That’s really weird, I have HomePods gen 1 & 2 (and a few mini’s) and they’ve worked fine so far. More often than not my room mates are more of a problem than the HomePods. Usually someone will connect their call to a random HomePod, which is usually pretty disconcerting.
I will say though I rarely ask the HomePods themselves to play music and almost always use a phone to start the music. I have ~7 connected around the house. I used a few different voices though so I know which one responded so I know which one to go after if I set a timer, since 3 share an open loft area and for that it can be a bit weird which one gets the request.
I have mostly HomePod Mini pairs, and a couple individual Homepods. I do have quite a few rooms, but my network is solid. Perhaps having a series of wired WiFi repeaters gives Homekit trouble, but nothing else has issues.
> almost always use a phone to start the music
This works better for me too. I still have (much less frequent) trouble casting to some random room's speakers.
But that is cumbersome compared to just asking, especially for multiple rooms. Since "Zones" don't show up in the iOS and macOS volume/speaker-group interfaces at all, as far as I can tell.
And then there is Apple's design choice to only let each room appear in one "Zone". No idea why each zone can't simply be its own set. Leave it up to users to care if two people are fighting over what plays in some joint room - it would be a problem that reflected editable zone definitions, not a bug.
The whole system is inexplicably janky: by design, lack of original effort, subsequent inattention, and bug.
It's janky because it's poorly thought out and they tried to give too much with too little capacity.
It's stupid that you have to stream for a phone in the first place when you could have something connected to power act as a local server and not deplete the battery from your phone (and enjoy the unreliability of wifi on top).
Apple has just made a poor decision for the "wow" factor that never makes for a great working product in the end.
The hardest part is saying no to stuff that don't make sense and the way they have implemented Homepods/Homekit is just a testament of that.
> It's stupid that you have to stream for a phone in the first place when you could have something connected to power act as a local server and not deplete the battery from your phone (and enjoy the unreliability of wifi on top).
You aren’t streaming from your phone? I was under the impression that HomePods only stream phone calls. Media is accessed by the HomePod itself, and your phone either gets updates from it on what is playing or your phone is telling it what to play. Evidenced by if you disconnect wifi on your phone the HomePod will continue the current song without your device.
I will say though I rarely ask the HomePods themselves to play music and almost always use a phone to start the music. I have ~7 connected around the house. I used a few different voices though so I know which one responded so I know which one to go after if I set a timer, since 3 share an open loft area and for that it can be a bit weird which one gets the request.