Anybody using Homekit? I have an issue with devices disappearing.

[MacInWin]

I have about 30 Homekit devices in my home. Most are smart plugs, which I use to turn on and off lights around the house. Some are cameras, for security. As the central Homekit hub I have multiple Apple TV units, all with Homekit enabled. I use an Eero mesh network to provide good WiFi all through the house.

Randomly, devices will "disappear" from the home, show as "Not Responding" in the Home app on my iPhone and iPad. When the automation kicks in, these devices don't respond properly, either not coming on when they are supposed to, or not going off when they are supposed to. What I have done in the past to get them back into the system is to remove them, then add them back in and add them to the scene/automation.

However, this week four disconnected on the same night. Three are simple on/off smart plugs by Meross, one is a smart dimmer plug by Legrande. I have removed them from the home, reset them and tried to add them back in. but the system keeps throwing up errors. Some errors were that the device needed to be reset (even though they had already been reset), that they needed to be removed from the Home (even though they already had been), that they had already been added to the Home (even though they didn't appear in the Home anywhere), that the couldn't be reached (even though they show up in the router tables).

I then reset all of the Apple TV boxes, hoping that restarted them might sort out the confusion, to no avail. I have also rebooted all of the Eero boxes, and reset the entire network, also to no avail.

I have been searching online for more things to try, with no luck.

I suppose it is theoretically possible that four devices each failed simultaneously, but that does seem to be a bit of a long shot. I have replacements on order, but thought I would raise the issue here to see if anybody else is running Homekit and having the same kind of issue who has suggestions I haven't tried.

Anybody using Homekit?

 

[M_Six]

I use Homekit. I have maybe 70 devices (door sensors, door locks, cameras, plugs, power strips, lights, light switches, etc). I tried the Meross plugs and gave up on them after a few weeks because they were constantly "Not Responding." I use Eve plugs and power strips which are somewhat more reliable, although I've had issues with them a few times as well.

I have three Eufy Homebase 2 devices with 3 or 4 cameras each. I recently had to reset one of the Homebase devices and tried to add it back into Homekit. I had previously removed it from Homekit and from the Eufy app. It loaded fine back into the Eufy app, but Homekit throws an error that you usually get when the device hasn't been reset or Homekit thinks it's still part of my Home (i.e., "The Setup Code is Incorrect"). I've tried everything to get it back into Homekit and it just won't go. So similar to your issue.

It's only been a few days, but I recently updated to iOS16.1 on my iPhone and iPad and Ventura on my laptop. The new Home app seems to be working better (fingers crossed). I'll start updating my Apple TVs and my Homepod Minis and hope that doesn't break anything.

So, not much of an answer, but if you haven't upgraded to iOS16.1 on your devices (or TVOS16), you might want to try that.

One other thing...my system used to be mesh wifi. My wifi nodes were not connected via an Ethernet cable (know as Ethernet backhaul). The wifi worked fine for everything except smart home devices. I had constant problems and almost gave up on smart home stuff entirely. But then I set up a wired network using MoCA adapters and got all my wifi nodes and Apple TVs on an Ethernet connection instead of wifi. That really made things run smoother.

 

[MacInWin]

Thanks for the post. I was feeling a little bit lonely...

My Apple TVs are a mix. Three are Ethernet, two others are WiFi-only because there was no way to get an Ethernet cable to them without having to break into walls. I have 26 Meross smart plugs, of which 23 work flawlessly, and three other worked until last week when they dropped out of Home to be "Not Responding" and I cannot get them back. I have a Wemo wall switch that never would connect to Homekit, so I decided to just use the Wemo app to program it for on/off once a day as that was all I really needed. It controls my porch lights and comes on at sunset and off at 11:30 pm. I haven't tried Eve, but I do have a couple of Legrand units that work. I also have a Meross Garage Door kit that works well for controlling two garage doors. No thermostats or locks at this point.

