Like a lot of new technologies from Apple these days, HomeKit isn’t perfect but the parts that work well are really useful. Apple’s home automation framework connects smart accessories from various companies all under the control of Siri and HomeKit apps like Home or Hesperus. But HomeKit is relatively young still and there’s plenty of low hanging fruit in terms of ways the framework could improve with iOS 10 and beyond. Here are a few ideas I hope we see with HomeKit this year:
More Triggers: Siri is great for giving commands in the moment, but automation is really about scheduling repetitive actions and letting the technology do the work. HomeKit lets you automatically engage scenes, or groups of set actions, using triggers, or certain conditions like time of day.
Using the Home app and three Philips Hue white bulbs, my outside lights turn on at 7:30 PM and turn off at midnight. I have a scene called Porch On which turns on the front, side, and back porch lights, and another scene called Porch Off which turns them off. Porch On occurs daily at 7:30 PM while Porch Off repeats daily at midnight. Optionally, telling Siri Porch On or Porch Off or calling out individual bulbs will toggle them on and off anytime.
The problem with using time of day as this trigger, though, is that the time of sunset changes dramatically in South Mississippi based on the season. When I first set up the trigger, I used 5:30 PM as the Porch On time, but sunset has since moved back two hours. Ideally, using sunset and sunrise as the trigger would be best, but that’s not a HomeKit supported trigger just yet.
More Siri: As it stands now, even though HomeKit uses Siri for voice control, Siri can’t always control your HomeKit setup. Asking Siri from CarPlay to turn off your lights confuses it and results in a message saying Siri can’t control your car, which is an understandable point of confusion, but Siri on Apple TV is the glaring omission for HomeKit.
Ask Siri on Apple TV to dim the lights and the on-screen text reads “Sorry I can’t help you with that here.” Why not? Creating a Movie Night scene is probably one of the more popular use cases for HomeKit. Lower ecobee’s temperature, set Hue lights to 20% brightness, maybe even go blue, lock the front door, and enjoy your movie. You can easily create that scene in HomeKit now, but can’t use the Siri Remote on Apple TV to set it. Instead, you’ll need to use your iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, or Apple Watch. It’s great that the other devices all talk HomeKit, especially Apple Watch, but Apple TV has some learning to do here.
Speaking of other devices, 9to5Mac reported earlier this year that the Mac is set to gain Siri with OS X 10.12 (MacOS 10.12?). Hopefully that means the Mac learns how to HomeKit, too, which could create an Amazon Echo-like setup in my home office; if Siri ships on Mac without HomeKit like Apple TV, that’ll be even more perplexing.
More Accessories: More triggers and more Siri (I think) should be relatively easy, but my last request is a bit more complex. HomeKit works with a decent variety of accessories now (smart plugs, thermostats, locks, shades, lights, sensors, etc.), but HomeKit improving will obviously require more accessories in the future. The home security space is an interesting one with Nest Cam-type solutions, but Siri/HomeKit integration isn’t there yet.
That’s just one example of where HomeKit could expand. More importantly, I’d love to see some of Apple’s own hardware start to speak the same language as HomeKit. For example, “Siri, turn on my Apple TV” currently offers up an apology that it can’t do that, but launching the Remote app or interacting with the Siri Remote turns on my Apple TV 4 and connected Sony TV in my bedroom (my LG TV in my living room doesn’t support powering on and off that way unfortunately).
For TV sets that can be powered on and off when connected to Apple TV, HomeKit and Apple TV integration would be great here. Apple TV already acts as a remote point of communication in some instances so the foundation is there.
Apple even has a command listed on its Siri site that describes turning on a TV with Siri through HomeKit, but I haven’t been able to recreate this scenario myself. For starters, Apple TV doesn’t talk to Siri from the iPhone. I had one bright idea, too, that didn’t pan out so well: connecting my TV to an iHome Smart Plug. Then Siri could turn the TV off, but turning it back on still required the TV remote or power button on the set, so the process actually added an extra step. (An actual Apple TV set would come in handy here.)
