HomeKit

Apple’s HomeKit feature lets you control “smart” lights with Siri or Apple’s new Home app on iOS 10, and there are generally two ways to make your home lighting more intelligent. You can change your light bulbs to “connected” bulbs that talk to a bridge over Wi-Fi, or you can replace your light switches with “connected” switches that take the same bridge approach.

The Lutron Caséta kit takes the latter approach by replacing your existing light switches with smart switches that make your traditional light bulbs work with Siri. There are notable differences between both approaches including cost and ease-of-setup which I’ll unpack below. And if bells and whistles don’t impress you, Lutron takes the crown for having the most elegant solution to HomeKit lighting with one exception…

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Controlling smart home devices with your iPhone or iPad is far from a new concept, but in iOS 10, Apple is lending much more focus to home automation. It’s all thanks to the new built-in Home app that ships with iOS 10 and watchOS 3.

Resident Apple HomeKit enthusiast, Zac Hall, already wrote a thorough walkthrough of the new Home app during the initial iOS 10 beta period, but now that iOS 10 and watchOS 3 are shipping, it’s only right to give it another in-depth visit with a corresponding walkthrough.

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Apple’s new Home app in iOS 10 promotes HomeKit to a built-in app with Control Center access, but a few accessories require firmware updates to fully work with the new home automation software. Schlage Sense Smart Deadbolt was previously in this camp, and today Schlage is announcing that its Sense Smart Deadbolt is fully compatible with Apple’s new Home app.

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Update: Apple has updated its documentation to reflect the fact that the third-gen Apple TV can do HomeKit remote access, but not automation.

iOS 10 includes a pre-installed Home app from Apple that lets you easily set up and manage smart accessories and automation, which previously required using third-party apps from various developers. There is one important drawback for HomeKit users on iOS 10: you can no longer use the third-generation Apple TV as a hub for automation or remote access.

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Before Apple built its Home app for HomeKit in iOS 10, Matthias Hochgatterer created the best HomeKit app around with the original Home app. Apple’s Home app on iOS 10 is built-in, free, and has its own panel on Control, but the third-party Home app is still the best solution if you’re in deep with HomeKit like me. The iOS 10 version includes updated widgets, a new design, a refreshed Apple Watch app, and a temporarily discounted price to mark the launch.

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Netatmo, maker of the hyperlocal Weather Station, announced today that its Smart Thermostat and new Smart Radiator Valves officially support Apple’s HomeKit feature. The company highlights providing “the only complete heating solution in Europe that’s compatible with Apple HomeKit.”

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Philips Hue has quickly risen to the top of the food chain as far as iPhone smart home automation is concerned, with a range of HomeKit-compatible white and color lights that are controllable via WiFi. The company is now expanding its Hue range beyond lighting, to include related accessories …. a Motion Sensor. The new Motion Sensor goes on sale in October and allows users to automate parts of their lighting experience based on movement in rooms.

The box is powered by AAA batteries and can be mounted pretty much anywhere in your home. With the Philips app, lights can be triggered based off motion sensor movement and turn off automatically after a set duration. Other intelligent features include a setting to only enable lighting when the room is actually dark, conserving energy usage.

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Being able to automate locking and unlocking your front door is one of the easiest ways to transform your house into a smart home and enter the age of the Jetsons. Dom reviewed the first August Smart Lock (reg. $199) last year, and August has released updated hardware with a feature Apple fans will want. The updated August Smart Lock (reg. $229) features HomeKit support and a slightly tweaked design (magnetic battery cover, lock orientation notch, grooved edges). I’ll go hands on with the new capabilities and share my take on the newest August Smart Lock below.

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The iDevices Socket is an adapter that goes between your lighting fixture and a standard bulb to add Wi-Fi and iPhone app control to any lightbulb. It also adds support for control via Siri voice commands and the iOS 10 Home app through Apple’s HomeKit platform.

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We’ve already shared the new default wallpapers currently in iOS 10 and macOS Sierra, but there are also two additional new wallpapers that ship with iOS 10. Apple’s new HomeKit app called Home includes two house-themed images that you can set as wallpapers inside the app. 9to5Mac reader Mark Malstrom has extracted and shared both Home app wallpapers from iOS 10 for iPhone and iPad so you can use them as your Home screen and Lock screen wallpaper too.

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Smart doorbells are an interesting category of connected appliances. There’s an undeniable cool factor in bringing your home to the Jetsons era when you add a video camera, mic, and speaker to your doorbell. I’ve been testing the August Doorbell Cam ($199), which replaces your existing doorbell and lets you see and communicate with visitors from your iPhone, and it’s not just the smart doorbell features that have interested me…

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These products from August, Canary, Withings, Kuna, D-Link, Ring & others will be next to gain support for Apple’s HomeKit in the coming months.
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Before now, Apple’s HomeKit platform required an Apple TV for remote access control of most accessories. If you had network-connected lightbulbs or other home automation accessories, you’d need to have a new Apple TV connected to that same network to control them with Siri when out of the house. With iOS 10, Apple is giving iPad that capability too, and it’s now using multiple remote access devices to make all of your iPads and Apple TVs work together to extend your HomeKit network.

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HomeKit, Apple’s smart home accessory framework, is gaining some much needed attention in iOS 10 and watchOS 3 thanks to a new built-in Home app for iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch. Apple previously relied on third-party apps from accessory makers to control the HomeKit experience, using Siri as the only first-party controller, and various apps like the third-party Home app and Hesperus filled in the void.

Apple’s new Home app comes with a modern look, relatively easy-to-use controls, and access to accessories and scenes from anywhere on iOS 10. Check out our hands-on below to see Apple’s Home app for iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch in action.

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Last year, I wrote a Feature Request asking that Apple give third-party apps access to Siri, and generally work at beefing-up both the intelligence and the capabilities of its intelligent assistant. A couple of weeks ago, I wrote an opinion piece pointing to the fact that Viv is exactly what Siri should have been by now.

This week, a report suggests that I may finally be getting my wish. Apple is said to be not only planning to offer a Siri SDK to all developers, but also building an Amazon Echo/Google Home type box that will embed Siri more deeply in the home through integration with HomeKit. We will, says the report, find out more at WWDC.

If true, the implications could be profound – perhaps even meaning that we’ve hit ‘peak app’ …

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A recent patent filed by Apple and discovered by PatentlyApple hints at ways in which Apple is planning to make its HomeKit platform smarter. The patent, published today by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, is for an “automated environment” in which HomeKit would be able to track the routines of users and implement automated behaviors based on those habits.

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Since HomeKit was introduced with iOS 8, one major missing piece from Apple’s home automation effort has been a built-in app that provides a user interface to the underlying framework. Interacting with Siri is the only Apple-supplied HomeKit UI; users rely on third-party apps instead for all visual HomeKit management.

The downside to this approach is that there isn’t officially one HomeKit app to rule them all, and companies that make great smart home sensors and accessories don’t necessarily make great software. Compare that to Apple’s HealthKit framework which connects various App Store apps to a single dashboard in the built-in Health app. The approach isn’t perfect, but a similar effort for HomeKit would be welcomed.

The good news is Apple’s been developing a built-in HomeKit app for a while now, and a rumor surfaced over the weekend that such an app could finally be ready for iOS 10. As a close HomeKit follower, I’m very curious to see what iOS 10 may have in store for Apple’s home automation effort, but my first thought is that there are a few gems among the current crop of HomeKit apps that Apple may not compete with well even from its position as the platform owner…

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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:

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