I've been having these issues for the past couple of months. Sadly, 17.1 did not fix it, and tonight the HomePod mini finally broke me.
I've got seven of them, five of them are now factory reset and boxed up ready to be sold / given away. The remaining two will be singles purely for voice commands - one upstairs, and one downstairs. Otherwise I'm done torturing myself out of some misguided loyalty for Apple - as far as the HomePod is concerned at least
I feel the exact same way. Been having tons of issues for some time, but they've gotten far worse with each new software update tbh.
For the past week, my minis simply will not answer personal requests at all. I keep getting "trouble with the connection, make sure your iPhone is on the same network error. My iPhone is always on the same network. Stereo pairs don't play as pairs, and airplay only partially works.
Apple support is useless. Everything they tried just does not work. Resetting the minis, rebooting everything, resetting network settings on iPhone, NOTHING works at all. Airplay is half down, they don't answer requests and support is literally baffled. They keep blaming my wifi, meanwhile, my Google Nest speakers and hubs, and my Echo speakers and hubs all work flawlessly. How can it be wifi when nothing else is affected? I call rubbish on that suggestion.
Homekit has been awful for years, and that seems to have only gotten worse instead of better. My smart home devices left homekit for google home years ago and it's been a far better experience.
I have a second-generation pair that mostly works with my Apple TV in my media room and that will remain in service.
Like you, I've had enough and won't waste another minute trying to fix a flawed system.
When even the apple senior techs don't see that it HAS to be awful homekit/homepod firmware, I'm out.