I’m having a different buggy/not working experience with my HomePod.
That is, much of the time, it just doesn’t *work*. I will ask it to set some scene - which could be a combination of Hue lights, an Ecobee thermostat, and a few iDevices outlet switches - and it will either simply not work at all, or it will half-assed do it. For example, for my “goodnight” scene, it’s supposed to turn off all of my lights except for in the bedroom and switch on an air filter. But HomePod will turn off a light here, or a light there - not all of them. If I repeat the command, it will turn off another light or two. Repeat the command...another light. Eventually they’ll all turn off. Or it just won’t work at all. This happens about 50% of the time (rendering my fancy HomePod pretty much useless for controlling homekit).
The annoying part is that everything is set up and working fine. If I pick up my phone and tap in the Home app, I can choose the exact scene I just asked HomePod to set, and it immediately sets exactly as it should. Every time my HomePod failed to execute a scene, a moment later my phone could do it without a problem. So the problem *is* the HomePod.
Even more annoying is that now that the HomePod is set up, it grabs every “Hey Siri” command it can hear (and it hears all...), so if it won’t perform the command, I can’t get my phone to do it because it is now always submissive to the HomePod and essentially doesn’t work in my home for voice commands. I used to have an old iPad plugged in listening as my “always on” home hub, and it worked 99% of the time. I’d have a more seamless, less frustrating HomeKit experience if I turned off the capability on my HomePod and just pulled out my phone whenever I wanted to set a scene.
Oh, and because Apple couldn’t possibly have found a place for a discreet power/reset button on this pristine object d’art, when I want to reset it (which will fix the problem for a day or two), I have to crawl under my media stand and unplug it from the wall.
Apple is making it *REALLY* hard to remain a loyal citizen of its ecosystem - and my formerly avid Apple friends have begun abandoning it for Google because their stuff “just works” better than Apple these days.