HomeKit was very slow to get off the ground after it was introduced a couple of years ago, but over the last year we’ve seen the market of accessories available greatly expand, including August Home’s Smart Lock earlier today. With WWDC just over a month away at this point, I’m personally hoping we see HomeKit learn some new tricks and make some new friends with iOS 10, MacOS 10.12, and future versions of watchOS and tvOS. Have your own ideas for HomeKit (aside from just more, more more)? Let us know in the comments, and catch up on our other Feature Requests here.
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This is one of those 9to5 articles that Apple should read. Homekit has so much potential and there is an enormous amount of use that could be exploited with its relationship to the Watch especially. I’m probably in the same boat as you in that I love a lot of what they’re doing lately but feel that it needs to go that 25% more of the way to really shine the way it should.
And this is the problem with Home Kit, and all of these home automation systems. They solve problems that have already been solved in other more reliable, less centrally vulnerable ways. Take the examples in the article:
Turning lights on at sunset: I use light sensitive fixtures. When it gets dark out they turn on.
Turning on lights when you pull up to the house: I use motion sensitive lights. They have the added security advantage that they trigger when someone other than me approaches the house too.
Turn on the bathroom heater: I have two. In floor heating stays on all the time. The lag is such that it doesn’t make sense to turn it off. The towel bar is heated as well. I have it turn on with its built in timer a couple hours before I get up. That time doesn’t change summer or winter.
Motion sensor lights in the kitchen: These already exist as free standing units that replace your current switch. I use one for a closet light where I tend to forget to turn it off.
All of these devices plus programmable thermostats can be purchased today at Home Depot, Our Own Hardware, or a thousand other places. They are an established technology that just works. A single computer failure or lost phone won’t impact their function. Sure I can’t turn on my bathroom towel heater from Tokyo, but you know that really is a loss that is far outweighed by the other advantages in reliability, ease of use, and not being susceptible to hacking.
This man is talking some sense.
So we got years of homekit now and we can lock the door, turn of the lights and get the heating going. Apart from the fact that this is rather useless and already done (as Doug points out), I’d be ashamed if that was my only progress if I’d be in charge. Apple has a long way to go if it really want to invade homes with automation.
Where is my intelligent fridge that sends me a message to buy the stuff that’s finished when I enter the store?
I need a real voice command assistant that I can talk to. Siri, scan my mail and see if *beep* has answered. And while you’re at it. get a kettle going, put the washing machine on and play last nights concert of *beep*. What you say? The dishwasher is full? Ok, start it. Can you check how many broccoli is left? Only 200 gram? Put broccoli on my shopping list please. Start macpro and run final cut project *beep*. Once I’m on the second floor, send the vacuumbot.
you know, the stuff of science fiction, today.
I solved the turning on and off the TV by connecting a Logitech Harmony Hub to HomeKit by using HomeBridge running on a Raspberry Pi.
https://github.com/kraigm/homebridge-harmonyhub
I use an ISP5 iHome SmartPlug on my TV (50″ Toshiba) not a fancy smart tv or anything. It turns on and off just fine. One thing is to be sure you have the tv powered on when you tell the smart plug to turn off. This particular TV must have a feature to automatically power back on if loss of power is detected then restored. Works great as a stand alone command “Siri, turn on my TV” or in other scenes with the Home App, “Siri, it’s movie time”.
Same here, but with a Samsung set. Works great.
As someone who made a sizeable investment in X-10 about 40 years ago – only to see it pretty much disappear over the last few years, I hope that the Home Kit platform gets more and more developed in the short term. The very things that I loved in the X-10 system (programmable event timers and software that resides on my computer for setup – but lives in a computer interface that’s plugged into the wall, with a built-in battery backup) are what are missing in today’s low cost, modular home automation hardware / software.
