Hue, Siri, Homekit

[MaulRx]

so we have our whole house on hue lights and up until last night it all worked beautifully with Siri. We used Eve to group them as we want them. Was able to turn them on and dim them at well.

Then the whole thing went nuts. It stopped listening and now I can't get them to dim at all. I've reset the hue bridge, the bulbs, set them all up again, redid the groups, reset HomeKit data. And even started a fresh iPhone. It simply will no longer work. Any ideas where to start? I'm at the point I'll just put light bulbs back in and forget it.

 

[jonnyb]

Exactly the same thing has happened to me yesterday evening.

Siri doesn't respond properly when I say 'set living room light to 50%'. Siri says it can't find any devices at this time.

If I ask it to turn on the kitchen light, it turns everything on and says 'OK the lights are on'. On my partner's iPhone Siri just says it doesn't understand what I said.

I've tried repairing the Siri connection but it has had no effect. It's very weird and frustrating.

 

[MaulRx]

Exactly the same thing has happened to me yesterday evening.

Siri doesn't respond properly when I say 'set living room light to 50%'. Siri says it can't find any devices at this time.

If I ask it to turn on the kitchen light, it turns everything on and says 'OK the lights are on'. On my partner's iPhone Siri just says it doesn't understand what I said.

I've tried repairing the Siri connection but it has had no effect. It's very weird and frustrating.

Yes exactly. If I ask them to dim any light it says it can't find any devices. Some groups no longer work and some turn on all lights in the house. I have tried everything as well up to and including resetting my iOS devices as new.

I've set up hue mote to get me through but if I can't use Siri I don't see the point....

 

[jonnyb]

Well in one way, I'm glad it's also happening to someone else! It has got to be a Siri server-side issue. You know how they just had to change something server-side to fix that security hole? Maybe that broke something to do with iCloud Keychain and Hue hubs?

 

[MaulRx]

Well in one way, I'm glad it's also happening to someone else! It has got to be a Siri server-side issue. You know how they just had to change something server-side to fix that security hole? Maybe that broke something to do with iCloud Keychain and Hue hubs?

Oh yea that slipped my mind, the Twitter thing. I'll give it a few days. Finally get an iPad that can use Hey Siri and I can't control my lights haha

 

[jonnyb]

I've logged a bug with Apple anyway. If it is that, hopefully it will be fixed soon.

 

[jonnyb]

A solution! They seemed to have removed the need for the word 'light'. So, try saying 'turn on/off bedroom' or 'dim bedroom to 50%'.

Rather unintuitively you have to say 'dim bedroom to 100%' which works but makes no sense whatsoever.

 

[MaulRx]

I also found that if you add the word brightness you can get them to work. I used to be able to say "Turn Bathroom Light to 10%" and now I have to add brightness. I can't get Siri to understand the word dim anymore either, comes out as damn

 

[steve knight]

I have pretty much given up on it. it is faster to use the today widget. I have gotten it so my wife can turn all lights on or off with siri and it is all she needs as she is blind. the rest us automated for the most part.

 

[MaulRx]

I have pretty much given up on it. it is faster to use the today widget. I have gotten it so my wife can turn all lights on or off with siri and it is all she needs as she is blind. the rest us automated for the most part.
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Huemote looks similar. I'm using it now to get me through the rough patches as well as making new automations instead of groups. So instead of a group called "Both Living Room Lamps" I made an automation called "Turn On Both Living Room Lamps" Harder route to the same goal. I agree the buttons are quicker but two problems: I found that the hue bridge doesn't like to receive from more than one device, except shared HomeKit commands, and also for the price I paid I want voice commands like Star Trek!

Hue has been a disappointment overall from the start.

 

[MillieWales]

Huemote looks similar. I'm using it now to get me through the rough patches as well as making new automations instead of groups. So instead of a group called "Both Living Room Lamps" I made an automation called "Turn On Both Living Room Lamps" Harder route to the same goal. I agree the buttons are quicker but two problems: I found that the hue bridge doesn't like to receive from more than one device, except shared HomeKit commands, and also for the price I paid I want voice commands like Star Trek!

Hue has been a disappointment overall from the start.

My wife and two of my children use their phones and iPads to control the lights, it's never caused any issues. We tend to use Huemote for simplicity, it's just so easy to click swipe and choose the setting you want. We all have different settings in our widgets depending on what we use - I don't need to adjust he kids lights for example and they done need our bedroom.

iConnectHue is great for extra features, but for speed it's not so easy to access unless through the widget. I like being able to programme my Tap switches so easily through the app, each button has multiple presses set up, each Tap is set up differently depending on where it is.

Most apps just have too many features that we don't need for everyday life. We don't need fancy animations, although I use one to call my kids down rather than shouting and it's programmed into a Tap in the kitchen. Other than that I just have several settings - Daytime, Evening, Bedtime, Goodnight etc - and a couple of animations for slow fades in the morning.

I've found the lights far from disappointing but of course everyone has different experiences. I'm going to be adding a further 20 bulbs outside soon, I may need to use a second Bridge as it will push the limit a bit far I think (people have got the bridge to work with 70 bulbs even though Philips say it's 50 but it can cause issues). He only app that can handle multiple Bridges is iConnectHue. Alternatively I may just run a second bridge from an app I reserve just for outside lights, which kind of makes sense.