I checked Thread network from within Eve app, my main HomeKit hubs - Apple TV's were missing from the list of Thread network devices! So many devices that rely on Thread were all not working , or not working reliably ! When I tried to re-invite my wife to our Home in HomeKit, it would not work, invite went through , but when you accept it, it just disappears. Called Apple support , after getting passed to Tier 2 support, the advice was to give the "system" at least 24 hours to "settle" after architecture upgrade. I was quite suspicious of this suggestion! BUT... as the day progressed (a few hours) things started working again, I could invite my wife back into HomeKit ok, my Apple TV's appeared as Thread routers again , all my Eve products started working reliably again, automations starting working OK. ONLY thing left which is not working reliably or as fast as they used to are my Philips Hue lights, which is a bit of a problem as have quite a few Hue lights. I checked Hue bridge and its software is up today, so not sure about this one. In summary, after doing 16.2 updates on all devices and then doing Homekit architecture upgrade, be patient for a while before deleting items or blowing your whole Homekit away and re-building.
 
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NiftyMac56 said:
I updated all my HomeKit hubs and devices to 16.2 a week or so ago, yesterday decided it was time to do the HomeKit Architecture upgrade, it seem to all go ok, but then the realisation happened, things were not rosy! First my wife lost HomeKit access to our home. Then my Eve aqua was not working could not see it in active device list, many devices sitting at "updating". When I checked Thread network from within Eve app, my main HomeKit hubs - Apple TV's were missing from the list of Thread network devices! So many devices that rely on Thread were all not working , or not working reliably ! When I tried to re-invite my wife to our Home in HomeKit, it would not work, invite went through , but when you accept it, it just disappears. Called Apple support , after getting passed to Tier 2 support, the advice was to give the "system" at least 24 hours to "settle" after architecture upgrade. I was quite suspicious of this suggestion! BUT... as the day progressed (a few hours) things started working again, I could invite my wife back into HomeKit ok, my Apple TV's appeared as Thread routers again , all my Eve products started working reliably again, automations starting working OK. ONLY thing left which is not working reliably or as fast as they used to are my Philips Hue lights, which is a bit of a problem as have quite a few Hue lights. I checked Hue bridge and its software is up today, so not sure about this one. In summary, after doing 16.2 updates on all devices and then doing Homekit architecture upgrade, be patient for a while before deleting items or blowing your whole Homekit away and re-building.
Click to expand...
This is promising and thanks for sharing. Would’ve been nice if Apple just stated in the update notes that it may take up to 24 hours to fully migrate to the new architecture.
 
I did the architecture update today... but after I updated all my devices were missing (homepods, apple tvs, accessories, etc). It was like I had a blank "home." I couldn't figure it out, I even tried adding a new home entry in the iOS Home app to try and shake things out etc, to no avail. I don't know if I was just missing something obvious in the iOS app, but when I opened the Home app on my Mac, i went to the View toolbar and saw there were two "My Home" entries. So I swapped to the other one and all my devices were there. Somehow it created two "My Home" entries and for whatever reason either the iOS Home app wasn't showing me both, or I just missed it.. but it was more obvious when using the mac Home app. Anyways, now all is well with everything.. just a slight scare. :)
 
NiftyMac56 said:
Called Apple support , after getting passed to Tier 2 support, the advice was to give the "system" at least 24 hours to "settle" after architecture upgrade. I was quite suspicious of this suggestion! BUT... as the day progressed (a few hours) things started working again…
Click to expand...

I agree with the idea of letting things “settle” a bit after an update like this. I’m about a week out from the upgrade now and today was the first day in forever that I did not have several devices showing “no response” all throughout the day. I have done a few things through the week like reboot a few hubs and factory reset two HomePods that were having issues, but overall things are solid now. Responses from Siri requests are not faster as I’d hoped, but at least they are working and dependable. Hopefully it stays that way and continues to get better as we move though the next iOS updates.
 
Can anyone on the new architecture try asking Siri for a future request, please. Just curious if this has improved.
e.g. “Hey, Siri, turn off the kitchen light in 10 minutes.”

I’m currently on the old architecture waiting for some time off from work in case. This Siri feature has been completely unreliable for me since iOS 16. Thanks.
 
Itinj24 said:
Can anyone on the new architecture try asking Siri for a future request, please. Just curious if this has improved.
e.g. “Hey, Siri, turn off the kitchen light in 10 minutes.”

I’m currently on the old architecture waiting for some time off from work in case. This Siri feature has been completely unreliable for me since iOS 16. Thanks.
Click to expand...

I've not tried it with lights but I use it frequently with an electrical socket and it seems to work very reliably (surprisingly!!)
 
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NiftyMac56 said:
ONLY thing left which is not working reliably or as fast as they used to are my Philips Hue lights, which is a bit of a problem as have quite a few Hue lights. I checked Hue bridge and its software is up today, so not sure about this one.
Click to expand...

My Hue switches wouldn't work after the update, a reboot of the Hue bridge fixed that though.
 
Itinj24 said:
Always for you or since the new architecture?

A socket is actually one of my daily used cases.
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Honestly can't answer that. Don't think I used it before the architecture upgrade. And had completely forgotten the feature is even available. But I have used it reliably since the update.

But yet again with Apple being the incompetent ********s that they are and their ever growing complete lack of attention when it comes to detail, it's mental that I can't instigate this function from my watch. But that's another story.
 
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StumpyBloke said:
Honestly can't answer that. Don't think I used it before the architecture upgrade. And had completely forgotten the feature is even available. But I have used it reliably since the update.

But yet again with Apple being the incompetent ********s that they are and their ever growing complete lack of attention when it comes to detail, it's mental that I can't instigate this function from my watch. But that's another story.
Click to expand...
Cool, appreciate the info.
 
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Itinj24 said:
Can anyone on the new architecture try asking Siri for a future request, please. Just curious if this has improved.
e.g. “Hey, Siri, turn off the kitchen light in 10 minutes.”

I’m currently on the old architecture waiting for some time off from work in case. This Siri feature has been completely unreliable for me since iOS 16. Thanks.
Click to expand...
I tried this on two different homepods and two different sets of room lights and it worked both times. It gave me the “one sec” message and took longer than it should have to set it up, but it did work.
 
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Alfie said:
I tried this on two different homepods and two different sets of room lights and it worked both times. It gave me the “one sec” message and took longer than it should have to set it up, but it did work.
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Much appreciated. It usually fails on the first and second try for me after waiting for Siri to process it but the third times usually the charm. It’s just a huge waste of time so I usually end up grabbing my phone which has a 100% success rate.
 
Alfie said:
I tried this on two different homepods and two different sets of room lights and it worked both times. It gave me the “one sec” message and took longer than it should have to set it up, but it did work.
Click to expand...

Exactly the same for me, always get the one sec comment. Can't stand all that human-esque crap. The worst one being "on it"!!! Should be able to turn it off completely. Christ I really hate Apple LOL.
 
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