One of the anticipated new features coming this fall to iOS is Apple’s HomeKit Secure Video to view and manage footage from security cameras. Now we’ve got what seems like our first look at the user interface that will come with the new feature.


Update 10/8: Reported by HomeKit Hero, what appears to be a full demo video for HomeKit Secure Video has leaked from an Apple Store (via Zachary Truskowski). The video matches up with the image that we saw last week showing off the UI of the new feature. The demo video is about a minute and a half long and shows off several events captured by the camera with AI.

With this video allegedly coming from an in-store demo iPad, Apple could be getting close to releasing HomeKit Secure Video. Around the one-minute mark in the video below, we get to see the details for the Camera shown off in the demo, however, we Apple doesn’t list any manufacturer or camera model. But Logitech, Eufy, and Netatmo were shared as the first companies to support the feature later this year.

Check out the full video below:


Spotted by Zatz Not Funny!, user zyloros posted a few screenshots on Reddit today, with one of them notably showing off what looks like the UI for the playback functionality for HomeKit Secure Video.

In the image below we see several captured events to scrub between with icons for a person, an animal, and a car. To the right, there’s a button to jump to the Live feed.

Up top, there’s a calendar bar for selecting footage from different days. In the top right corner are buttons for mic and volume, with Settings showing up in the top left corner.

On the far left side, there’s a share sheet button. And on the far right side, the button with four tiles allows users to see data from cameras like temperature, motion, and more.

Apple HomeKit Secure Video

Some users running the iOS 13.2 developer beta 1 are seeing a popup (see below) that prompts to set up HomeKit Secure Video, however, there don’t seem to be any cameras that have the functionality live yet.

While some Reddit users asked what camera zyloros was using, they didn’t respond.

When Apple announced HomeKit Secure Video back at WWDC in June, it said that Logitech, Eufy, and Netatmo would be some of the first companies to support the new feature.

HomeKit Secure Video

HomeKit SecureVideo first look

One of the many new elements that Apple announced back at this year’s Worldwide Developers Conference is Secure Video for HomeKit, built for home security cameras.

And while Apple showed off the feature a bit at WWDC earlier this year, today we get what appears to be our first look at the upcoming user interface for the iOS 13 feature. The image was originally shared on Friday by Reddit (via Zatz Not Funny!) and shows a few unique aspects of the UI.

The image above shows a few different moments captured by the security camera. We can see that a person was caught on the camera at one point, as well as an animal, and a vehicle. The UI will give the user the ability to jump to each of those moments with a quick scrubbing feature, and icons will show which object was detected and when.

There is a button for settings, a way to close out of the video altogether, an option to mute sound, a quick share icon, and Play/Pause. The UI also has an option to quickly jump back to the live feed.

There is a calendar bar at the top of the screen, too. It appears this will let users quickly jump to a specific day in a month.

It all looks pretty straightforward and easy to use, which is a good thing. HomeKit’s Secure Video in iOS 13 will provide access to iCloud storage, activity detection, and more.

Secure Video should go live with iOS 13.2, which is currently being beta tested. Are you looking forward to this new HomeKit-enabled feature?

One of the anticipated new features coming this fall to iOS is Apple’s HomeKit Secure Video to view and manage footage from security cameras. Now we’ve got what seems like our first look at the user interface that will come with the new feature.

Spotted by Zatz Not Funny!, user zyloros posted a few screenshots on Reddit today, with one of them notably showing off what looks like the UI for the playback functionality.

In the image below we see several captured events to scrub between with icons for a person, an animal, and a car. To the right, there’s a button to jump to the Live feed.

Up top, there’s a calendar bar for selecting footage from different days. In the top right corner are buttons for mic and volume, with Settings showing up in the top left corner.

Apple HomeKit Secure Video


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The saga of IKEA’s smart blinds coming to the United States continues today. The company has confirmed to The Verge that its smart blinds won’t launch in the United States until “later this year” after already missing earlier promised release dates.

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Ecobee HomeKit Thermostat

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The IKEA smart blinds were originally slated to launch in the United States back in April, but IKEA then delayed that launch until August because it had found “an opportunity for improved functionality” during testing. It then announced that the smart blinds would be released on October 1, but that date has come and gone and the blinds are nowhere to be found.

Now, IKEA has confirmed that the smart blinds will miss that October 1 launch date in the United States. The company has not provided any details on why the release has been delayed, nor will it provide a new date. Instead, IKEA simply says that they will launch “later this year.”

In the United States, IKEA will sell the Fyrtur blackout blinds for between $129 and $179, depending on size. The Fyrtur blinds, as well as a less opaque option, are already available in countries like the U.K.

While the price point of the IKEA smart blinds makes them an intriguing option compared to other products on the market, they, unfortunately, won’t support HomeKit at launch. IKEA had originally promised integration with HomeKit at launch, but then backed off of that claim in August. The company says that HomeKit support will be available later this fall, but whether or not that actually happens remains to be seen.

Are you still holding out for the IKEA smart blinds in the United States? Let us know down in the comments!

Read more: 

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LG ThinQ AI AirPlay 2 HomeKit teaser 001

We have known since the beginning of this year that several TV manufacturers were planning to update their smart television sets to support Apple’s AirPlay 2 and, in some cases, HomeKit.

LG was one of those companies to announce support for this new initiative, and the update to most of its smart TV lineup started back in July. There are still a few models from the Life’s Good crew that have yet to be updated, but that number is getting whittled down. Today, for instance, sees the update to support AirPlay 2 and HomeKit rolling out for the UM7X series of Ultra High Definition (UHD) smart TVs.

MacRumors was the first to pick it up. Owners of this model of TV can download the new software, which is version 04.70.03, right now to enable AirPlay 2 support along with HomeKit. Once the download is finished and the new feature is present, AirPlay 2 will allow users to stream content from their iOS, iPadOS, or macOS devices directly to the TV.

No Apple TV required.

With HomeKit support, functionality expands quite a bit. Once the TV is updated it will show up in the Home app on iOS, iPadOS, and macOS. The Home app will allow users to quickly switch inputs on the TV, adjust the volume to their liking, or turn the TV on/off.

What’s more, with HomeKit support users can also bring Siri into the mix, using the wake word and then saying something like, “Turn down the TV volume”. You can turn the TV on or off like this, too.

The announcement that TV manufacturers like LG, Samsung, Vizio, and others were going to support AirPlay 2 (and HomeKit) was huge, making waves right at the start of 2019. Now that TVs with the feature are out there in the wild, it would be interesting to hear just how much of an impact this is making.

If you have a TV that now supports AirPlay 2 and/or HomeKit, are you taking advantage of the new feature?

Matthias Hochgatterer’s Home app for managing HomeKit on the iPhone and iPad has a brand new version out today with an overhauled design and a different name. Version 4.0 is ready for iOS 13 and iPadOS 13 with Dark Mode support and lots of personalization options for HomeKit. The name change, on the other hand, isn’t exactly by choice…

Home+ offers more than Home

First, the big changes in Home 4 include Dark Mode support for the first time, seven different Home screen icon choices, and loads of icon options for HomeKit accessories.

