I’m wondering whether anyone else has seen this sort of behavior from Siri.
Tonight I used my phone to ask Siri to turn on a scene (involving three lights) in the next room. All lights in the scene were off prior to my request.
Siri turned on the scene, but informed me that one of the devices didn’t respond. Yet she actually did turn on all three lights. So I’m not sure what she thinks didn’t respond. This happens with some regularity, though sometimes Siri claims that more than one device didn’t respond.
Just to make tonight’s experience a little more interesting: I went to the room in question, where there’s a HomePod. To test things, I asked Siri to turn the scene off. HomePod Siri told me she couldn’t do that. So I asked her to turn off the lights in the room, which she did, no problem. Then I asked her to turn on the scene. Again, no problem.
If anyone’s encountered this, were you able to fix it? It’s admittedly a minor annoyance rather than an actual problem, but it’s weird.
I see the same behavior as @anon20961960. iPhone Siri usually doesn’t have a problem controlling my lights. HomePod Siri does. And original HomePod Siri is dummer than HomePod mini Siri.
This could be just down to a bit of network traffic congestion and the response from the lamp being outside of Siri’s response window. I would not worry too much about it, happens all the time and as long as the action gets performed I’d say you’re fine.
It could be interesting to compare, if the described problems are linked to a special product, manufacturer or used network structure.
For example, I use a system (Homematic) that is partly working on 433 MHz. And as this is a Frequency that is used for a lot of stuff, there is a regulation that requires the equipment to send only a certain number of times within a certain time frame.
If problems like the described occur at my home, this is in the majority of all cases a result of one Device sending too much, and therefore reaching the limit of the so called “Duty Cycle”.
This is a little non sequitur but I recently bought a big bundle of Hue lights and it came with a remote. I would not have bought a remote otherwise. But man… The responsiveness of that thing has made it a contender for my favorite thing about the Hue lights. My standard interaction at this point is to instruct my phone to toggle the lights; curse at how long the phone is taking; grab the remote; marvel at the lights obeying instantly; finally see my phone do something like the police showing up at the end of a horror movie.
IMO, I’ve narrowed down my problems to one product - Siri.
I received a HomePod mini for Christmas 2020 and decided to try HomeKit. Prior to that I was controlling my lights with Google mini’s. I left my exterior lights, which operate automatically, on Google and swapped my interior lights to HomeKit.
I rarely have a problem with my HomeKit lights when using Home.app buttons or Automation. But when I give Siri a command via HomePod it misfires at least 10% - 15% of the time. When this happens I frequently give Google a command to turn it’s lights on/off to test my network/internet connection. It works every time.
I’m considering moving back to my Google mini(s). When asked for information it will answer audibly and send a link to where it found the information, and it will respond to follow up or new questions. For example I just had this “conversation”:
“Hey Google who was the first president of the United States?” (It answered with the correct information) then I said “when did he die? (correct answer) then “how old was he when he died?” (correct answer). I could have summoned Google then asked ‘What time is it?” received my answer then asked “what’s on my calendar for tomorrow” and I would have been given that info.
I love my iPhone, iPad Pro, Apple Watch, and Mac. But I can’t rely on iCloud or Siri.
and move on. At least I know I’m not alone. 