HomePod Mini Internet Connectivity Issues

The firmware Update has NOT fixed the issue.

the 3 x home pods mini are still disconnecting from the network (but associated to the WiFi)

The Big Home Pod does not suffer from this issue.

The DHCP Lease time is 7 Days. Connected 802.11a (5 Ghz)

3 x Home Pod Mini Power cycled at 11.00.am

a continuous ping every 5 seconds to each Home pod mini

11:00am next day pings stopped to all 3 home pod mini

The DHCP Lease time is 1 Days. Connected 802.11a (5 Ghz)

3 x Home Pod Mini Power cycled at 11.00.am

a continuous ping every 5 seconds to each Home pod mini

11:00am next day pings stopped to all 3 home pod mini

The DHCP Lease time is 30 Minutes. Connected 802.11a (5 Ghz)

3 x Home Pod Mini Power cycled at 11.00.am

a continuous ping every 5 seconds to each Home pod mini

3 days later home pods still working.......

It’s now been three days and we’ve not had any further issues (touch wood). I’m fairly confident that at least in my case, it was band steering that was causing the issue. I don’t know what the specific issue is (the Minis struggle with certain frequencies, perhaps?) that causes the issues, but disabling band steering has stopped the issue from manifesting, in my setup.

Have you tried this.

go to the home app on device associated with homepods. 

tap on the little house top left. 

go to home settings. 

tap on your picture, or if no picture, on your name. 

turn off, then turn on “recognise my voice” follow very quick set up feature and this might fix it. It worked for me and I did inform Apple.

good luck and a very happy new year to you and yours x

Yes, i saw on my Netgear router support that i’m not the only one to have this issue with the Netgear Nighthawk AX4 - RAX40- AX3000, and someone find a temporary fix. He explain that the issue come from the last update about security, and if you roll back update and instal the previous one, it works.

I think it same for other brand of router. I hope too that Apple will deliver a worldwide update.

Yes that is the major purpose of a powerline adapter but it essentially functions as another router with its own IP address assigned by the main router. It also then transmits it's own Wi-Fi signal which you can either assign a unique SSID or combine it with the main SSID (I use the first option.) Bottom line is that when I connected the HomePod mini to the powerline SSID it worked perfectly from then on. This fits with what seems to be a apparent here which is that this is a router dependent issue. Anyway, the normal use case is to have two powerline adapters, one to take the signal from the router and then another to broadcast wifi and/or or hook up an ethernet cable in a another room. However I don't see any reason why you couldn't figure out how to do this with a single unit if you don't need the range extension.

As I've written before, I think it's best to be patient and let Apple work this out but if you can't wait this is one possible short term solution. It worked for me anyway.

Well looked like you were wrong. I disabled band steering and set two SSIDs and to WPA/WPA2. Mini works flawless for 4 days now...

My connection issues with my mini’s have gone away since ditching my blue cave for an eero 6 system. I’m still a little resentful that that fixed the issue as my Blue Cave worked really well. But I will say that along with my HomePod mini issues disappearing I also have better WiFi coverage in some of the areas where the blue cave would struggle occasionally

Just a follow up. I changed out my modem today and all my problems went away. Have my fingers crossed. This has been quite a journey. All 5 homepods (2 paired HomePods & 3 mini’s) working great all over house. 👍

So what I learned so far for an installation in Germany.

Home Pod Mini ist not working reliable with a "Telekom Speed Port Smart 3"-Router, but it seems to help to turn of Wifi AC Protocol. Switch it to N.

Same Home Pod Mini seems to work fine with a Router "Fritz!Box 7590"

Have you tried this. I’ve posted it at least half a dozen times. 

go to the home app on device associated with homepods. 

tap on the little house top left. 

go to home settings. 

tap on your picture, or if no picture, on your name. 

turn off, then turn on “recognise my voice” follow very quick set up feature and this might fix it. It worked for me and I did inform Apple. I’m ****** off that no one appears to even try this that cleared my problem up immediately. 

Here’s some insight. If you read all 10 pages of this blog you will see the product has a defect. The best solution is to return them and wait until Apple comes up with a fix. Or you can do what 90% of the participants on this forum have done and waste days, weeks, and money trying to fix a $99 speaker.

That is VERY interesting and fits with my experience. When I changed from a Wi-Fi SSID coming from my router to an SSID coming from a powerline extender it worked. So again, until they issue a fix I would encourage people to try an extender if they have one.

I haven’t commented in awhile on this but keep getting emails about new posts. I also replaced my Asus Blue Cave, with an Eero 6 system and my connectivity issues with the minis went away. They work pretty much as expected all the time now. I would say it’s ridiculous to have to spend money replacing perfectly fine networking equipment just to get hundred dollar smart speakers to work but I’m also pretty invested in the eco system and Covid seemed like a good time to upgrade the WiFi anyway.

The HomePods are prone to acting up if you have wifi with Dual Bands. The typical symptom is “ it’s not my wifi because everything else works”. It causes them keep hopping around 2G, 5G and so on, in an attempt to get the higher speed. This causes many disconnects during the switch over to one or the other. Changing the settings to not have the 5G be the default helps. You can still use 5G

In the meantime you can:

• Reboot your wifi router
• Or Restart HomePod:

Open the Home App - go to the Room it’s in 

Long press on the HomePod icon to bring up settings, scroll down to the gear icon, tap that, scroll to the bottom to Reset HomePod - then select Restart HomePod 

I gave my HPM a static IP. Initially appeared to have made no difference but the HPM is clearly toying with my emotions now as it has remained online, uninterrupted for nearly 30 hours now. I was lucky to get 8 hours previously.

I'm also coming from what seems to be a worst-case-scenario of having it connected to an asus blue cave.

other details - I'm using separate SSID's for 2.4/5 on the blue cave (HPM is connected to 2.4) and I'm using cloudfare's 1.1.1.1 dns service for reference as opposed to slow IP dns.

with respect to several HPM's I would imagine (but haven't confirmed) that it's the first HPM (primary?) connection that is important and additional HPM's should use thread to mesh to each other?