Nothing Really Seems to Just work

[groovyd]

Ok so I have 3 Incipio plug in outlets, an Ecobee thermostat, and I just got the Lutron Caseta smart-hub with light dimmer. The reason I got the Lutron unit is I have their Serena shades on the way and was hoping to control everything by voice.

For some reason Siri which was at at least telling me the different room temperatures a week or so ago is now no longer working right at all. It did manage to turn the bedroom light on once but wouldn't turn it off. I have all the devices uniquely named and put into rooms. What am I doing wrong? Does one of the 'home' apps need to be running in the background when using Siri? I tried it but still nothing she just keeps saying 'that is not supported' or i can't find such and such in that room.

I do have like 3 different 'home' apps now to control everything, one by each manufacturer and the 'Home' app itself. Which should I use so things just work as they all seem rather wanky.

I am a programmer so not entirely clueless about technology but if I can't manage to get a simple few devices reliably working how do they expect the average non-techie to do this? As far as I can tell Homekit is seriously flawed.

 

[groovyd]

I found out by removing all rooms and just leaving everything thing in the home helps Siri find it. The hierarchy of naming devices is a mess though since no two devices can have the same name even if in different rooms for example 'light' in the 'bedroom' and 'light' in the 'living room' which would make more sense when saying 'turn on living room light'. alas nothing really works reliably no matter what you do. oh and I actually have 4 homekit like apps now; lutron, incipio, ecobee, and 'home'. They are all equally poor and slow and sometimes don't update when the device changes state. Apple needs to make their own 'home' app that just works with everything correctly and is properly organized.

 

[jaw04005]

I feel your pain. My experience with HomeKit has been terrible, and I'm fairly well invested with 17 Hue lights, 2 El Gato Eve sensors and 2 iHome power plugs.

All the devices work OK through their individual apps (Hue being by far the best using the 1.x app), but everything from the Siri naming scheme to having to set up rooms to trying to use Apple TV to access the network outside my home's Wi-fi.

Nothing HomeKit related works reliably. There's a limit on how many devices can be in a room, and I've had to resort to naming lights like "Living Room Shelf Light 1."

And why do you have "transfer" HomeKit scenes/device names over to Siri anyway? That's ridiculous.

It's just not intuitive. I even paid $15 for the Home iOS app, and it's easier to setup but it's still a pain.

On the other hand, my non-HomeKit Nest thermostat seems to work reliably inside and outside the home.