HomeKit

Back at CES in January, Nanoleaf announced a range of new smart light devices. Today one of those has arrived with the 4D Screen Mirror Camera and Lightstrip Kit. Aiming to make your entertainment experience more immersive than ever, read on for all the details on Nanoleaf’s latest smart light product.

Continuing with the summer of Matter announcements, TP-Link’s Tapo has just released the industry’s first Matter-enabled smart switches. The Tapo S505 and Tapo S505D are now both available for purchase. Tapo is TP-Link’s smart home brand. TP-Link makes a wide variety of home Wi-Fi routers, business grade networking equipment, and much more.

When the news broke in April that WiZ products were coming to Matter, this was a huge benefit to Apple, the HomeKit ecosystem, and to HomeKit users. In fact, I believe no one is benefiting from the Matter rollout to the smart home world than Apple, as they were the ones often left out of the lower-cost products. Matter is an open smart home standard that is supported by Amazon, Google, and Apple, allowing accessory makers to be compatible with a single standard rather than three separate ones.

In the past few months of using the Level Lock+, my mind has been doing a lot of thinking about the role of hardware in the future of the smart home. Sure, software (even voice) is great for interacting with devices, but there’s something I’ve found magical about Home Key. My smartphone is hardware device that interacts with my hardware lock through software. The software is invisible. It’s been so wonderful just tapping my iPhone on the lock and having it open. It’s also led me to believe that Apple should continue pulling at that string going forward. Of course, all this will apply to the recently released Aqara smart lock with Home Key support.

Smart home company Eve Systems – one of the leaders in HomeKit-compatible and now Matter-compatible devices – has been bought by the automation and electrification giant ABB.

Eve will, with immediate effect, become part of the Building and Home Automation Solutions division of ABB. The two parties naturally hope the partnership will be good news, but some will be watching events with some degree of nervousness …

After using the Level Lock+ with Home Key support for a few months, I can honestly say that Home Key is now table stakes for all smart locks. It’s no longer enough to just support HomeKit. HomeKit is a software layer for door locks. Home Key support is a game changer in terms of day-to-day functionality. There are no apps to open or Bluetooth connections to wait on. With Home Key, it’s tap and go. I’ve spent the last week with the Aqara Door Lock U100 with Home Key support, so let’s dive into how it works, my thoughts on it compared to Level Lock+, and the installation process.

When you strip away home automation to its essence, it’s about taking something you normally would buy manually and automating it. That might be turning lights on based on motion, time of day, etc. It might be able automatically raising or lowering blinds based on smart blinds based on when the sun sets. It’s about streamlining how you interact with your home. There’s no more mundane task that should be integrated into HomeKit than smart vacuums, and it’s time for Apple to support it as a HomeKit device. Read on to learn about a few smart vacuums I’ve been testing this year, and how I’d love to take the experience further with HomeKit.

Matter is the new solution to all our smart home compatibility problems, right? That’s what we’ve been told, and that’s what we want to happen, right? Open stands on everything related to technology are preferable, but sometimes, new standards take years to mature. That’s what we’re seeing with Matter. We’re even seeing brands like Wemo back away from Matter support as well. Over the past few weeks, I’ve been testing a product called Homey Bridge, and it’s one of the most interesting smart home concepts I’ve tried in some time.

Popular home security kit maker Abode is out with a new offering today, the “Adobe Security Kit.” It arrives as the most affordable option from the company to protect your home. However, one of the compromises to hit the entry-level price was forgoing HomeKit support – which comes with the mid-tier and flagship Iota All-In-One Kit, Smart Security Kit, and Standalone Smart Hub.

As I mentioned a few weeks ago when looking at the Onvis Thread-Enabled door sensor, HomeKit door and window sensors are some of the most underrated devices that most people aren’t thinking about. There are so many use cases that HomeKit door sensors unlock, that they might even be more versatile than HomeKit motion sensors. This week, I am looking at the Meross MS200 door and window sensor.

Eve, the popular HomeKit vendor, has unveiled two long-awaited products: the new Eve Shutter Switch and the next generation of Eve Flare with Thread support, a portable, HomeKit-compatible LED lamp. The Eve Shutter Switch is only available in select European markets, while the Eve Flare is available in the US as well.

Since early 2020, I’ve used abode as my primary security system. I’ve discussed it a number of times in past editions of HomeKit Weekly, but I continue to get emails asking if I am still using it, etc. I wanted to take an opportunity to update my review, discuss how I am using it in my new house, and where I’d like it to go in the future.

Smart home company Netatmo is out with a handy new device today that makes a wide variety of air conditioners and heat pumps intelligent with HomeKit connectivity and more. The Smart AC Controller installs in just 10 minutes and allows you to control your air conditioner with Siri, the Home app on iPhone along with Alexa and Google Home support at an affordable price.

Half a year after its debut, the Level Lock+ continues to stand out amongst the competition for its unique, minimalistic design, and ease of installation. Level Home’s smart lock is also one of just a handful of smart locks that support Apple Home Key – a feature introduced with iOS 15 that allows for NFC control via an Apple Watch or iPhone.

Is this Level Lock+ the best smart lock for users knee-deep in the Apple ecosystem? Watch my hands-on video review for the details.

One of the biggest challenges with a smart home is knowing…when you’ve gone too far with your gear purchases and your home is so heavily tied to a smart home platform that without access to Wi-Fi, your home is fundamentally useless. For this week’s edition of HomeKit Weekly, I want to explain how I’ve tackled this problem and how to know when too much HomeKit is just too much.

Having recently moved into a new home, I wanted to set up HomeKit lights in the kitchen that would turn on and off automatically. Ideally. So I got some Philips Hue bulbs, an Eve motion sensor, and did the obvious thing with automations in HomeKit.

The result was unsatisfactory. Here’s why, and how I eventually got my smart home vision to become a reality, with the help of Homebridge …

As a cheaper option in the smart light bulbs space, Wiz products are relatively popular. However, they have not supported HomeKit (only Siri Shortcuts) and have been a less-than-ideal option for Apple Home ecosystem users. Unofficial support was previously made possible via Homebridge.

However, this week, Wiz is rolling out Matter support for many of its newer bulb models (via The Verge). This brings official support for these accessories to Apple Home for the first time.

Aqara is one of the best value brands for HomeKit products today. You can add its M2 hub as your starter kit, and then start layering on devices like the low-cost water leak sensor, motion sensor, and door sensors. Aqara continues to innovate with products that work great with HomeKit, and today, they’ve released a brand new product. The Aqara Presence Sensor FP2 is a new millimeter wave motion sensor that is taking smart home automation to the next level. This new motion sensor device is loaded with features that make it one of the most versatile and precise sensors on the market today. It does require an Aqara hub, but thankfully, there are plenty of options like the M2 I listed above or the M1S hub.

An NSO zero-click iPhone hack worked by gaining access to HomeKit on the device, but it was blocked by those using Apple’s Lockdown Mode security feature, with the phone alerting them to the access attempt.

However, two other NSO zero-click attacks seemingly succeeded – both exploiting vulnerabilities in the Find My app …