As much as I miss the features of the X-10, I can’t replicate them with any on the stand alone timers / sensors as in Doug Aalseth’s post – for instance, the X-10 had geographic timers based on your location and the date for precise controls of dusk & dawn; it had a “security option” to vary on / off times randomly by 10 ~ 20 minutes to prevent someone from watching the lights come on / go off at the same time. And, it was very low cost; modular and unobtrusive.
I have hope for Home Kit and the various manufacturers of the hardware / software. I just wish they would look at what X-10 offered 40 years ago.
I wish Home Kit could be added to existing smart home equipment. I bought two August locks a year before Home Kit was added, and it looks like there is no way for them to update the locks or August Connect plug to be Home Kit compatible. They give app and firmware updates, but no Home Kit compatibility.
I also have a Ring Doorbell, and Withings Home cameras, and it appears that those won’t be able to be Home Kit enabled with a firmware and app update.
I really don’t want to buy new locks, doorbells, and cameras just for Home Kit compatibility.
Also, next time you are in Gulfport, go by Lookout and tell them to put the cheesy fries back on the menu.
I’d love to see Logitech Harmony integration! Could you imagine? Tell Siri to do one of the activities that you have set up in your Harmony Smart hub and the TV turns on, goes to the correct input, your lights dim, etc. That’d be what we all imagined home automation would be like!
I already use my Harmony remote with homebridge. It takes a little bit of hacking but fairly easily done!
HomeKit is about equal with iBeacons, Force Touch, the Apple Watch and Apple Music in my estimation: I’m not sure I’ve been so indifferent about any of Apple’s big ideas since Ping. Though the iPhone is still the best phone on the market and the Mac the best computer; Swift is a huge improvement on Objective-C and continues to develop impressively; and the Retina MacBook is a great improvement over the Air. So my money’s not going anywhere else, I’m just having to get a bit more used to rolling my eyes.
iBeacons haven’t taken off the way I would have liked either. It’s interesting that Apple’s greatest products are the ones that don’t require anyone else to cooperate, but their products with the greatest potential are ones that require other people to get onboard: Apple Pay (the greatest thing they’ve done since the original iPhone), Healthkit (finally an industry standard for devices and services to communicate with each other), Homekit, and even features that apps can offer like TouchID integration.
The reason why their products with the greatest potential rarely become their greatest products is that the people they rely on to make them successful (merchants, device makers, and app developers) are hard to get on board and implement the new technology for users to take advantage of.
I on the other hand have GREAT hopes for HelathKit. Having dealt with a number of health issues I’d love to see more in home sensors and monitors that would upload data to the cloud/Dr.s office. The applications out so far don’t apply to me but I’m eagerly watching what comes out.
Most of these things are why I love my Wink system. Aside from voice commands (which you can get with Amazon Echo), it allows most of this stuff to be programmed. I have it set up to turn on specific lights at sunset. It’s also geofenced so it turns on my porch light after sunset when I come close to the house. Motion sensors and door triggers also help set up various light scenes at different times of the day, as well as my alarm system when I’m away from home. I have commands set up on my Watch so I can tap on, let’s say my Movie Time shortcut, and all the lights turn off except the living room, which dims just enough to see our popcorn. I have two shortcuts to turn every light on, dimmed down, leading up the the bedroom, the another to shut every light in the house off. Once I get a smart lock, the Blackout trigger will also be programmed to lock the doors. I’d love Wink to be integrated with HomeKit for the voice commands, but as it stands, I love how flexible it is and how easy it is to automate and program things around my life. Everything just works.
I agree. Apple does a pretty lame job integrating with their own products. Why can’t I say play some music in the bedroom and it use my AirPlay speakers? Apple TV omission is a complete joke! How could they miss adding HomeKit? It can’t be that hard!
Homebridge is a nice solution in the meantime while we wait for Apple as well as other manufacturers to get on board. :)