Core: Odd HomeKit home app light colour behaviour

[someguythatcodes]

Home Assistant release with the issue:
0.99.2

Last working Home Assistant release (if known):
Unkown

Operating environment (Hass.io/Docker/Windows/etc.):
Docker

Integration:
Homekit

Description of problem:
I've got a Zigbee RGB+W bulb which I've setup with HA and exposed to HomeKit using the HA Homekit component. The bulb works perfectly when adjusting parameters from the HA UI where adjusting the colour wheel changes the RGB value and moving the colour temperature slide changes the colour to white and adjusts the tempearture.

However, in the Home app there seems to be some really odd behaviour occurring when setting up and using the light's 6 palette colours. It's hard to explain so I've attached a screen recording to better explain it (https://streamable.com/6a982):

• The colour temperature indicator seems to have the colour from the RGB colour picker, not the currently selected colour temperature (00:04)
• When editing the 6 colour swatches in the palette, sometimes clicking on one moves the screen to the colour temperature palette rather than the RGB colour picker palette (00:10)
• I have to close and open the accessory page to get the new swatches to load (00:18)
• When selecting swatches, they seem to overwrite each other (00:22)

I've had a play around with HAP-python (the package used in HA to provide the HomeKit component) and it seems that if you define a HomeKit light accessory to have the hue, saturation and colour temperature characteristics (which HA does for my RGB+W lamp) then the same behaviour as described above is reproduced. However if you define the light to have hue and saturation then it works perfectly. When using hue and saturation only, the Home app shows both the colour wheel and colour temperature wheel and I believe it uses the colour temperature wheel to generate a hue and saturation instead of colour tempearture.

I then had a look through Apple's HomeKit Accessory Protocol document where I found this:

9.21 Color Temperature
If this characteristic (Color temperature) is included in the ”8.23 Light Bulb” (page 147), ”9.44 Hue” (page 179) and ”9.82 Saturation” (page 197) must not be included as optional characteristics in ”8.23 Light Bulb” (page 147). This characteristic must not be used for lamps which support color.

This may explain the sporadic behaviour that I have been seeing.

Has anyone else experienced this? Any ideas on what could be done to solve this?

[guimaraes13]

I have recently acquired some Hue Color and Ambiance bulbs and have experienced the same problem.
I have a similar setup; Home Assistant controls the Hue Bridge through the hue integration and exposes the bulbs to the iOS Home app using Homekit.
I did some experiments adding the Hue Bridge directly to the Home app and this problem doesn’t seem to occur.

[martincollar]

Hello, same problem it started with last iOS and HomeKit update. I have hue colors and have same problem with color palette override. I think the palette is HomeKit functionality so it’s on Apple to fix it? I do not have home assistant. https://youtu.be/rUAzcC6Hs_w

[someguythatcodes]

So my current workaround for this problem is to use the "Eve for Homekit" app to set up scenes, as it allows you to turn attributes (brightness, colour and colour temperature) on and off as well as set them. These scenes then appear in the Home app and seem to work fine

[martincollar]

I’ve just reported to Apple with video and all details so let’s see.

[someguythatcodes]

Thanks @martincollar. Please do let us know their response on here!

[martincollar]

No answers yet :( do you know where is the best place to report bugs to apple? I used feedbackassistant.apple.com...

[someguythatcodes]

I think feedbackassistant.apple.com is the right place to report to. Not sure how long they take to respond. I imagine they get a lot of requests!

[theseal]

I have the same type of problem. Could it be related to #24513 which was closed when iOS13 came out?

[martincollar]

This started with 13. I have 13.2.3 and it’s broken. On multiple devices. So not sure why it’s closed..

[someguythatcodes]

Can confirm I'm also seeing the same problems with iOS 13.2.3

[Trefex]

Me too same issue

[martincollar]

Im gonna call our local official support on Monday..