My house: a HomeKit success story

Cupertino, November 16, 2021

With the recent thread on HomeKit success stories and a lot of attacks against HK (some legitimate grievances and some "sux"), I thought I'd share my setup. Start with the network. I moved into a new house last year and had the opportunity to make the CAT6 cable go from my home office closet to the living room, kitchen and bedrooms. Currently, I have only one Ubiquiti Unifi NanoHD AP that serves 21 devices. For cable connections I have 4 Unifi flex mini switches with 5 gigabit ports (2 of them are in my equipment rack and the other two are connected to certain wall ports). My router is my old Netgear Nighthawk R6700 with wifi radios turned off (so there is no wild network configuration). Everything that has an ethernet port is connected. I have 3 HomePod Mini and 2 AppleTVs as a HomeKit hub. Most of the time, one of the ATVs is the HomeKit hub, but occasionally, one of the minis will take over. I didn't notice any problems when I took over the minis. For bridges, I use a Pi 3b + running HOOBS, a Lutron smart bridge pro, Hue bridge and Aqara M2 bridge. For real accessories, use the following * 2 5th generation Ecobee thermostats * Smart lock for August WiFi * 3 Meross smart sockets * Rachio 3 irrigation controller * Ring alarm with upgrade bridge (via Homebridge) * Harmony Hub (via Homebridge ) * Roborock Robovac S4 (via Homebridge) * 8 Lutron Box switches (2 fan controllers, 2 dimmers and 4 on / off switches) * Aqara accessories (2 temperature sensors, one contact sensor and 2 smart sockets) * 2 white Hue ambiance bulbs with a Lutron Aurora dimmer I'm still building my setup, but so far everything has been very reliable. Although I did not have any major problems, I did find it annoying. I was very annoyed that "conditional" automations are not conditional for anyone who created workflows or developed software (although it helped me realize that the Convert to Shortcut functionality scratches this), I'm annoyed that there aren't more types of devices (such as how my robovac appears in HK has a fan and a occupancy sensor). Finally, I would like features like false switches and delay switches to be integrated into HK by default. I looked at the Home Assistant if I were to leave HK, but so far, HK still finds an excellent balance for me, flexible enough to do what I need and just work. Thank you for coming to my TED speech.

Best selling & Top trending HomeKit product in our shop at this moment

HomeKit.Blog is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Apple Inc. or Apple related subsidiaries.

All images, videos and logos are the copyright of the respective rights holders, and this website does not claim ownership or copyright of the aforementioned.

All information about products mentioned on this site has been collected in good faith. However, the information relating to them, may not be 100% accurate, as we only rely on the information we are able to gather from the companies themselves or the resellers who stock these products, and therefore cannot be held responsible for any inaccuracies arising from the aforementioned sources, or any subsequent changes that are made that we have not been made aware of.

HomeKit.Blog Is A Participant In The Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, An Affiliate Advertising Program Designed To Provide A Means For Sites To Earn Advertising Fees By Advertising And Linking To Amazon Store (Amazon.com, Or Endless.com, MYHABIT.com, SmallParts.com, Or AmazonWireless.com).

The opinions expressed on this website by our contributors do not necessarily represent the views of the website owners. 

Copyright © 2022 HomeKit Blog
. All rights reserved
United States