** 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.

qf26M5u.jpg


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

3C0Kkhi.png


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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most of our lights are on zwave dimmers and I have some zwave sockets too, controlled by zway running on a raspberry pi. I ran homebridge with the zway plugin briefly as a test recently, seemed to work well exposing everything to be placed on the new third panel in iOS control centre. Looks like there is a Nest plugin too, but not tried that yet.
 
Thing to note about Philips Hue is that you'll need the new square shaped Hue Bridge version 2.

The old round shaped original bridge doesn't support homekit, because it can't do the required hardware encryption that Apple enforces.
 
Dooksy said:
Will my Hive central heating control work with Homekit?
Click to expand...

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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I started my homekit journey with a nanoleaf aurora - wow. it's awesome.

next month IKEA release TRADFRI lighting in the UK, this is homekit compatible from what i can glean about it and WAY cheaper than any other offerings.
 
it looks like it's been removed from their site BUT it also looks they have just done a major announcement today - loads of news sites are covering it

Nox
 
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.
Click to expand...

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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Valo said:
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/
Click to expand...

i will revisit my original post - have dug through the manuals and not found any mention yet excepting where people are not using the ikea hub but a third party homekit compatible one. :(

which means the hue hub might work but philips have a really bad habit of breaking third party bulbs with firmware updates :(
 
Valo said:
Nice! I'm considering purchasing one of those as well. Would love to hear your thoughts on it....easy to assemble and setup?
Click to expand...

it is awesome!

Yes very easy to assemble/setup - I needed a non-5g wifi to set it up though which was a bit irritating. When i jumped my iphone onto the 5g network, everything else followed lol, macbook, ipad, work phone etc.

have homekit setting it on at 11pm with a yellowy sleepy colour and on again at 6:30 am in a bright bluey white. the most difficult bit was working out the shape i wanted!
 
Valo said:
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/
Click to expand...



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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