** The HomeKit Thread **

Valo

Valo

Valo

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With Apple including the Home app in iOS 10 to and more manufactures either committing to or already releasing HomeKit ready devices, I thought it was an idea to create a thread to discuss this.
Originally a lot of the HomeKit devices have been developed and released to the US market however official devices are beginning to hit these shores as well....at long last!

http://www.apple.com/uk/ios/home/

http://www.apple.com/uk/shop/accessories/all-accessories/home-automation?page=1#!&f=homekitcompatible&fh=459b+4559

I'm actively looking into the potential automation of my home using HomeKit and experimenting with the Homebridge as well. Just wondering if any of you are as well?

Some official devices I've already come across:

Elgato Eve: https://www.elgato.com/en/eve

Elgato have recently released the first HomeKit smart power plug for the UK.

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They also have a full range of sensors and accessories:

Eve Room: Senses Indoor Air Quality
Eve Weather: Senses Outdoor Temperature, Humidity, and Air Pressure
Eve Door & Window: Senses if a door or window is open or closed.
Eve Thermo: Thermostatic Radiator Valve

Wifiplug - http://www.wifiplug.co.uk/homekit.html

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UK company who have developed a range of Smart Plugs and Light Switches that operate over Wifi. They have added support for IFTTT and are just completing adding support for Amazon Echo, and are now taking Pre-Orders for their Smart Plug with HomeKit support.
They say it the HomeKit plug will be fully cross compatible with their other Non-HomeKit products, other plugs and light switches allowing you to use their entire product range via the Home app.

Tado Smart Thermostat - https://www.tado.com/gb/
The new Tado v3 thermostat now supports HomeKit and will be shipping Mid October early November 2016.

Honeywell Lyric T6 Thermostat - http://www.honeywelluk.com/products...c-T6R-7-Day-Wireless-Programmable-Thermostat/
The new Lyric T6 comes in both wired and wireless models and features support for HomeKit.

LightwaveRF - http://lightwaverf.com
Already an established name in the home automation field in the UK. They are actively working on adding HomeKit support to their entire product range.
 
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Dooksy said:
Will my Hive central heating control work with Homekit?
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There is no official HomeKit support for Hive yet. It sounds like it will gain support (in 2017: https://www.wareable.com/smart-home/hive-and-alexa-team-up-for-the-smart-home-3349) however it'll no doubt require you to upgrade the hardware or a they'll be a bridge device similar to Philips Hue due to the HomeKit device specification requirements.

If you want a work around now there is a third party Homebridge extension for Hive available: https://github.com/njpatel/hivekit but you'd need to setup and run your own Homebridge server.
 
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I've been experimenting with HomeKit properly for the past couple of weeks after picking up a couple of the Elgato Eve Energy plugs at Christmas. I've been really happy and impressed with them, in true Apple fashion it just works!

Will try and do a mini review at shortly.

With CES on currently there are a lot of new devices being debuted as well as existing products being updated with HomeKit support. This is a good sign and looks like HomeKit might finally begin to find it's feet.
 
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Hate to burst the bubble but it doesn't look as if Ikea Trådfri supports HomeKit as standard. The manuals I've looked at for the base station makes no reference to it.

According to reports I've read on other websites it uses the ZigBee Light Link standard (Same as Philips Hue) that got released in a number European countries late last year.
Hopefully going forward they could add support for HomeKit and other standards by developing a new bridge/hub with the secure chip HomeKit requires. Lets face it if they do it would be awesome with the potential cost savings.

Another option would be the Focalcrest Mixture Hub which I think is still in development but is a ZigBee and Z-Wave to HomeKit Bridge which was debuted at CES this year. No idea though how this would all play together though - https://9to5mac.com/2017/01/06/foca...mart-home-products-into-homekit-siri-control/

nox_uk said:
I started my homekit journey with a nanoleaf aurora - wow. it's awesome.
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Nice! I'm considering purchasing one of those as well. Would love to hear your thoughts on it....easy to assemble and setup?
 
