[2.4.2.143] Siri Issues Consolidated Thread

🧰 Built-In Apps and Drivers HomeKit
1

Good evening folks! I've been trying to pivot from Alexa to Siri for voice control over the last few weeks and there are a few maddening issues I continue to encounter with the HomeKit Bridge built-in app. In researching these, I've encountered other reports of similar or identical issues in a great many threads here dating back many months. In the interest of consolidating all of it into a single topic for cascading feedback to the devs and socializing updates to the community, I'll summarize my current known issues below.

For the purposes of consistency, these voice commands are all given to HomePod minis running the latest firmware, and I'm in the latest version of Apple Home.

  1. Cannot reliably change colors. Changing a color with Siri will often fail outright with no acknowledgement. Sometimes, the light will do a transition fade through the destination color and then back to the original color. Subsequent light changing commands will output the previously-requested color; the lights are seemingly stuck one color command behind. The only way to catch them back up is to change the color with the Home app.
  2. Cannot reliably change levels. Changing a level with Siri will often fail outright. I've noticed that sometimes changing the room name in HE to not have any resemblance to the name of the device will improve the odds of success, but this is not a consistent solution.
    Fixed in 2.4.2.143
  3. Cannot switch from RGB to CT modes. A device in RGB, when asked for a white, will reproduce a dim blue daylight using its RGB mode rather than switching to CT for proper white light.

I have tested these issues with the following device types and can reproduce them on all:

  1. GE Zigbee Dimmer Switch (obviously not testing RGB with this one)
  2. Sengled RGBW Bulb
  3. Third Reality Combo Motion Sensor/Night Light
  4. LEDvance RGBW Lightstrip
  5. Sylvania RGBW Bulb
  6. Sylvania Gardenspot Mini RGB (issue #3 above does not apply here as these are RGB-only)

This seems to be a pretty widespread issue not specific to any vendor, driver, or device type. Given the rather odd workaround to rename rooms in HE works sometimes and the bug where the light transitions through the requested configuration and then back to its original state, my speculation is there may be a one-two punch of misinterpreted Intents impacting disambiguation of the target device, and erroneous timing/sequencing of commands coming from Siri.

I'm more than happy to make logs available or allow diagnostics of my C7 hub. I'd like to get Alexa fully decommissioned in my household, but I can't replicate these basic bits of functionality with Siri yet.

2

@gopher.ny You can count me in the interested parties.
Willing to test and provide data.
Note: No RBG, colors here. Just major issues with dimming via Siri commands.

3

@gopher.ny
Setting a Level via Siri appears to be stable for me on all my Apple devices. :hugs:
Two things:
1) “dim” does nothing, same for “brighten”. “Dim/brighten by 20%” treated as set to 20% Correction: Works intermittently. Will gather more details.
2) Getting a Warn every operation.
warn Great Room Floods: on() blocked, already adjusting

4

Here’s a new one: in the midst of Siri running a Shortcut that included activating a Room Lights tonight, it managed to crash the whole zigbee network — got a zigbee network offline error and it never recovered.

5

Check out 2.4.2.143, just released. It should take care of the dimmer issues. Please let me know either way.

5 Likes
6

So far, so good! I renamed all my rooms back to more sensible names ("Chow Hall" -> "Dining Room" once again) and voice commands for dimming seem to be consisently in good shape.

1 Like
7

I can also confirm that unfortunately setting a CT verbally will still always produce an RGB approximation, even if the device is already previously in CT mode.

8

I think I have figured out at least a contributing factor in the color change issues — I noticed that switching colors in the Home app worked only about 20% of the time.

After switching color in the Apple Home app, HE does report the light is at the desired color, even though it isn’t. Setting the color in the HE interface works fine. Here’s the difference:

Using Siri or the Home app to change the color results in two rapid-fire commands:

setHue()
setSaturation()

Doing the change in the HE interface uses:

setColor()

The HE interface method works 100% of the time. If the HomeKit integration can leverage that method instead, I think it might fix the difficulties changing color with Siri. I don’t think it will fix the CT/RGB issue, but we can do that next. :slight_smile:

1 Like