The new default app icon matches the recently introduced Apple Watch icon which I really like. There’s even a lamp icon option that represents the new Sonos IKEA AirPlay 2 speaker lamp — that’s great attention to detail! The app also presents sensor information on a single tile in a sensible way unlike Apple’s iOS 13 Home app.

All of these changes make the third-party Home app really appealing over the built-in app, and there’s a great widget for controlling favorited accessories that can live on the iPad Home screen now. Read about all the new features here.

Behind the name change

Apple first introduced its HomeKit smart home framework as part of iOS 8 in 2014. The iPhone already worked with smart home appliances from different companies using various protocols, but HomeKit offered a single framework from Apple for controlling products from different companies.

Voice control through Siri was the only user-facing unifier during the first year of HomeKit however. Developers could create HomeKit apps, but Apple didn’t release their own app until 2016. Matthias Hochgatterer’s Home app was highly regarded and considered the best HomeKit app for actually using HomeKit on the iPhone and iPad during that time.

Starting with iOS 10, Apple debuted its own HomeKit controller with a built-in app using the same name. Apple’s Home app has special privileges aside from being pre-installed including fast access from Control Center, but both apps have coexisted since 2016.

Something changed this year at Apple, however, and the original Home app has to change its name. Matthias explains on his blog:

For iOS 13 I totally redesigned user interface and added new features. The app should still be called Home on the home screen, as the years before. But out of the blue Apple rejected the update with the reason that it can’t be called Home anymore. Somebody from the App Review team called me and made it clear that the app can’t have the same name as the Apple Home app.

The name change isn’t by choice, but it is the name that I like the most if it has to change. (Home+ is also shorter than writing “third-party Home app” since Apple released its Home app.)

Home+ 4 is a free update for existing customers (four years of free updates and counting) and $14.99 on the App Store.

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Longtime HomeKit accessory maker Eve Systems today announced a handful of updates to its smart home range. The Eve Extend is finally shipping and available to buy, allowing Eve users to connect its Bluetooth accessories to the full range of your home Wi-Fi network.

Eve also unveiled Eve Water Guard, a smart water detector coming next year, and enhancements to its Eve Thermo smart radiator valve. The company is also debuting an EU version of its Eve Light Switch, launching in countries beyond the US this October.

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The newly announced Eve Water Guard can detect leaks in your home, send notifications, and sound the alarm as soon as water is detected. This means you can get alerted on your iPhone as soon as flooding starts, allowing you to respond quickly and limit the impact of water damage. Rather than just testing a single spot, the accessory features a long 4-foot cable that can sense water anywhere along its body. The Eve Water Guard is set to launch in January.

The Eve Light Switch has been available in the United States for a while, but it will soon expand overseas. Eve is launching an EU version of the switch in October, released initially in Germany, Austria, Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands. Naturally, the size and shape of the switch has been redesigned to fit the EU sockets. The switch lets you use your existing lights and bulbs by adding the HomeKit smarts to the switch itself.

The Eve Extend has been long in the making, having been first announced more than two years ago. However, now  that it’s finally available, it may be of use to people already deeply embedded in the Eve ecosystem, particularly those facing range issues with the Bluetooth radios of the accessories in some rooms. With the Eve Extend, you can bridge up to 8 Eve accessories over your home WiFi network — which should naturally offer much larger coverage than Bluetooth. Note that the Eve Extend only works with Eve’s HomeKit accessories, as it is not compatible with third-party HomeKIt gear.

Finally, launching September 16, Eve is updating the Eve Thermo smart radiator valve to make the product better. The LED display should now be easier to read, and the touch controls will respond with affirmative feedback. They have also updated the motor that actually opens and closes the valve to make it quieter in operation.

Eve is demonstrating all of its new upgrades and products at the IFA consumer technology convention.

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Photo: Shutterstock


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Signify, the Philips subsidiary behind Hue lighting, has announced a new Philips Hue Filament collection, as well as a new Smart Plug and Smart Button, a revised portable Hue Go, and more. Read on for all of the details on today’s Philips Hue announcements.

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The new Philips Hue Go portable smart light is a followup to the original Hue Go with one key addition: support for Bluetooth. This means you don’t need a bridge in order to use it with the Hue app or Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant. HomeKit support still requires a Hue Bridge. Signify also says the new Hue Go feature “improved battery life.” It will be available in November for $79.99.

Next up is the new Philips Hue Smart Plug, which works like many of the smart plugs that have long existed on the market. The Hue Smart Plug turns “any table or floor lamp” into a Hue smart light. You can then add it to your Philips Hue setup just like a normal smart light, and control it using the Hue app and voice assistants including Siri.

Meanwhile, Signify has also introduced a new Philips Hue Smart Button. This works similar to existing accessories like the Fibaro Button (reviewed). Essentially, you can program certain commands to certain scenes and lights:

In a single press, you can control your Hue lights however you like, or press and hold the button to brighten and dim your lights. When connected to the Philips Hue bridge, you can configure the button, so it turns your lights to a pre- set shade of white light and brightness level that suits the time of day; in the morning, one press will turn your lights to cool, energizing tones, and in the evening, one press will trigger warmer, dimmer light settings.

The new Philips Hue Smart Button will be available in October for $19.99, while the Smart Plug will be available at the same time for $39.99.

Elsewhere, Philips Hue has also launched new GU10 spotlights in Bluetooth-enabled Hue White and Color Ambiance and Hue White Ambiance variants. These new bulbs feature “higher lumen output” and a new design compared to their predecessor. Starting this month, the color variant will be available for $54.99, while a two-pack of White Ambiance bulbs will run $49.99.

There are also new E12 candle bulbs, which Signify says gives you “more choice with your home lighting like chandeliers or ceiling fans.” These will be available this month at $32.99 for a two-pack.

Filament Kitchen Lifestyle

Last but not least, Philips Hue has launched a new Filament series with designs that are “reminiscent of traditional, incandescent Edison-style bulbs.” These bulbs can be used in wall fixtures, suspended from the ceiling, or simply placed in a lamp with or without a lamp shade.

The Philips Hue Filament collection includes three form factors: the traditional A19 light bulb shape ($24.99), ST19 tube ($27.99) and G25 globe ($32.99). The Filament collection will launch in October.

The new accessories are all compatible with HomeKit, so long as you have a Philips Hue bridge. View a full gallery of images below.

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Yeelight HomeKit support has finally landed, after what the company says is eight months of work.

Even better, there’s a firmware update available for three existing products that will retroactively add HomeKit support…

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The company announced the news on its homepage and in a brief post.

Yeelight & HomeKit

Yeelight is dedicated to bringing the best smart lighting experience to our global users. In the past eight months, our engineers have worked very hard to bring HomeKit compatibility to three of our old products.

Simply upgrade firmware to the latest version and follow our instructions to like your Yeelight devices to HomeKit. Then enjoy HomeKit convenience with Siri on iPhone and iPad!

Three products are listed:

A reader tells us he got an in-app notification for his latest LED bulbs (model E27), but he also has some first-generation bulbs that don’t get support.

Yeelight offers a range of smart lighting products, starting at less than $20.

It’s not all good news where HomeKit is concerned, however. Zac Hall recently suggested that Apple’s Home app is actually worse for many users in iOS 13.

