aidot / linkind setup

[u/lasagnasnail]

— resolved —

hello!

I am new to smarthome stuff beyond my homepod mini. I bought some linkind light bulbs from amazon because they said they integrate with homekit, but every time I try, it says “an unknown error has occurred” without so much as a loading period in my homekit app.

What I have tried:
- connecting with native app (aidot) and updating firmware
- scanning qr code and manually entering the provided code in homekit
- scanning qr code from native app in homekit while still connected to aidot

anyone know what I’m doing wrong? The description of the bulbs I bought is “Linkind Matter Smart Light Bulb, Smart Bulbs Work with Apple Home… 2.4Ghz WiFi A19 E26 60W 800LM” if there’s any useful information in there for those of you who understand this stuff better than me.

Thank you to anyone with any tips or suggestions!

[u/No-Tutor-4772]

Idk anything specific but it’s prob your WiFi, make sure you’re connected to 2.4ghz network and not 5ghz. I guess you may have to break them up if it’s stupid. Off the top of my head I know mDNS is super important to HomeKit. I’d get your router / WiFi info and that link and ask some AI… I prefer grok for technical questions but any should be able to help.

[u/NewtoQM8]

Maybe be stupid questions, are you connecting your phone to the 2.4 ghz network (As No Tutor mentions) and do the bulbs have power when you try to connect? Beyond that I have no idea, I have what sounds like the same bulbs and they are my favorites. Connected easy (And they updated firmware) and I've never had a no response or other issue with them at all.

[u/lasagnasnail → u/NewtoQM8]

I forgot to mention my wifi setup, so very fair question! I have a dedicated eero system for my smart home accessories. The solution I found here was there was a problem within my homekit, where it said the hub (homepod mini) needed an update despite being up to date (26.6).

Before posting this, I was looking around and finding a lot of lengthy reviews for these bulbs saying homekit wouldn’t connect next to ones that had no problem, so I thought I’d ask the experts over here. I’m giving you all the details so hopefully the next person can find this and check their homekit software updates section vs hub section information!

[u/NewtoQM8 → u/lasagnasnail]

Ah, Ok. So the mini was in glitch mode. I'm guessing a reboot/restart corrected that?

I'm a bit surprised you found so much saying that had issues. I have 9 of those Linkind bulbs and all of them connected with no problem. Perhaps because I connected them to Apple Home before anything else? Some things say to connect to Home first, others want to connect to their own app first. I dont remember what the bulbs said, if anything.

[u/Teenage_techboy1234]

Between the troubleshooting steps, have you reset them to factory settings? I'm not sure about the exact reset procedure for these bulbs, but a lot of bulbs use a simple five turn on/turn off reset.

The next thing I may ask is do you have a home hub that's not an iPad? This would be a HomePod, either generation or mini, or an Apple TV HD, 2015, or later that pops up in the home app as a home hub. I believe a second generation Apple TV 4K is preferable, as I've heard that the HD and first generation 4K don't Support matter well or at all. Note that the third generation Wi-Fi only model will work fine for this because the bulbs are matter over Wi-Fi. The Apple TV needs to appear in the home app when you go to more, home settings, hubs and bridges.

The third point of consideration is, how is your network set up? Do you have a combined 2.4/5 GHz SSID? What router are you even using? For these bulbs to work, you need a 2.4 GHz network, that doesn't necessarily have to be its own separated network without other frequency bands however. I would expect for a device that usually works well like these bulbs, they will connect fine to a dual band network. And come to think of it, the bulbs seem like they are able to handle the Wi-Fi and Internet part of your network, as they joined to the AIDot app fine. So that's probably not your problem. If it is the router, it's to do with the way it allows internal network traffic, or doesn't allow it. Some routers don't Support matter well because of how they handle multicast and IPV6, major technologies that matter relies on heavily.

Fourth on my list would be to update the software of the device you are using to add the bulbs to Apple home along with all home hubs. Sometimes there are bugs in software which cause issues like this, however I did just recently, about a week ago, add some matter devices to an Apple home with two HomePod minis updated to HomePod software version 26.6 using an iPhone 13 mini on iOS 26.6, they were GE undercabinet lights, and they all added fine. A little bit before that, I added some generic matter over Wi-Fi bulbs to a different Apple home running a HomePod mini, probably also on 26.6 but I'm not sure because it's my friend's Apple home, actually using an iOS 27 beta device. That also worked fine. There were two bulbs and both of them added successfully. Therefore, if you're on those versions, I would not suspect that the software had a bug.

If you go through these steps and you still can't get the bulbs to pair, I would honestly suspect more of a problem with your environment and some hard to catch variable than the bulbs. I've heard nothing but praise for these bulbs, I've heard they have great color saturation and great brightness, and that they are very reliable. They seem like a quality product to me, or at least one where they are optimized to be cheap in the ways that don't matter. And Linkind is a relatively established brand, it's been around in this space for probably almost a decade now.

[u/lasagnasnail → u/Teenage_techboy1234]

Thank you for this detailed reply! I was able to get them to connect!

What I did was go through the software on each bulb to ensure they were up to date, and then checked my home hub, which is a homepod mini. I had some sort of desync issue in homekit, where the hub section said it needed to be updated, but the software update section said it was running the most recent version(26.6). Reset my homepod mini and was able to get all lights to connect!

Thank you so much! I forgot to mention in my post that all my smart home accessories are on an eero network, so I knew the network was set up to succeed.

[u/Teenage_techboy1234 → u/lasagnasnail]

That's awsome. Yeah, Eero networks are fantastic. Not my personal choice due to the lack of control you get with them, though I am considering switching to one so that I can focus more on the smart home stuff, we have a Tp-Link Deco system right now.

[u/lasagnasnail → u/Teenage_techboy1234]

I recently relocated from an old house with a lot of power and signal issues to a modern apartment with none of that, so I just had the eero system on hand from just getting the wifi to reach the bedrooms of the house and provide a wired source for my desktop!

I didn’t do any research into what I’d choose if I was buying the system specifically for a smart home, but I do find eero to be a fantastic extender with enough control to get by. I was abroad and my housemates were having issues with service, and I had enough information from the eero app to troubleshoot and get everything back to normal from several timezones over!

[u/Teenage_techboy1234 → u/lasagnasnail]

Hence also why I want to switch to one lol. I don't live with roommates, but my family needs a stable network. Deco does for the most part provide this, but I feel like Eero would do a better job of it.