HomeKit How to get out of a disconnected state in home app?

[malcky77]

Hi folks,

I am away from home at the moment and have the worst mobile phone connection I have ever seen in over 20years of having mobile phones.

So in one of the few occasions I could get internet on my phone I thought I would check in on all my home network remote access stuff we all pay for to make sure everything is ok at home:

UniFi protect app...for my cameras...all good, no signs of anything dodgy outside my house and my car is still there. Lol

Philips hue app...all good, lights going on and off as expected with sensors and automations. (Cats in the house and a friend going in to feed them triggers the sensors)

Tado heating app...all good, can see all working as expected and can control each radiator remotely still.

Apple home app...65 items not responding....wtf...that’s every smart thing I have in the house linked with the home app...Philips hue bulbs, sensors & switches...tado heating system, but these thing ARE working.

So I looked at the home app settings and noticed the home hub is showing as disconnected and the other 4 possible hubs showing in standby....so it looks like when I was trying to check on the home app at a time when I was in a crap area internet wise with my phone and it failed to connect..it’s marked the home hub as disconnected???

Seems like the home app is NOT refreshing or something? How can I get that sorted?

 

[Itinj24]

Try a hard reboot on your iPhone. That sometimes corrects HomeKit issues for me.

 

[malcky77]

@Itinj24
I restarted my phone already with no luck....I also used my UniFi App to block the current HomePod hub from the house WiFi Thinking that would have caused the hubs to swap round as the main home hub but that didn’t do anything either.

 

[waw74]

it seems the software they recently released was not quite ready.

"Home hub not connected" - why?

I have been using HomeKit for months now with no issues. I have four Apple TVs (and now a HomePod) serving as 'hubs'. I have multiple scheduled automation tasks that worked fine. Recently, however, the automation tasks are not running, and underneath each automation task I see the message 'Home...

forums.macrumors.com

Fix Homekit hubs on Standby after 13.5 upgrade

Hello, I have my Homekit devices using an Apple TV HD (4th generation) working as a Home Hub. Recently after the last 13.5 upgrade on my iPhone and also with the latest upgrade on the Apple TV, it became stuck in Standby within the Home app. I tried solving it by connecting additional Home hubs...

forums.macrumors.com

 

[malcky77]

@waw74
I have not updated any iOS or Mac device for months, so they are all on 13.6.1 (for my iPhone anyway), not sure what the HomePods or the 4K Apple TV will be on, so I can’t blame the latest update for this issue I don’t think.

I don’t think there is anything else I can do remotely to try fix this....when I’m back home tomorrow it will either sort itself out when my phone gets back onto the same WiFi network or when I reboot the HomePod that’s marked as disconnected.

 

[Itinj24]

@waw74
I have not updated any iOS or Mac device for months, so they are all on 13.6.1 (for my iPhone anyway), not sure what the HomePods or the 4K Apple TV will be on, so I can’t blame the latest update for this issue I don’t think.

I don’t think there is anything else I can do remotely to try fix this....when I’m back home tomorrow it will either sort itself out when my phone gets back onto the same WiFi network or when I reboot the HomePod that’s marked as disconnected.

I’m surprised another hub didn’t take over when you paused the disconnected hub. Can you reboot your UniFi network remotely?

 

[malcky77]

@Itinj24
I do have full access to my home internet network as that is all working perfectly but I won’t restart any of it as I don’t believe that’s where the problem is...I reckon it will only be fixed when I can restart the problem HomePod, which will in turn force a change in which device will act as the primary home hub.

I am a bit disappointed that none of the other standby devices did not kick in and take over if a problem has occurred with the current one....what is the point of having standby devices otherwise????

 

[waw74]

if you reboot the wifi, as the other devices reconnect, they might re-negotiate who is the active one.
as long as you don't have other devices that you're worried about re-connecting, it shouldn't hurt anything.

there are issues in this version, plus homepods currently being a version being everything else probably isn't helping.

 

[Itinj24]

It doesn’t hurt to at least give the WiFi reboot a try since you’re not there anyway. As it is, only a handful of devices are connected. Those should at least pick right back up when the network goes back online.

 

[malcky77]

Ok so I rebooted the upstairs WiFi access point which is where the problem HomePod was connected to....during the reboot I could see that problem HomePod (and another HomePod) connected to the downstairs WiFi access point, so that at least let’s me know the problem HomePod is actually working and not frozen/stuck at least.....NO change, still marked as disconnected in the home app.
I decided to reboot my phone again too just for good measure, opened the home app, still shows 65 items unresponsive....looked at the home hubs page and it then showed all 5 possible home hubs as disconnected for a minute, then it updated and still shows the problem home hub as disconnected with the other 4 showing in standby....so still NO change.
I still think this will only get fixed once I power down the problem homehub.

I think this proves to me that Apple should make a dedicated Ethernet connected home bridge because this standby/swapping around malarkey clearly doesn’t work....as my Philips hue bridge and Tado heating bridge are working perfectly fine as expected.

 

[Spindel]

I think this proves to me that Apple should make a dedicated Ethernet connected home bridge because this standby/swapping around malarkey clearly doesn’t work....as my Philips hue bridge and Tado heating bridge are working perfectly fine as expected.

They do, it's called Apple TV. I have two ATVs in my home connected to wired network and until tvOS 14 they have worked great.

But after tvOS14 they refuse to connect to my Animus Home (same with my phone and iPad), but my on my mac the devices connected to my Animus Home show up as connected and are working for some reason.

 

[malcky77]

@Spindel
I don’t class the Apple TV as a dedicated home bridge....it’s a streaming box that they added functions to...which don’t work as intended. As you can see above on my screenshot, I also have a 4K Apple TV that is available as a standby home hub but didn’t take over when the main home hub at the time went into a disconnected state.

I am home now and as soon as I restarted the problem HomePod everything came back as expected on the home app of my phone....strangely the same homepod is still showing as the primary home hub even after a restart.

 

[Itinj24]

The thing I don’t like about the HomePod is that you can’t disconnect it as a hub like you can the ATV and iPad but they always seem to take precedence. This may be anecdotal but I always felt that my one ATV connected by ethernet was my best performing hub. We should be allowed to manually switch and disconnect disconnect hubs both locally and remotely.

 

[Spindel]

My problems seems to be sorted with tvOS 14.2

 

[Spindel]

I retract my previous comment. Still have the same problems as described earlier.