I also have the Legrand dimmer plug that dropped out with the three Meross plugs last week and I cannot get it back, either. What is curious is that my iPhone 14, running iOS 16.1, sees the Legrand and the three Meross units that won't connect. So, they are broadcasting the "I'm here, ready" signals, but my Eero mesh network isn't picking them up. I can see them in the Settings/Wifi on the iPhone.

I think my next step will be to do a cold start on the four Eero units and the ISP modem to force the LAN to recreate all of the connections. Maybe then the recalcitrant units will get connected. I do have to pick the right time to do that, however, as my wife runs a business on the Internet as a side hustle does depend on her connections. She's going to be out of the house Friday, so I'll give it a go then. If that fails, the next/final step will be to reset all of the Eero units back to factory and rebuilding the LAN from scratch. That way anything stored in the Eeros gets dumped. I may just go ahead and jump to that on Friday, unless somebody has a better idea between now and then. That is a non-trivial event with the multiple smart TV/AppleTV/Printers/Theater servers/etc. And I don't want to have to create a new Home and recreate all of the accessories in that, which I may be forced to do if I get too aggressive with the network. Ah, well, nobody said it would be easy.

Sure would like to know what triggered four controllers to just drop out on the same day, though.

Yes, this is a 21st century problem...but it SHOULD work and I despise when it doesn't.

I'll let you know how it goes. Again, thanks!

 

[MacInWin]

Ok, I've given up. Today I restarted my network devices (Eero, four of them). At that point I lost three more units, now for a total of 7. None would reattach, although my iPhone can see all of them on WiFi, so they are transmitting and receiving, and the Eero did attach to 20+ other units, including units very close to the ones that are not responding. And the lost ones were not all the same brands. I've lost Meross, Legrand, and Wemo units to the Home.

Next was a hard reset of the Eero, to force create a brand new network. Every connection is new. Had to reboot all four Eeros, then after the gateway Eero was activated, add in the two satellites and the extender unit I have in the mesh. Then turned on Homekit in all four. Devices started to show up, but were erratic. Sometimes reporting, then not responding. But I let it "settle" for an hour or so and most devices appeared in Home, where I expected them, in the Rooms I had set up.

But the missing ones will still not appear.

It's not the device manufacturer, I have three brand devices that don't work.
It's not age, I have four brand new smart sockets, and none will connect.
It's not the Eero, it works with other devices of all three brands.
It's not signal strength, my iPhone reports strong signals at all 7 locations where device won't connect.
It's not my iPhone, it's able to see the network and Home works except for the missing devices.
It's not the Homekit server, it sees all the other devices other that the missing 7.
It's not the AppleTV that the server runs on, I have four of them of different models and Home runs on all of them, sees what I can see on the iPhone and the scheduled events trigger, even if they can't completely succeed because some of the devices don't respond to the commands.

So, I'm giving up. As the devices continue to disappear, I'll simply trash them and migrate back to a dumb house. Wife won't like it, but I spent five hours today on this and I'm done. I'm not going to invest any more money in this until it gets worked out and I hear from others that they have success. And even then, it's going to one plug at a time and I'll stop at the first failure.

 

[IWT]

Your perseverance and stamina are awesome, Jake.

Luckily for me, I've never used HomeKit and I'm reassured in my decision not to

Ian

 

[M_Six]

I've been to that level of frustration. With my setup it's usually the Thread-based stuff (Eve and Nanoleaf) and some straight non-hub IP stuff (Wemo and Meross) that goes AWOL. Anything with a dedicated hub seems to work fine. I've had times where everything worked smoothly for weeks and then we'll get some random power blip that wreaks havoc on the system. It'll take me days of reinstalling stuff to get it all working again. Right now I'm in one of those sweet spots where it's all working as it should. I'm hoping the recent updates to iOS and MacOS and Homekit in general are responsible for the sudden cooperation between all the parts. But who knows. We could have a power blip tomorrow that brings it all down again and I'll be pulling my few remaining hairs out.