The Home app where users manage the smart home experience makes one design choice that is likely meant to make it more approachable. In practice, the change degrades the experience for a whole category of HomeKit products.

Where a device has multiple sensors, such as temperature and humidity, Apple integrates them into a single icon that you can tap to view details. That gives a neater appearance in the app, but removes the ability to see information at a glance.

The worst example is saved for last: HomeKit camera sensors. The Arlo Baby Cam is primarily used as a video camera with sound input and output. A firmware update to the camera later added support for five additional accessories using the product’s built-in sensors (with all data viewable in the Home app).

If you want to read the sensor data in iOS 13, simply tap on the camera tile, view the live video feed, find the button for other accessories in that room, then bam, you’ve managed to do something that was zero steps in iOS 12.


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Apple is upgrading HomeKit this fall with new features like Secure Video and expanded automation, but it’s not all good news for Apple’s smart home framework. The Home app where users manage the smart home experience makes one design choice that is likely meant to make it more approachable. In practice, the change degrades the experience for a whole category of HomeKit products.

Difficulty managing the Home app at a glance when more than a few accessories are added has been a common complaint about the app’s design from the start. In iOS 13, Apple appears to be addressing this feedback with a change to how individual products with multiple accessories are presented.

In iOS 12, each accessory is presented as its own tile even if it’s part of a single product. This can result in a single HomeKit product populating the Home app with a half dozen tiles.

Apple’s Home app treats products with multiple accessories different in iOS 13. One product is one tile even if it includes two or more accessories. Fewer tiles means more usable at a glance, right?

Not so fast. Here’s where it becomes a step back for products like this. The awesome Eve Degree sensor is a single HomeKit product that measures both temperature and humidity. Summer can be brutal on the Mississippi Gulf Coast where I live, so I really like knowing exactly how hot and how humid it is at my front door.

That information is glanceable in iOS 12 where each measurement is presented as its own sensor accessory:

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This is how iOS 13 presents the same accessory:

FullSizeRender

You can still expand the tile to show more information — in this case any information — but the tile for this accessory includes no updatable information.

Here’s another example using the indoor Eve Room product. This is iOS 12:

Screen Shot 2019 08 20 at 2.10.21 PM

And this is the new approach starting with iOS 13:

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Again, any useful information has been grouped into a single tile with no sensor data. Glanceable data is gone, requiring an interaction to actually see what those sensors are presenting:

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While the change is disappointing for sensors, it’s downright confusing for other types of HomeKit products that include more than one accessory.

For example, the useful VOCOlinc Flowerbud diffuser and mood lamp is a single product with two very different HomeKit accessories. iOS 12 lets you easily view the status and control each accessory with individual tiles:

Screen Shot 2019 08 20 at 2.05.53 PM

Here’s that same product squeezed into a single tile in iOS 13:

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I realize the examples are becoming exhausting, but that just illustrates the disappointing experience in iOS 13’s Home app. This change even affects HomeKit power strips like VOCOlinc PM2E which can include plugs, lights, and fans as assigned by the user in the Home app.

iOS 12:

Screen Shot 2019 08 20 at 3.21.41 PM

And iOS 13:

homekit

The worst example is saved for last: HomeKit camera sensors. The Arlo Baby Cam is primarily used as a video camera with sound input and output. A firmware update to the camera later added support for five additional accessories using the product’s built-in sensors.

Five more sensors is an awesome improvement to an already great HomeKit product — at least in iOS 12:

Screen Shot 2019 08 20 at 3.31.20 PM

If you want to read the same sensor data in iOS 13, simply tap on the camera tile, view the live video feed, find the button for other accessories in that room, then bam, you’ve managed to do something that was zero steps in iOS 12.

camera

Glanceable information isn’t the only benefit lost. Discoverability is a casualty too.

This design choice isn’t just a glitchy software bug found in a beta version of Apple’s software. It’s an intentional design change that required developing for this update. It hasn’t improved as the rest of the operating system has started to stabilize; it’s only grown worse.

Why did Apple make this change? The idea is logical. One product should have one tile that can be expanded to show every included accessory. It reduces the tile count and clears up which accessories belong to which products in your home.

The current answer being tested in each iOS 13 beta so far doesn’t appear to be the correct solution however. Glanceable information is removed and very different types of accessories are squeezed together.

yale assure sl homekit home app

Apple’s Home app already has a solution to the too-many-tiles problem. Users have control over which tiles appear on the Favorites section of the Home app. You can show as many or as few as you choose.

Accessories are only unpacked when you view a specific room, and even then you only see which accessories are located in that room. iOS 13 even improves this by moving bridges that offer no data or control to a different part of the Home app.

The Home app also has a mechanism for grouping accessories — if you choose — which is useful for turning multiple bulbs into a single lamp. iOS 13 could learn from that approach with a toggle to unpack accessories grouped under a single tile. The default can be bad as long as there’s a logical way out.

Jamf


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Theoretically, HomeKit supports fans as a smart home accessory. There are some HomeKit ceiling fans already on sale, but what I’ve been holding out for is a HomeKit tower fan for my office. Unfortunately, there aren’t really any to speak of.

After years of waiting, and a particularly hot summer, I gave up and explored the enthusiast route. I bought a standard fan with an IR remote control and set out to induct it into my HomeKit home using Homebridge…

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The most obvious route to add a dumb appliance to the HomeKit ecosystem is to use a smart plug. With a HomeKit smart plug, you can very quickly add smarts to a lot of accessories. The smart plug toggles the power on and off at your command, so it’s perfect for things like floor lamps.

Unfortunately, tower fans are not so simple. As they have settings like fan speed and oscillation to manage, they don’t simply turn on when the power turns on. They have a memory of sorts. When you plug them into power, which is what a smart plug is effectively emulating, they just sit there. You then have to press another button to actually start up the fan. This means a smart plug is not the solution.

Instead, I bought a fan with an Infrared remote control specifically because my plan was to use Homebridge. (What is Homebridge? Homebridge is a third-party, unofficial, bridge server that can expose all sorts of accessories to the HomeKit platform.)

The key to all of this is an IR blaster called the Broadlink RM. The RM connects to WiFi, so you can connect to it from an app and beam out Infrared commands remotely. However, the app is terrible and I have no interest in using it. Instead, the plan was to connect the Broadlink RM to Homebridge using this community plugin.

In the end, the blaster will essentially send out the same Infrared codes as the fan’s remote. The fan will see the incoming IR and dutifully perform the commands. All the IR stuff is wrapped up neatly in a Homebridge plugin and this means it will show up in my HomeKit home like any other accessory.

How to set up an Infrared accessory in HomeKit using Homebridge

ir blaster face on

 

The first step is to set up a Homebridge server itself if you don’t have one already. You can run Homebridge on a Mac, a Rasberry Pi, pretty much anything that can act as an always-on server. I elected to install Homebridge on my Synology NAS, which is always running as our house’s Plex media server anyway. You can find complete installation instructions for Homebridge on Synology here.

Then, the next step is to install the Homebridge plugin which knows how to connect to the Broadlink RM IR blaster.

