White Series Dimmer (VTM31-SN) - with Siri

Has anyone figured out a way to get “hey siri” to work when calling the smart switch? Regardless of how I rename each accessory (for instance, if I rename the LED strip to something different from the paddle itself) “hey siri” will still turn on the LED strip instead of the paddle. It makes the smart switch 1/3rd useless since I can control it in the Home app (HomeKit) and the physical switch. Thoughts on how to get this working?

If Siri is turning on the LED strip directly, that suggests that the LED strip is connected to a smart controller. Is that correct?

Combine the switch into 1. Click on the switch and go into settings. Name the switch something different. I keep all the switches named as inovelli dimmer. For example, for master bedroom, it’s called MB Inovelli Dimmer.
Next, right below the name you’ll see “accessories” it should list 2, even tho 3 tiles show up when you click it. Now click the one that controls the actual light, click the name of it not the light icon. Click the settings cog once again, now name this one what you want it to be called. Save it.
Go back to the previous menu where the accessories are listed. Click the one that controls the LED Bar, name it what you want, save it.
Now separate the tiles again (if you prefer that view).

Siri should now be able to discern the actual light and not turn the LED bar on.

the LED strip and paddle are both responding correctly. The issue (in my case) is that at the paddle is called “kitchen lights” and the strip is called “kitchen lights LED” and when I turn it on using Siri by saying “Siri, turn on kitchen lights” it turns on the strip not the paddle. This happens regardless what I name either device. I think CroVladvo’s post below explains it, it inherits the “single tile” name first and will trigger the LED strip no matter what. Will toy around with this and see how this works and report back

Glad you’re headed in the right direction. I’m not a Siri/Apple/Homekit user, but I think I understand what you’re getting at. My thought was that since Siri can directly control the LED strip, it must be on a smart controller (WLED, etc). And if that controller is wired to the Inovelli, the Inovelli is/should be in the Smart Bulb Mode.

If the Inovelli is in the Smart Bulb Mode, turning IT on or off via Siri won’t have any effect on the wired load since it’s in the SBM, so don’t you really want Siri to address the light strip?

The problem may lie in the fact that the LED bar will not accurately reflect the light strip’s status. If that’s the case, you need an automation to sync that bar to the light strip status.

If I’m totally missing the point, disregard, lol.

(EDIT: Noted @vreihen’s response below. That explains my confusion.)

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I’m reading these posts as meaning that the switch’s LED status bar is being controlled by Siri, the confusion being that the OP called it the LED strip.

My $0.02 from wrestling with Siri for years is to create a room “Kitchen” in HomeKit, and then name the switch components “Light” and “Strip” to separate the names. Siri will combine the room name and object to be controlled when you say “Kitchen Light” or whatever…

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Its a weakness of Siri and iOS Home. The “long term” solution is for Apple to fix iOS Home so you can put the different controls into different rooms, or have an option “Don’t control by Siri” which you can select. Suggest users let Apple customer support know!

If you’re also a HomeAssistant user, a workaround is to pair the device to HomeAssistant, then use the HomeAssistant HomeKit bridge to re-export the load and LED controls. When you do this, iOS treats the controls as entirely different devices which can then be put into separate rooms.

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I can confirm this works. However:

  1. You lose the functionality in HomeKit to assign actions to single/double clicks and long presses. You’ll have to implement that in HA, which may not be spouse friendly!

EDIT: Ignore the point below. The problem was on my end. The switches are very responsive with this setup.

-----IGNORE----

  1. I set up a switch hooked up to a dumb bulb this way, and I found the response times between making adjustments in HomeKit and the reaction to the switch and bulb to be very slow – like 3 or 4 seconds. And sometimes if I made a few adjustments in a row, the switch setting in HomeKit did not match what I was seeing in the bulb (ie, HomeKit shows a dimmed bulb but the bulb is bright).

—END IGNORE—

I’m curious if any of you has figured out an “ideal” setup for these switches yet. I’m building a new home and will have more than 70 of these installed. I’m playing around with setups now to figure out how to best organize the switches and the commands. I was leaning toward HomeKit for almost everything, but I’m finding the controls a little difficult to manage there.

You may want to check your local network and HomePod/Apple TV gateway. Granted that I only have one White Series switch and it’s in a test box, but it turns on/off just about instantaneously from both HomeKit and HomeAssistant when paired only to HA and exported from HA to HomeKit. It seems even faster than my Z-Wave switches!

After a few years now, I have come to the realization that HomeKit will never be anything more than a convenient UI for Home Assistant. Both my wife and I do what little manual controlling that we do through Apple Watches and Siri. (I will save my speech about home AUTOMATION being done wrong if it requires manual control…)

^^ this - 100%
If you’re beyond a few devices, HomeAssistant is the one platform that can really give you a lot of control. But the features come at the cost of a greater learning curve.

And I say this having tried them all - HomeSeer, Hubitat, SmartThings, Google Home, Apple iOS. None of these compare to what HomeAssistant can do, particularly if you are using Matter devices where HomeAssistant is far, far ahead.

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You are correct… The problem was on my end and not the switch or setup. It is very responsive!

We are the same! The biggest drawback I see with using both HA and Siri is I haven’t found a good way of maintaining room scenes in one place, rather than having to duplicate them in both places. I would love to create scenes in one place and be able to call them using both Siri and HA automations. I’ve explored the input boolean route, but it’s just so cumbersome in HomeKit.

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Have you considered the following approach?

  • create your scenes in home assistant
  • create a switch in HA that toggles the scene (maybe this is the input Boolean)
  • create a scene in HomeKit with the same name, except that all it does is toggle the switch we added
  • in HomeKit, mark the switch as not visible in dashboards, and put it in an area called “scenes” so you don’t accidentally trigger it when you turn on all the lights in a room using Siri
    Then you can say “hey Siri, time for goodnight” and it toggles that switch which enables the scene in HA.

@tonyinseattle

Hey, thanks for the reply. Yeah, this is pretty much what I mean. It’s not a terrible solution (it works) but certainly not as easy and making a scene and being done with it. You have scenes and switches in HK (you can sorta hide them, like you say, by grouping them in a room – but wouldn’t it be great if they could really be hidden?), and there’s no way in HomeKit to see if a scene is already on. But this might have to be the route I take.