topic Re: Lights are a mess in Home Automation

Lights are a mess

MarcH1 — Tue, 19 Nov 2024 13:59:04 GMT

My routines and voice commands are random and broken for the last few weeks. Individual lights are reported as offline when part of a routine but can be turned off via voice command. Another light is suddenly just not functioning and no reason is given, just "4 out of 5 lights turned off". Also of note, when using "turn off lights" as part of a routine (bedtime) several of the lights will turn off before the routine is supposed to execute.

I suspect that it might be the mix of bulb manufacturers I have though I'd need to inventory them individually to confirm.

Past experience says to just tolerate this until a patch comes along, but I would be interested in any advice that might get things working again short of relinking every light in my house.

Re: Lights are a mess

BigMaman — Tue, 19 Nov 2024 14:53:25 GMT

I have been having the same issues. I have replaced bulbs, deleted and readded bulbs, deleted and recreated routines (incredibly time-consuming!), and ensured the Home app and bulb apps are current. Nothing seems to work. I have lights coming on in the middle of the night, and others seem to randomly drop from the app and show as offline. I am at my wit's end!

Re: Lights are a mess

GBD — Tue, 19 Nov 2024 19:04:09 GMT

@MarcH1 In my case, I believe the problem stems from the rapid fire of commands from the Google Home automation to the partner services are either getting lost or ignored by the external service.

All of my bulbs (except 1) are Philips Hue and I found that using the Google Home bedtime automation to turn off the bulbs would sometimes (couple of times a week) miss turning off a light or two (Not the same lights each time) until I just decided to (In the hue app) setup a zone with all my lights and a scene to set them as I want them to be at night. I called this scene "Night Mode" and in my bedtime routine I now have only one command to call this scene instead of sending a command for each hue bulb.

I also have the 1 bulb, several nightlights (controlled by smart switches) and other devices that are in setup the Tuya Smart app that I have created a scene for as well.

My routine went from 32 actions down to 2 as I now just call the Hue scene then the Tuya scene. It's been several months since I made this change and I have had no problems since.

If any of your bulbs are Geeni and you are using the Geeni app & service to connect to Google Home, this could be a source of your problems as well. When I used Geeni, several times a week, Google assistant would tell me that it couldn't reach Geeni. I ended up getting rid of the Geeni service and moving the Geeni devices onto the Tuya Smart app which seams to have a much more stable integration with Google Home.

Re: Lights are a mess

BigMaman — Tue, 19 Nov 2024 20:31:11 GMT

My bulbs are Sengled and GoSund. I will try setting up routines in those specific apps and reset my Google to only initiate the routines by naming Sengled and GoSund. Thank you for the tip!

Re: Lights are a mess

MarcH1 — Wed, 20 Nov 2024 14:37:59 GMT

FWIW, everything worked as expected this evening. I changed nothing.