Helpfully, the plugin has extensive documentation of its own, so it’s quite easy to follow along. To install the plugin, I opened up a terminal command line in the Homebridge console of the Synology web interface, and typed:

npm install homebridge-broadlink-rm

This downloads the appropriate package and installs it to your system automatically.

At this point, plug in your IR blaster in the same room as the accessory (or accessories) you intend to control. The blaster needs to have line-of-sight to the fan, but it doesn’t have to be dead on. The Broadlink RM is about the size of an Apple TV, so it’s quite small and discreet.

You have to use Broadlink’s app to connect the blaster to the WiFi network, but don’t bother actually setting up any accessories using Broadlink’s app. This is wholly separate to the Homebridge plugin configuration, so you don’t need to bother with it.

Homebridge is managed using a configuration file called config.json. You can access this file through the file system, and edit it using a text editor. (For my Synology setup, the easiest approach was to download the file through the web panel, edit it locally on my Mac, and then upload it back to the NAS’s storage.) This single file lists all the various parameters for all of the HomeKit accessories you want to expose.

For the Broadlink plugin, we need to add an entry to the platforms array of the JSON object and define the accessories inside of that. Again, refer to the plugin’s documentation pages to see example configuration snippets and explore all of the different customization options.

To get started, your platforms entry should look something like this:

Screenshot 2019 08 19 at 11.31.06

Every time you make a change to config.json, you will need to restart the Homebridge server for it to apply the new configuration. For a Synology server, this simply means pressing a Restart button in the Homebridge package interface.

With the initial configuration like the above screenshot, you can now try accessing Homebridge from your Home app on the iPhone for the first time.

Homebridge exposes itself to the Home app as a hub. From within the Home app, press the ‘Add Accessory’ button and select the detected Homebridge hub. Enter the following 8-digit code to confirm: 031-45-154. (You can find this code at the top of your config.json file.)

Now that the Homebridge hub is inside HomeKit, any exported accessories will also be added. Any changes to Homebridge from now on will be reflected automatically inside the Home app.

Now, although we haven’t explicitly added any accessory objects to the config.json file yet, there will be a new accessory in your Home called ‘Learn’. This is added by the RM plugin. This switch is the key to translating the Infrared remote control buttons to actionable items.

IMG 4506

What pressing the Learn switch does is puts the IR blaster into a special mode where it looks for any Infrared signals and outputs them to the Homebridge log. You need to write down the Infrared codes as we’ll need them later.

So, let’s say we are trying to record the power button of the remote. What we need to do first is press the Learn switch inside the Home app. Then, point our remote control at the IR blaster and press the power button. Look at the log and copy down the Infrared hex code (this will be a long hexadecimal sequence).

Repeat this process for every relevant button you want to expose to HomeKit. Don’t worry if you forget anything, you can always go back and learn again later. We are going to expose our fan as a basic on/off switch, so we only need the Infrared code that corresponds to the power command.

Once you have got a record of all the Infrared codes, you can go back to the config.json file and change the ‘hideLearnButton’ property from ‘false’ to ‘true’. This will remove the Learn accessory from the home.

Okay, so we have our Infrared code for power. Now what? Once again, we can look at the plugin documentation and work out the accessory object format that we need to put in the JSON.

The plugin can simulate accessories for many different types; outlets, switches, fans, lights, garage doors, locks, air conditioners, and shades. Each type has a different set of optional and required parameters, and it can get quite complicated.

The basic switch is all we need to power on and off the fan, and this requires only four properties: the name of the accessory, the semantic type (“switch”), the Infrared data to send when HomeKit turns the switch on, and the Infrared data to send when HomeKit turns the switch off.

Screenshot 2019 08 19 at 11.56.13

For both the ‘on’ and ‘off’ cases, we just paste into the hex string for power that we learned earlier. The ‘persistState’ option determines what happens if the Homebridge server restarts; should it remember the previous on/off state of the accessory? If ‘persistState’ is ‘true’, it remembers the previous state. If ‘persistState’ is ‘false’, then the switch accessory will be considered off on each reboot of the server. For a fan, it probably makes more sense to persist the state so I set this to ‘true’.

Note that this accessories array goes inside the platform object. For the Broadlink plugin, we do not use the top-level accessories array.

We are finished with our configuration, so to declutter our Home app, we set the ‘hideLearnButton’ parameter to ‘true’ which will remove the Learn switch helper. Our final config.json files look something like this:

Screenshot 2019 08 19 at 12.01.27Assuming everything was typed in correctly, and there are no syntax errors like missing commas, you can now restart the Homebridge server one more time.

Once it fires up, there will now be a new Tower Fan accessory in your HomeKit home. It will look like a switch, but we can use the ‘Display As’ setting inside the Home app to make it look like a fan. You can freely rename the accessory inside the Home app, by the way, the config.json name is just to identify it inside Homebridge itself.

When the fan tile is pressed, HomeKit sends a message to Homebridge to turn the switch on. The plugin then finds the Infrared code for the ‘on’ state and beams that around the room through the IR blaster. If everything went smoothly, the fan will see the Infrared signal and turn itself on! Success. Tapping the tile again sends the off command and the fan stops spinning.

How well do all these hacks work?

fan final

I was a bit skeptical going into this that everything would work without a hitch. However, I have been running this exact arrangement for two weeks now without a single glitch or failure.

Controlling the fan with HomeKit is extremely responsive. I can tap the tile in the Home app or use Siri and toggle the fan immediately. The performance is honestly better than some certified HomeKit accessories I’ve tried. The IR blaster never fails to send its signal, and the fan always receives it and behaves accordingly.

Using Homebridge and an IR blaster to recreate a switch may seem like overkill, but this is just scratching the surface of what is possible.

You may have noticed that the plugin includes support for an actual “fan” accessory. This means you can use Infrared to control things like oscillation and fan speed. I actually got oscillation working but my downfall was the fan speed setting.

honeywell remote

Unfortunately, the remote for my Honeywell fan only has one fan speed button. When you press the button, it sends out the same IR signal and the fan rotates through each of the three fan speeds. For the IR blaster to work with fan speed, you need to find a fan/remote combo that sends out a different IR signal for each speed; like one IR code for slow, one IR code for fast.

Because of this issue, I opted to simply expose the fan as a basic switch. If I wanted to, I could expose the fan speed command as a separate ‘toggle switch’ inside HomeKit. However, that is a little elegant, so for the time being, I am using it as a simple on/off switch only.

Conclusion

I sure hope that some company soon will actually make a real HomeKit fan, with certified support for all of HomeKit’s accessory services like power, fan speed, oscillation and swing mode direction. That would be the most ideal solution.

That being said, I have been genuinely surprised at how well the Homebridge community solution has performed. The description of the process makes it sound more difficult than it actually is. And of course, that configuration only has to happen once. I set it all up in a couple of hours. If you don’t have a programming background like me, it may be a bit more of a struggle to wrap your head around things like the JSON file format. But, Google is your friend. Homebridge is a surprisingly popular hack and there are a lot of tutorials and videos online that guide you through it.

Homebridge is an incredible Apple community achievement. Frankly, it is amazing that this stuff exists at all — all for free. The Broadlink RM IR blaster that was the glue of this particular integration is pretty inexpensive too.

