After years of poo-pooing home automation, suddenly I find myself getting on board, at least in a small way. My husband got tired of repairing the under-cabinet lights in a dark corner of the our kitchen, local stores no longer sell the bulbs that burn out at sometimes alarming rates. Out of fear I left the house while he rewired the lighting and installed LED strips and a Lutron dimmer switch. Only after it was all working did I ask if the dimmer switch was HomeKit compatible – he ended up ordering a Lutron dimmer switch from the Apple Store which should arrive tomorrow. Now he wants to install LED strips under all the cabinets and control them with HomePod so he can say ‘Hey Siri read my mind and set the ambiance so the kitchen doesn’t look like Times Square on New Years Eve.’
Does anyone have experience with Lutron dimmers? Any advice on using them with a HomePod?
It’s pretty easy. If you’re getting the Lutron cassetta dimmers, install the Lutron app on your phone that’s paired to home pod. Add the dimmers to the app then HomeKit. In HomeKit, set up a scene that has the dimmers set to the level you want. Give it name you like. Then just ask HomePod Siri for that scene by name.
Thanks, Brandon. Your advice was spot on.
Unfortunately, what arrived from Apple was the Leviton dimmer, not the Lutron dimmer which has higher review marks. He didn’t return it. After several hours of rewiring and running to the electrical supply store, it now works. At startup the dimmer app recognized my HomeKit data, the dimmer switch and our home WiFi network. By the time I got to the Home app everything was already there. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. Hey Siri, wash the dishes, wipe down the counters, sweep the floor, and put everything away.
Now I have two Leviton dimmers in the kitchen/dining area.
I used the Home app to create several scenes for adjusting the lights in tandem. They work perfectly from the Home app, which is not surprising.
I then created Shortcuts to activate the scenes and they work perfectly from the Shortcuts app as well as the widget panel.
Then I used the Settings app to create Siri shortcuts so I could have the HomePod in the kitchen activate my scenes. No matter what I do, the HomePod will not recognize the shortcuts via voice, sometimes with hilarious results. Fearing that Siri shortcuts with words such as lights and dim might be confusing the HomePod, I recreated the Siri shortcut to respond to the word ‘Guacamole’ – HomePod consistently reads me a Wikipedia summary of guacamole and asks if I want more information.
The good news is that HomePod responds to simple instructions (not the scenes I created) and figures out that I want both dimmers to be activated, dimmed, etc. For example: ‘set the lights to 50’ dims both sets of lights simultaneously. I’m a happy camper.
I think Apple needs to have Siri on HomePod search your Siri shortcuts before looking for other matches. Has anyone here had success with Siri shortcuts in Homepod?