I’ve got two devices which tell me that the HomePod is on the wrong Wi-Fi network. Yes, I can believe that. Care to help a fellow out and fix it? Apparently that’s not a thing they had to program.
Extra points to Apple that the electric power plug cannot be disconnected at the device; but requires me to crawl under my desk and unplug it from the wall. I have no idea if a hard reboot by unplugging the power will help, but that appears to be the only option.
At least the Amazon Echo devices had particular button sequences for various levels of reset. Also, the power cord detached at the device, too.
But Apple is too cool for buttons and plugs. You dimwits.
Anyone can whine; how about a solution, David? Sure. It’s stupid, but it works:
- Switch your iPhone / iPad to the correct Wi-Fi
- Why do you even have more than one Wi-Fi network, David? The answer is Three Dumb Routers.
- Remember: the S in IoT stands for Security.
- Exit the HomePod app on your phone
- I don’t know for certain that this step is required. But I do know that when it comes time to reach out to the HomePod, the act of opening the app will trigger an inventory to be taken. Probably there is some sort of polling cycle that tells the app to inventory this IoT device: but why leave that to chance?
- Unplug the router providing the wrong Wi-Fi the HomePod is clinging to.
- The stupid HomePod won’t be able connect to a Wi-Fi network that is off.
- Unplug the HomePod
- Leave it off for 15 seconds or more.
- Decades ago in electrical engineering class, one of the professors gave us an extra credit math problem to calculate the amount of signal left in circuits as the capacitors drained. The clock crystal is still running; signals are still generated. Generally speaking, for computer circuits, it took about five seconds for the capacitors to drain. Best practice in engineering is to triple anything safety related – so: 15 seconds. This is safety related because you don’t want some weird random signal triggering some logic just because a capacitor wasn’t fully discharged: you could fry something and then the magic smoke escapes.
- Leave it off for 15 seconds or more.
- Plug the HomePod back in
- Visit the HomePod in Apple Home app
- It will whine that the HomePod is on the wrong network; but this time it will do something about it.
- Plug your main router + Wi-Fi back in
- Thank goodness the Apple programmers didn’t program the HomePod to have affinity to the previous Wi-Fi just because it returned to existence.
- Since it was my secure devices Wi-Fi, I do actually want that network to work.
- If I had a family here, I would have needed to blast out prior warning that the network was going away. Good times.
I don’t know. Maybe the people at Apple never thought people ought to secure their home with more than one Wi-Fi network?