If you are feeling adventurous, perhaps give Homebridge a shot.


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IKEA has announced that it is increasing its investment in smart home technology and products. This comes as the company has gradually expanded into the smart home market with low-cost products that often integrate with Apple’s HomeKit platform.

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Sylvania HomeKit Light Strip

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IKEA says that it first initiated its smart home efforts in 2012, but now it is establishing an all-new IKEA Home Smart business unit to take things to the next level. Björn Block will serve as the head of IKEA Home Smart, and says that for IKEA to continue growing it needs to “explore products and solutions beyond convention home furnishing.”

“We have decided to invest significantly in Home Smart across IKEA to fast-forward the development. This is the biggest New Business we are establishing since the introduction of Children’s IKEA,” says Peter van der Poel, Manager IKEA Range & Supply.

“By working together with all other departments within IKEA, the business unit of IKEA Home smart will drive the digital transformation of the IKEA range, improving and transforming existing businesses and developing new businesses to bring more diverse smart products to the many people. We are just getting started,” ends Björn Block,

It’s unclear what other smart home products IKEA has on its roadmap. The company is gearing up for the launch of its long-awaited HomeKit smart blinds in the United States. It also recently launched its first speakers in partnership with Sonos, which we reviewed earlier this week.

What would you like to see from IKEA’s new Home Smart business unit? Have you incorporated any of its existing products into your smart home setup? Let us know down in the comments.

Read more: 

Jamf


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After my 20-year-old garage door opener decided to kick the bucket, I asked a friend to install a new opener. The LiftMaster WLED Elite Series garage door opener that I opted for includes built-in Wi-Fi, allowing it to connect to my home network without the help of any additional hardware.

By itself, the Wi-Fi-enabled opener can talk to the MyQ smartphone app, allowing users to open and close the overhead door remotely via the app. More important for those engrossed in the HomeKit ecosystem, however, is direct support for the MyQ Home Bridge hardware.

The MyQ Home Bridge acts as a liaison between HomeKit and the overhead door opener, allowing you to control a garage door via Siri or the Home app on your iOS device.

Is the MyQ Home Bridge a worthwhile investment if you have a capable garage door opener? Watch our hands-on video for the details.

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Synology RT2600ac: The AirPort Extreme replacement.

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First and foremost, I have to admit that the whole setup is needlessly ambiguous, and could have been simplified by integrating the Home Bridge hardware directly into the opener itself. Upfront, the setup seems unnecessarily complicated, especially when there is Wi-Fi already built into the opener.

Another possible point of confusion is the existence of the MyQ Smart Garage Hub (watch Jordan’s review at 9to5Toys), which brings smartphone support (but not HomeKit support) to most garage door openers made after 1993 that don’t already have Wi-Fi support built-in.

MyQ Home Bridge video walkthrough

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If you have an opener that lacks Wi-Fi, you’ll need both the Smart Garage Hub and the Home Bridge to enable HomeKit support. Be sure to read Zac’s hands-on with the MyQ Home Bridge for more details.

Unboxing the myQ Home Bridge

The MyQ Home Bridge is a simple, black plastic box that’s not much different in form factor than the MyQ Smart Garage Hub. On the front of the device is the LiftMaster logo, along with a set of blue, green, and yellow LED indicators below a translucent window.

On the side of the unit, you’ll find three buttons along with the power port to connect the included power supply. The programmable buttons are optional and can be used to reset the unit to factory defaults.

LiftMaster MyQ Home Bridge review

Regardless of the actual “LiftMaster” branding, the MyQ Home Bridge is compatible with certain Chamberlain, Raynor, and Craftsman garage door openers as well, as they all are a part of the Chamberlain Group corporate parent company. The same goes for the Chamberlain-branded MyQ Home Bridge.

LiftMaster MyQ Home Bridge

Also included in the box is a mounting bracket and screws for mounting the Home Bridge on a surface. Because the unit operates wirelessly and doesn’t need to be hard-wired to your router, you have the option of mounting it in the same location as the garage door opener itself.

LiftMaster MyQ Home Bridge installation

I opted to mount the bridge on a wooded plank next to my opener, which is what LiftMaster recommends in its documentation. As long as you have decent Wi-Fi signal strength in the garage, such a setup should work just fine.

LiftMaster MyQ Home Bridge side view installation

Connecting the MyQ Home Bridge

Since there is no power button or switch on the Home Bridge, simply plugging it in is enough to get started. A blue status light indicates that you’re ready to begin the set up process.

LiftMaster myQ Home Bridge LED

You’ll need to download the MyQ app on your iOS device, which you likely already have if you’re using a Wi-Fi-enabled opener or an opener + the MyQ Smart Garage Hub.

LiftMaster MyQ Home Bridge configuration app

Once the MyQ app is installed and open, you’ll need to create an account and log in. The MyQ app allows you to monitor and control the garage door opener via the app interface, but in order to incorporate the MyQ Home Bridge and enable HomeKit support, you’ll need to go through the set up process.

LiftMaster MyQ Home Bridge add new device

Set up involves plugging in the MyQ Home Bridge, adding a new device via the app, scanning the HomeKit setup code, and pressing the physical Learn button on the garage door opener.

LiftMaster MyQ Home Bridge Garage Door Opener

In order to press the Learn button on my opener, I had to pull down the side panel to access all of the unit’s buttons. A single press on the circular Learn button was all that was needed to finish the set up.

LiftMaster MyQ Home Bridge Garage Door Opener button

Using HomeKit to open the garage door

Once everything is set up, you’ll see the garage door opener in your Home app represented by a HomeKit tile. Tapping the tile will either open or close the door depending on its current state.

LiftMaster MyQ Home Bridge Home app

You can also control the opener via Siri commands such as “open the garage door” or “close the garage door”.

LiftMaster MyQ Home Bridge Siri Control garage door opener

Another benefit to HomeKit support is automation, which can be set up to trigger when certain conditions are satisfied, such as when you arrive at home.

The downside to automation is that you’ll need to verify the command before it proceeds since, just like Apple mandates with interior doors, there is a potential security risk involved with opening garage doors.

LiftMaster MyQ Home Bridge opening Garage door

I understand why Apple may want to play it safe and not execute door-opening commands automatically, but I can’t help but feel that such a setup is inferior to what you get from a comparatively simple HomeLink experience on the Tesla Model 3. HomeLink will automatically close and open your garage door based on GPS location without any confirmation needed.

LiftMaster MyQ Home Bridge Garage Door Opener flashing beeping

LiftMaster and Chamberlain also play it safe with their smartphone controls, as anytime the command to close the door is initiated, the garage door emits several loud beeps, flashing lights, along with a 7-second delay before the door begins to close. Watch our hands-on video above for a look at this madness in action.

This only occurs when using the app to close the door and is there to prevent potential injury in case the command to close is initiated from a remote location where the user isn’t able to monitor the door and what may be around it. It’s another reason why I prefer the simple HomeLink method found on the Tesla Model 3 because it’s emulating a simple click of the hardware remote instead of initiating commands via Wi-Fi.