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nox_uk said:
OK, picked up Tradfri at the weekend - it's pretty fast. much better than my previous homeseer/rfxcon setup, also much cheaper. Confirmed no Homekit support but here's where it gets interesting. So from my reading lots on he net over the past week - Tradfri does no support ZLL, it supports ZHA, an older but more comprehensive standard than ZLL. Just about every 'hub' like the philips hue 2 supports ZLL. In theory if the Tradfri were ZLL then the homekit enabled Philips Hub 2 would be spot on for it to work. So there's three options i can see: a homekit enabled ZHA hub becomes available, IKEA switch their bulbs from ZHA to ZLL or someone writes a plug in. That Mixtile seems to have disappeared but would offer a good solution. Someone on the hue developers forum figured most of this out, and it sounds like from a comment they made IKEA want their bulbs to work with everything, so we may see the switch to ZLL. When Philips did this for their original hub & bulbs, it was a firmware only update.
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Good to know the Tradfri range is good. That's some interesting information and potentially an interesting development if Ikea decide to switch to ZLL standard, keeping my fingers crossed they decide to support HomeKit natively as well though.
 
Elgato Eve Energy Review

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When I found out that Elgato had released a UK version of their smart power plug with HomeKit support, I was eager to try it out and see how well the HomeKit ecosystem works.

I originally picked two up and got them as Christmas presents, so I’ve been using them for a few months now. I recently picked up a third and decided to snap a few pictures and write this quick review after setting it up.

What’s in The Box?

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1x Elgato Eve Energy Plug
1x Eve Energy Quick Start Guide with HomeKit Code
1x Instruction/Safety Instructions Booklet

Setup

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The plug itself is well built and also features a manual on/off switch on the top with green status LED.

Just like with any Apple product, setup is incredibly easy. Once you have downloaded the Eve app from the App Store you simply use that to configure the plug by plugging it in and powering it on and following the instructions within the Eve app, using the camera on your iPhone to scan the HomeKit code either on the side of plug or on the back of the Quick Start Guide in the box.

The App will then ask you to name the plug and where it's located by a creating room. The name you give it will be used when communicating with the device by Siri, by creating a room it allows you to group multiple HomeKit accessories together, making it easier to see and manage multiple HomeKit devices you have on a room by room bases and allows you to create a HomeKit Scenes, a way to trigger multiple devices together within the Eve app and Apple's own Home app.

Any configuration you do within the Eve app passes through to Apple's own Home app and vicsa-versa. As long as iCloud HomeKit syncing is also enabled these changes are then synced across your connected devices.

The Eve app can also give you figures for Consumption, how much power the item plugged in to the plug is using, along with Projected and Actual Costs this is accurate as long as you enter in to the app your cost per KW/H for electricity you are charged. This feature is only available via the Eve app and does not feed through to Apple's Home app.

Conclusion
All in all it is a good product but you do pay a premium for a HomeKit enabled smart plug when compared to other non-HomeKit versions like Belkin WeMo for instance.
Reliability has been great, I've never had a problem either while at home or from outside switching devices on or off with manual or Siri commands being unsucessful. There is a delay of a few seconds between commands been given and results occurring but it's perfectly acceptable in my view.

Elgato have an interesting range of HomeKit enabled accessories which is steadily increasing. Eve Energy is well built product and I'd be interested to see how well their other products work with one and other.
 
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nox_uk said:
apparently Tradfri will get homekit support in October (of note Ikea didn't mention which year...)

spotted this on a developers forum in a post about getting access to an open API for it

fingers crossed :)
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That would be great if it's true. Keeping my fingers crossed as well
 
solublepeter said:
Only minutes after I wrote that, I read in this article http://appleinsider.com/articles/17...new-ecobee-4-thermostat-more-devices-shipping that Apple have removed Lightwave from their compatibility list

"Also stricken from the list is the LightwaveRF Link 2. There is little actual information about the product, but on April 18, the company said on Facebook that HomeKit integration was "currently in development" and it was "contractually obliged not to release any more information" on the the product."
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I really hope that's not a sign that LightwaveRF aren't going to offer HomeKit support. I've been considering investing in their products, both light switches and plug sockets when the revised Link 2 was available, their products look great and I think are one of the few options in the UK for people to actually create a smart home without buying an adapter plugs like the Elgato Eve above.

