Xiaomi MTJD02YL Desk Lamp Pro - Apple Homekit

Hello,

I have a problem with this light/lamp.
In Yeelight app is working everything fine, but in Apple Homekit doesn’t.
I use Apple iPhone XS Max for 1 week with latest iOS and problem is that lamp doesn’t respond in Homekit after some time in use and I must restart the lamp. But lamp in yeelight app is still responding and working fine.

Can you help me with that, please?

Roman.

Hello There,

do you have a HomeKit HUB set up? (an Apple TV, or iPad, located constantly on the same network as you HomeKit enabled devices)
if only using an iPhone with HomeKit enabled devices, you probably know, that phone Lock screen has to be unlocked in order to control any Home Kit device, right?
When you unlock your phone screen, it takes a little while until the device reports online status, and you can control it again.

I have the same lamp, installed a week ago, and so far, it is working without any error.

Hello,

no, I have only iPhone. Of course, I always unlock phone.
Well, I was waiting for 10 minutes and nothing happend. When I just replugged the lamp then iPhone can see it in HomeKit (after 2-3 mins.). But only HomeKit control is not working, yeelight app and Siri control is working well. That’s weird.

Hello Roman,

It took me only couple of days, to experience the problem you are facing.

First we have to say, when you use only an iPhone to controll that should work until the phone is on the same network (and only 2.4 GHz but not 5 GHz) as the smart devices.
Second. The control should work from iPhone until you do not leave the network where your smart devices are. I mean away from home controll will not work unless you set up a Homekit Hub - as an Apple TV, HomePod or iPad 4th gen.
Third. I googled for couple of hours to find any reason of “not responding” Unfortunately there are only generic troubleshooting tips available, like check network/WiFi, resart iPhone, disconnect/reconnect WiFi/Bluetooth, sing out and back to your iCloud, or remove and add again your smart devices to HomeKit, or the worst case scenario: remove “my Home” from Homekit, and start all over.
Fourth. Unfortunately there are many other folks out there having the same issue, what even worst is, that many of them have even HomePod or any other possible devices set up as HomeHub, but with the same issue.

So from here, I in my opinion this is not an issue with the smart device, but the Apple device. As you mentioned the manufacturer’s app works just fine, same here, YeeLight I can use to controll even when I’m away from home.

Hope that Apple is aware of this HomeKit “not responding devices” problem, or maybe I will try to get in touch with them to find out the reason why, or we need to wait until this will be fixed with any of the upcoming iOS updates.

Thanks for reading, have a nice one.
B

Hello,

I might have found the solution.

In my case the solution is - I guess - to enable Apple Bonjour Service port: 5353 on my network.

I made a little deep dive into HomeKit, how it works?
I reserved fix IP for all my Yeelight devices first. Apple HomeKit is using Bonjour Service. For this to be able to use you need an Apple Bonjour Service capable router. If your router is capable to support mDNS you are fine. In my case that can be enabled by IGMP Proxy. But that still did not solve the issue, since I have two routers, had to avoid “double NAT” problem. For this I searched the port which is used by Apple Bonjour Service, that is port 5353, and enabled it for UDP connection.

After I enabled that the Apple Home application “No response” started to refresh and changed right away, showed the correct status.

I did several tests, turned off wifi, went outside the wifi range, all my Yeelight devices showed “Not available”. Each time I reached back my home Wifi network (doesn’t matter whether my phone connected to 2.4 gHz or 5 gHz wifi network) the Apple Home application is refreshing, and I get back the actual status and I can use my devices, without any problem.ű

Hope this can help you too to have your device working properly.

Cheers, B