9to5Mac’s Take

In my opinion, the main benefit of the MyQ Home Bridge, and HomeKit support, in general, is the ability to quickly monitor the status of the garage door via voice commands or via the Home app. Executing actual commands is handy as well, but the experience feels gimped due to the lack of full automation, and the delays and additional theatrics that accompany the experience.

LiftMaster MyQ Wi Fi Garage Door Opener

I also think that the process to enable HomeKit is overly complicated. For users with older non-Wi-Fi garage doors, you’ll need to have three pieces of hardware installed — the MyQ Smart Garage Hub, its corresponding sensor for the opener, and the MyQ Home Bridge. If you already have a modern garage door opener installed, such as the LiftMaster WLED Elite Series, you’ll just need the MyQ Home Bridge.

LiftMaster MyQ Home Bridge hero

It’s nice to be able to monitor and control your garage door, but it’s not the seamless experience that you might expect from a HomeKit-enabled device. For some users, “dumb” HomeLink support built into a vehicle may be the preferred option.

What do you think about the MyQ Home Bridge and HomeKit-enabled garage door openers? Sound off in the comments below with your thoughts and opinions.

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Sonos and IKEA’s home decor meets smart speaker collaboration has an interesting challenge: will it blend? Not in the squeeze-it-in-a-blender sense; will it blend in with your home and fit your taste?

Like sound, design preference is highly subjective. What’s not is just how versatile the new SYMFONISK lineup can be. Sonos and IKEA have bundled a Play:1 level Wi-Fi speaker inside a table lamp and bookshelf end cap. Useful features and attractive prices make both speakers worth considering even if you’re not in the Sonos ecosystem.

Smart as Sonos

Sonos didn’t hold any features back when creating SYMFONISK speakers with IKEA. Both Wi-Fi speakers are real Sonos speakers with features like Trueplay audio tuning, integration with Apple Music streaming, and support for wirelessly playing audio with AirPlay 2.

Apple AirPlay 2 speakers including the table lamp and bookshelf speakers let you wirelessly beam audio including music and podcasts from Apple devices. You can also assign each speaker to a room in your home using HomeKit and Apple’s Home app. This lets you use Siri voice control to send audio from iPhones, iPads, HomePods, and Apple TVs to AirPlay 2 speakers.

Sonos

Neither speaker includes built-in voice control and both lack microphones found on other Sonos speakers, although those omissions could be seen as positives for privacy-focused users.

Even without mics included, any Sonos system can be controlled with Amazon Echo and Google Assistant smart speakers and inputs when connected through the Sonos app. For the most integration with the Apple ecosystem, HomePod is still the (premium) smart speaker to beat.

If you’re already in the Sonos ecosystem, the two SYMFONISK speakers fit in with your existing system just like any other Sonos Wi-Fi speaker.

SYMFONISK lineup

The long-awaited collaboration between Sonos and IKEA starts with two speaker types, each with black or white color options, as the beginning of the new SYMFONISK lineup.

Both the table lamp and bookshelf speaker are sonically similar with audio comparable to the entry-level Sonos One (or Sonos Play:1) Wi-Fi speakers. Priced from $99 to $179, the first two SYMFONISK speakers won’t deliver the punch that Apple’s $300 HomePod and Sonos’ $500 Play:5 will, but both push impressive sound for under $200.

Under the fabric wrap are forward-facing speakers on both options — no 360º sound even on the table lamp speaker despite its HomePod-like appearance — but Sonos Trueplay is effective at tuning speakers with acoustically challenged placement.

Table Lamp

The $179 table lamp is the higher priced Wi-Fi speaker in the set.

The base includes three buttons for controlling volume and playback below a status light that can be disabled through software. The speaker layer is hidden under a white or black soft fabric that wraps around all sides.

Sonos IKEA speaker 4

The back of the lamp includes an inset cutout for an Ethernet port for use without Wi-Fi in contrast to Apple’s Wi-Fi-dependent HomePod. An Ethernet port on a table lamp certainly doesn’t help with the furniture-not-speaker illusion, but it’s not an eyesore if you can keep it out of view. Sonos and IKEA also include a removable power cable with a friendly fabric cover.

A giant knob on the right side of the table lamp lets you turn the bulb on and off without powering down the speaker half of the product. There’s no dimming control, but there is a satisfactory sturdiness to the switch.

Sonos IKEA speaker 2

The table lamp’s shade is a replaceable, hefty glass top that screws off to reveal the bulb slot. There are no smart light features built-in and you supply your own bulb, but the table lamp can turn smart with the right bulb just like any lamp.

The knob placement for turning the lamp portion on and off is worth noting for two reasons. The first is simple ergonomics. While testing the SYMFONISK table lamp as my bedside light, I noticed that the switch can be hard to reach if it faces away from your side of the bed.

Sonos IKEA speaker 5

Smart control aside, the bulb size requirement is the biggest drawback to lighting. Sonos and IKEA chose to support 7W candle bulbs in this version which usually aren’t bright enough to light a room. Lower brightness levels mixed with the opaque glass cover limit the table lamp’s utility as a single light source and make it more ideal for mood lighting.

Two of the same Sonos speakers can be paired to create a single stereo system, and that’s true for the table lamp as well. A pair of table lamps on either side of a bed or couch could help with the light levels while creating a unique stereo system.

Sonos IKEA speaker 7

Also recall that both Sonos speakers are forward-facing so the best sound is experienced when the front of the speaker is aimed toward you. With light knob placement and sound quality in mind, I’ve angled the table lamp to point toward the front corner of my nightstand. That’s not the ideal position with that Ethernet port and power cord in mind for me, but it’s worth the tradeoff.

Sonically, the speaker inside is remarkable for what you might expect inside a table lamp. Sonos lets you adjust the bass, treble, and loudness levels of each speaker if you don’t rely on Trueplay. Adjusting the treble upward in my case was perfect for balancing the sound without losing the bass response.

Sonos IKEA speaker 8

Apple’s HomePod can be too punchy even at low volumes which can be overkill for a nightstand; the Sonos sound with bass and treble control can be safer in this environment for noise conscious listeners.

Bookshelf Speaker

The bookshelf speaker may be the less interesting product visually, but a lower price and straightforward look make its appeal more general. Available in black or white, this AirPlay 2 Wi-Fi speaker can stand tall or sit flat to tuck away on a shelf or use as end caps between books.

Sonos IKEA speaker 9

The front features a textured fabric cover over the front-facing speaker while the sides are flat plastic. Like the table lamp, the bookshelf speaker can be paired with another bookshelf speaker to create a stereo system. This speaker can also be wall mounted or placed on a mounted shelf sold from IKEA.

When using the speaker as an end cap for books on a shelf, the Wi-Fi speaker just begs to become a stereo pair — not a bad AirPlay 2 solution for $200.

Sonos IKEA speaker 6

Adjusting the treble settings upward on the bookshelf speaker just like with the table lamp met my audio needs for a speaker this size, and for $99 you can easily buy a worse speaker with far fewer features.

For you?

For my own home, the bookshelf speaker is a natural fit today. I would love a version of the table lamp that offered no knob at all, relying on a smart bulb with remote control instead, and a smaller or removed plastic base on the bottom to reduce the footprint. There’s also an opportunity for an upgraded version that supports higher wattage bulbs for emitting more light in a room.