Just seen this over on MacRumors: https://www.macrumors.com/2017/04/27/mixtile-hub-wont-support-homekit/

Looks like the Mixtile Hub now won't support HomeKit. Focalcrest are claiming Apple doesn't permit bridge products to compatible with different brand devices, which isn't true as the Philips Hue Bridge works in that very way but granted that is only for a single product. The Mixtile hub would have made every ZigBee and Z-Wave product compatible with HomeKit and with that comes security concerns.

It's a shame but HomeKit is obviously designed from the ground up to be a secure platform so if it was Apple that said no, you can't exactly blame them.
 
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UberTiger said:
Completely agree. It sucks.

I ask it simple stuff and it fails.
Can't even give me train times in London.
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Exactly. Siri was a revolution when it was debuted back with the iPhone 4S but they could've done so much more since then to develop it but haven't.

Now with Google Home/Alexa Siri is really isn't good enough currently to make it central to the function of a new product it needs to be smarter......and work really well!
 
The_Abyss said:
It feels like Apple have fallen a long way behind. The Siri implementation on the Mac is a good example - utterly pointless, as it is so limited.
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I'm really hoping they put this right with the next versions of macOS and iOS it's one of my wish list items from WWDC next month. If they rumours about a dedicated Siri speaker are true then it's a must for that product to be a success, in my view.
 
Interesting article on 9to5mac about whats new with HomeKit in iOS 11: https://9to5mac.com/2017/06/07/homekit-ios-11-sprinklers-faucets-qr-code-nfc-authentication/

  • Adding support for Sprinklers, Faucets and Speakers for Multiroom Audio via Airplay 2
  • Occupancy and Duration Triggers
  • Pairing new accessories via QR Codes and NFC
  • Software authentication & Self-certification
  • Improved Latency for Bluetooth LE Accessories

For me the most interesting points there are Software authentication & Self-certification, if I'm reading this correctly this allows support for HomeKit to be added to existing products via software without the need to include the hardware authentication chip Apple previously required! If this is correct, I'm really hoping that this could potentially open the door for NEST to offer HomeKit support for their products. Would love to have official support for Nest Thermostat and Protects in the Home app, not to forget the ability to use Siri to set temperatures.

The other good thing is Improved Latency for Bluetooth LE accessories, I have a few Elgato Eve plugs and they can take a few seconds to react to a command so anything that can speed that up will be very welcome indeed.
 
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nox_uk said:
Went with tado. They already have homekit support, have zoned heating if you buy extra valves and it can adjust your heating depending on your phones location (if you want it to). Also i wasn't replacing a wired thermostat so needed a remote connection to my radiator, which is available on tado. Not sure about that on nest.

For me tado seemed like a better all round package for roughly the same cost. It just isn't as pretty...
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Tado looks great and has really developed well since it's launch and has the added benefit of HomeKit.

I'm a Nest owner (Thermostat and Smoke Alarms) since it launched in the UK and have been really happy with it and would be reluctant to change. If Nest would adopt HomeKit either with a Hardware Bridge product or now using the recently announced Software Authentication method it would be fantastic and make a lot of existing Nest customers very happy. I'd probably invest in a Nest Cam if it happened.

I think it's safe to assume the relationship between Apple and Nest isn't great though, Apple no longer stock Nest products but if Apple and Amazon can patch things up then hopefully the same thing can happen between Apple and Nest.
 
Valo said:
Good news on the Ikea Tradfri lights, sounds like Ikea is committed to rolling out official HomeKit support by the end of the year.

https://www.macrumors.com/2017/05/23/ikea-homekit-support-tradfri-smart-lighting/
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Ikea has come good on it's promise and added official HomeKit support for Tradfri lights. New multicoloured lights are also due to launch later this year in October.

Owners just simply need to update the firmware on the Tradfri hub by telling it to check for an update.

https://www.macrumors.com/2017/08/10/ikea-tradfri-smart-lighting-supports-homekit/
https://9to5mac.com/2017/08/10/ikea...date-new-multi-color-bulbs-coming-in-october/

EDIT: It appears IKEA has jumped the gun with announcing this. They are now saying it'll be by the end of the year!
 
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