 

[MacInWin]

I've been to that level of frustration. With my setup it's usually the Thread-based stuff (Eve and Nanoleaf) and some straight non-hub IP stuff (Wemo and Meross) that goes AWOL. Anything with a dedicated hub seems to work fine. I've had times where everything worked smoothly for weeks and then we'll get some random power blip that wreaks havoc on the system. It'll take me days of reinstalling stuff to get it all working again. Right now I'm in one of those sweet spots where it's all working as it should. I'm hoping the recent updates to iOS and MacOS and Homekit in general are responsible for the sudden cooperation between all the parts. But who knows. We could have a power blip tomorrow that brings it all down again and I'll be pulling my few remaining hairs out.

The frustration I have right now is that originally only 4 of my 30+ devices became "not responding" in Home. Normally, when that happens, I just delete them and add the device back, but that didn't work. But the devices that ARE in the system work, as do the automations. I originally had an Insteon system but moved to Homekit because I thought it would be more reliable and the future of home automation seemed to be moving away from the Insteon approach of using the wiring of the house to convey control signals. And originally, it did work better. But those last week has been a flashback to the bad old days where devices randomly worked and didn't.

I plan to talk to the Eero support team next week. The fact that Home works for what is left in the system says it's not the problem. The issue seems to be that neither the original 4 devices or new ones I bought to replace them will connect to the Eero network. I have verified that my ISP router is in bridge mode, so no double NAT. It simply HAS to be something in the Eero setup that changed, either an update from them or some configuration that got mucked up somehow.

What would be handy is a non-HomeKit device that should be connected to the WiFi network to try to connect to see if it accepting ANY new devices. But I don't have one of those handy right now. I may go see if there is any old WiFi device I can pull out of the archive that hasn't been in the network since I installed the Eero and see what it does.

 

[MacInWin]

I have had no success with Eero or Apple. Eero wants me to delete Home, delete all devices, sign out of iCloud, reboot my iPhone and iPad and start from scratch. I am unwilling to do that because I have been unable to add anything to the Eero network, so killing everything to start over could just lead to having nothing at all.

But what I am thinking about is to use a set of Netgear Orbi mesh routers that I have that were replaced by the Eeros to set up a separate IoT network. The idea would be to keep the current Eero network, that uses 192.168.4.x as the IP range, but also connect the Orbi and let it set up a different network with a different name and use 192.168.1.x as the IP range, or even 10.0.0.x, if I can set that up that way. All the home automation would be connected to this IoT network including the AppleTVs I am using for Homekit as servers.

So, my house would have two networks, with two different names, using my same ISP router as a bridge to the ISP. (Need to see if the ISP is ok with two routers that way. I wonder if I could "daisy chain" the network by having the Orbi connect to the Eero by Ethernet, set a dedicated IP in the 192.168.4.x net, then act as DCHP server for the 192.168.1.X net? Anybody know if that would work?) The one network would be for my computers, printers, etc., the other for the "things" that are needed for Homekit: AppleTVs, devices, etc.

I also have an Airport Extreme that I could use for the IoT network, if that would work.

I know that if I set this up I will have to move my phone from one network to the other to either be able to print from the iPhone or iPad, or to control the home network, but that would at least give me a working home automation network. Maybe.

Anybody have any comments on this wacky setup?

 

[Lifeisabeach]

You could try having the two networks... at the least, you could rule out the problem with the Eero one being the Eeros themselves. I have had to use two networks myself. When I replaced the HVAC system for my upstairs rooms, I had them add an internet controllable module that turned out to be so outdated that it was limited to 30 characters on the wi-fi password (WEP protocol?). I set my my Time Capsule, which was already in passthrough mode for backups, to be a separate network JUST for that HVAC system. Double-NAT is what this is referred to. Internet service still came through the Eeros, and the Time Capsule was wired into the Eero nearby and then had its own broadcasting SSID instead of just passing through.