If you’re invested in the Apple ecosystem, many of Sonos’ Wi-Fi speakers mesh well. Sonos supports Apple Music on all of its speakers, and AirPlay 2 which works with SYMFONISK is also supported on Sonos One, the second-gen Sonos Play:5, Sonos Beam, and Sonos Playbase.

Only at IKEA

The new Sonos + IKEA SYMFONISK Wi-Fi speakers are sold exclusively from IKEA online and in stores. SYMFONISK won’t be ideal for customers looking for voice control features or the most premium audio experience, but the new table lamp and bookshelf speakers are the start of a new direction for Sonos — one that will likely welcome new users to the Sonos ecosystem.

The new $179 table lamp and $99 bookshelf speakers reduce the price for a Sonos AirPlay 2 speaker considering the $199 Sonos One price and lack of AirPlay 2 on the $149 Sonos Play:1.

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At CES in January, TP-Link announced plans to add HomeKit support to its popular Kasa Smart Plug Mini sometime in “early” 2019. Unfortunately, however, it now appears that TP-Link has dropped those plans completely.

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Sylvania HomeKit Light Strip

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In a support document posted to its website, TP-Link explains that the Kasa Smart Plug Mini will not add HomeKit support due to changes in its roadmap (via The Verge).

Due to changes in our roadmap, the Kasa Smart Plug Mini (HS105) smart plug will not offer support for Apple HomeKit. Despite the change in direction for this specific SKU, our team is committed to the development of innovative smart home solutions that will continue to delight our customers around the globe.

This is unfortunate news for owners of the Kasa Smart Plug Mini. The announcement of HomeKit support made it a popular option, especially coupled with its oft-discounted price point. Outside of HomeKit, the Kasa Smart Plug Mini supports Alexa and Google Assistant, and can be controlled via the TP-Link app. Whether or not TP-Link has any other HomeKit announcements or accessories on its roadmap remains unclear.

Nonetheless, despite TP-Link’s failure to follow through, a handful of excellent HomeKit smart plugs from other manufacturers are already available. My personal favorite is the iHome ISP6S, which integrates with Alexa, HomeKit, and Google Assistant. Another popular option is the WeMo Mini Smart Plug.

There are also several HomeKit power strips on the market, with my personal favorite being the VOCOlinc Smart WiFi Power Strip (full review).

Have you integrated any HomeKit smart plugs into your smart home setup? Let us know down in the comments.

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HomeKit support for Arlo Pro and Pro 2 cameras started to roll out this week and we went hands-on with the support for Apple’s smart home platform. Now, Arlo’s Director of Product has answered a range of questions on the company’s forums and shared when Arlo Ultra should receive HomeKit support, details about HomeKit Secure Video, and more.

Arlo hosted a “Chat about HomeKit” with the company’s Director of Product, Greg Falgiano, on its forums today. While HomeKit support for Arlo Pro and Pro 2 was very welcome, it left out owners of the high-end Arlo Ultra. Falgiano confirmed that the Ultra is the next product to gain HomeKit functionality. He said Arlo’s goal is to finish that in Q4 but he didn’t share a more specific timeframe than that.

He also said that the company isn’t planning on making its cameras work with Apple’s upcoming HomeKit Secure Video for now.

Yes, Arlo Ultra is the next product to be certified for HomeKit. Our goal is to have that completed by Q4 of this year. Arlo does not currently plan to support Apple HomeKit Secure Video, but we will support a range of other features that will enable Arlo cameras to participate in the HomeKit ecosystem

Another user asked about the possibility of adding an arm/disarm option with HomeKit for Arlo cameras.

The inability to arm/disarm Arlo through Homekit is not ideal. I understand there may be issues directly adding the Base Station to HomeKit to allow this.

Could you instead create Siri Shortcuts as part of the Arlo App to allow arm/disarm of the system. This would at least allow users to incorporate Arlo Modes into Siri Shortcuts with other Homekit devices. This should be an easy addition to the Arlo App.

Falgiano said the issue is currently a HomeKit limitation that affects all cameras, not just Arlo’s from being able to arm/disarm from HomeKit. However, he did mention that enabling support for Siri Shortcuts could be a good workaround.

@illuminous thanks for the suggestion on Siri shortcuts. I agree that would be a good addition to the Arlo app.

For arming/diarming, we looked into this with the Apple team and the option isn’t available for camera “device types.” This applies to all cameras on the HomeKit ecosystem, not just Arlo. We passed the feedback on to Apple as we have heard this request from a few customers. We have to wait until it is officially supported before we can implement the feature though.

Are you waiting patiently for HomeKit support for Arlo Ultra? Have you got it up and running on your Pro or Pro 2 camera setup? Share your thoughts in the comments below!


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On Monday Arlo released its version 2.7.13 update to add HomeKit support to its security cameras. Needless to say, this is a highly-anticipated feature that Arlo users within the iOS ecosystem have been waiting on for quite some time. Was it worth the wait? Watch our hands-on video walkthrough for the details.

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Synology RT2600ac: The AirPort Extreme replacement.

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The 2.7.13 update includes full support for HomeKit, including the ability to add your Arlo cameras directly to the Home app, view cameras within the Home app, set up motion detection triggers with other HomeKit-enabled devices, quickly view scenes via interactive notifications, and ask Siri to stream a particular camera live.

Unfortunately, the update only applies to users with Base Station model numbers starting with VMB4000 and VMB4500. In other words, Arlo Pro and Arlo Pro 2 users will gain the new functionality, but Arlo Ultra users will have to continue to be patient as they await HomeKit support.

Arlo Pro 2 HomeKit support video walkthrough

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HomeKit is for Arlo Pro and Arlo Pro 2 only (for now)

Because I have an Arlo Ultra (full review) camera on my network, I disconnected the old VMB4000 Base Station because it became redundant once I hooked up the new VMB5000 Base Station required for the newer 4K-capable security camera. The VMB5000 includes backwards compatibility with older Arlo Pro and Arlo Pro 2 hardware, so I felt it was unnecessary to keep the old hub connected.

Arlo Base Station VMB4000 HomeKit

The Arlo VMB4000 Base Station

Obviously, my tune quickly changed once I realized that HomeKit support was here, but remained relegated to the older Base Station hardware. As such, I decided to reconnect the VMB4000, and simply connect all of the Arlo Pro 2 cameras I had on my network to it, leaving the new VMB5000 with its lone Arlo Ultra connected.

Arlo Ultra Base Station VMB5000 No HomeKit Yet

The VMB5000 (Arlo Ultra) Base Station isn’t yet compatible with HomeKit

Outside of the inconvenience of having to have an additional hub connected to my network, such a setup didn’t make much of a difference in usability. Once Arlo adds support for HomeKit to its newest Base Station, I’ll probably go back to my single setup and put the older VMB4000 back in storage.

Arlo Ultra No HomeKit Yet

Enabling HomeKit

Setting up HomeKit support for the Arlo cameras is all done within the Arlo app, so you don’t have to visit the Home app to add the hub, enter any passcodes, etc. I found that adding HomeKit support was a little finicky, but once I got going it was smooth sailing.

