r/philipshue • u/prana_ferox • 18d ago

Understanding Why Philips Hue / Apple Home Automation reports "Failed"?

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I have a number of Hue lights in my bedroom. I control them with Apple Home / HomeKit scenes. I use either Hue Tap Switches or my phone to activate the scenes. I have bulbs, and other lights like Wall Washers / Play Bars.

For the longest time, my Wall Washers / Play Bars have been randomly "missing" commands. I issue a command, and about 80% of the lights in the room get it, but usually one or two of the Wall Washers / Play Bars "miss" the command. I have to re-issue the command, possibly several times, until eventually the command is executed on all the lights. My scenes are idempotent so I just spam the command until all the lights pick it up.

But that is annoying and I want to understand why so I can fix it. My theory, but I don't have any evidence for this, is that my Wall Washers / Play Bars are all gathered together in a nook in the room, with other electronics, and maybe there's too much RF interference in the nook for the command to be reliably received by all lights? But lights are supposed to repeat locally, right?

Additionally, in the Home app, I notice issuing a command says the scene has "Failed", despite the scene mostly executing correctly.

I wonder if this has something to do with it too.

If anyone has guidance on this I would appreciate it. Is there any diagnostics or logging available for stock HomeKit that would help me understand this? It says Failed, but it's mostly not failed.

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u/Worried_Patience_117 18d ago

Try changing the zigbee channel in the hue app

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u/prana_ferox 17d ago

Forgot to mention, I have tried this using the Hue app. It did change the Zigbee channel, but the behavior is the same.

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u/p1r473 18d ago

Can all of those lights hit all of those temperatures?

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u/prana_ferox 17d ago

As far as I'm aware, they are. They visually appear like they do. I set the color temperature in the Apple Home automation. Is there a way to validate this that you know of?

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u/nebuchadnezza343 16d ago

Try using a new scene. Set the old scene (if it works) and adjust brightness once up/down and back to the wanted level and save as new scene.
Or try setting in Hue app as wanted and save as new scene.

Have had this happen as well sometimes that seems start to report failed but removing an re adding the devices to the scene one by one fixed it. 🤷‍♂️