Once the update is installed, you’ll see a pop-up within the Arlo app stating that Arlo cameras now work with HomeKit. You can also venture into the hub settings to access a new HomeKit panel specifically geared towards establishing a HomeKit connection.

Arlo HomeKit 1

Prior to the HomeKit set up process, you’ll be asked to lend access to your Home data, which is necessary to get the ball rolling. The app will then walk you through the entire process of adding cameras to HomeKit.

HomeKit Arlo Privacy Permissions

Giving Arlo access to HomeKit data

After tapping the Add Cameras to HomeKit button, the app will search your network for a compatible base station. After tapping on the base station, the app will have you select a Home, followed by the room that you’d like to add your cameras to. These rooms are imported from your pre-existing HomeKit settings, so it’s very straightforward even though the set up occurs “outside” of the Home app.

Once a room is selected, you’ll see a popup requesting to allow the Arlo App to add the Bridge (Arlo Base Station) to your Home. Once you tap Continue, the base station will be added to your home as a HomeKit hub.

Arlo Requesting HomeKit Info

The next step is to configure any cameras connected to your base station. Arlo Pro 2 cameras include two primary functions — they can act as a standard camera for viewing at any time, and they can also act as a motion sensor to trigger automation.

Add Arlo Bridge to HomeKit

The Home app allows you to rename the viewing and motion functions independently of one another. Users also have the ability to reassign cameras to specific rooms and include cameras in favorites for display on the Home tab within the Home app.

Arlo Add Camera Home app

Arlo Pro 2 HomeKit support

It is so nice to finally be able to access my Arlo cameras within the Home app. I can view a preview of any cameras I have set up within the Home app as a favorite, allowing me to gain a quick glance of everything that’s happening on the premises at any given time.

Favorite Cameras Home app Arlo

Preview cameras via the Favorites tab

Of course, you can also tap on any of the cameras for a live view at any time. It should be noted that iOS 12’s HomeKit camera live view interface is a bit more limited than what you’ll find in iOS 13.

Arlo Pro 2 HomeKit Streaming Video

iOS 12’s HomeKit live camera view interface

With iOS 13 you can quickly toggle between any cameras configured via a handy drop-down menu. Another nice thing about the live feed interface in iOS 13 is that you can easily access any other HomeKit accessories within the same room with a tap of the room button in the bottom right-hand corner. This is handy, for instance, if you detect motion in a room, and want to quickly turn on a light in the same room.

iOS 13 HomeKit Camera live interface

The iOS 13 HomeKit live camera interface is a bit more feature dense

Siri support means that I can simply say “Hey Siri, show me the Office camera” and Siri will quickly launch the Home app with a live view of the camera.

Another great feature is the interactive notifications. When a camera detects motion, a notification will display that includes a live camera feed should you wish to quickly view it. Similar notifications have been long available within the Arlo app, but it’s nice to have such functionality within the native Home app.

Arlo Pro HomeKit Video interactive notifications

Notifications provide a preview of the current scene

But the most important thing about HomeKit support with Arlo camera is how it allows you to interact with other HomeKit-enabled devices. Previously Arlo cameras were more or less quarantined from the rest of the HomeKit-enabled smart devices, which limited the potential and usefulness of these cameras.

Arlo Camera Previews Home app

For example, without HomeKit support, I couldn’t make my Philips Hue light turn on when my Arlo Pro 2 camera detected motion at night. With HomeKit support now in tow, such combinations are a real possibility.

There’s still a place for the Arlo app

That’s not to say that HomeKit support will entirely supplant the need for the Arlo app. There remain many functions that remain useful for Arlo app users — general configuration and optimization, to the ability to utilize features like the two-way radios, to the lack of support for other devices like the Arlo Ultra and security lights within the Home app.

The most obvious difference between the two is the inability to save or view recordings directly from the Home app. Although the Home app provides real-time monitoring, it’s the DVR functionality that makes a security-oriented camera system like the Arlo so effective.

Arlo App DVR

Apple announced that it is expanding its support for security cameras in iOS 13 with HomeKit Secure Video, a feature that’s separate from generic HomeKit camera support. Not only will this new service include privacy enhancements, but it will also allow supported cameras to save 10 days of recordings to iCloud at no extra charge for 200GB and 2TB iCloud storage tier subscribers.

Whether or not current-get Arlo cameras will eventually support HomeKit Secure Video is anyone’s guess, but I won’t be holding my breath. Arlo makes money from subscriptions that include DVR, so there may be little incentive for them to support HomeKit Secure Video.

As of now, there is currently a limited list of camera makers — Logitech, Eufy, Netatmo, and Robin — that will include support for HomeKit Secure Video in some of their current and upcoming products. Logitech recently announced that its currently-available Circle 2 Wired Security Camera would eventually gain support.

9to5Mac’s Take

It took a long time, but HomeKit support for the Arlo Pro and Arlo Pro 2 is finally here. Such support won’t eliminate the need for the full Arlo app, but being able to quickly view real-time camera views via Siri, and having the ability to integrate cameras within the rest of the HomeKit setup is a nice first step and a welcomed addition.

Here’s hoping that Arlo can get other devices up and running with HomeKit support as well, most notably, the 4K-enabled Arlo Ultra that we recently reviewed.

What are your thoughts on the Arlo Pro and Arlo Pro 2 finally gaining HomeKit support? Sound off down below in the comments with your thoughts.

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When Philips Hue first announced its line of outdoor smart lighting back at CES 2018, I was immediately intrigued. I was on-hand for the demo in Las Vegas and saw an answer to a problem that has seemingly plagued my outdoor spaces for years. There are plenty of lighting solutions for gardens and outdoor areas but most are clunky and unrefined. I’ve leaned on outdoor-grade smart plugs each Christmas for a while, but those lack the integrated dimming controls that are often best suited for landscape lighting.

The Philips Hue outdoor line arrived on the scene with an answer in-hand, and a hefty price tag to match. But what I found was a refined solution that met the needs of my burgeoning HomeKit setup while highlighting the unique architectural aspects of my home, which you can learn more about below.

Philips Hue Outdoor line covers all the bases

The initial CES announcement revealed an outdoor lineup built off the familiar Philips Hue line of products. There were floodlights, strips, and the usual suite of starter kits and expand at your own pace options we’ve come to know from Philips.

I’ve been using the Hue line for a number of years now. The ability to slowly grow my inventory of lights combined with a refined experience backed by HomeKit has made it a no-brainer for my uses. I’ve always found the price tag to be worth the experience.

My Philips Hue outdoor experience was centered around the brand’s Lily Outdoor spot lights, which retail in a three-pack for $339.99. At over $110 per light, that’s a pricey endeavor. Especially considering that three lights will likely not cover most home’s outdoor spaces. I also added a pair of Ludere Outdoor floodlights above my garage, which go for $129.99. All told, there was $1,580 worth of lighting required to adequately illuminate my 1.5-acre property. A cheap venture, this is not.

But while the price concerns are worth pointing out, you’re also buying into the best HomeKit lighting manufacturer out there. Backed by years of experience and Apple’s seal of approval. What I’m trying to say is, Hue isn’t going anywhere. And it’s that peace of mind in today’s constantly-changing smart home scene that makes the big price tag here easier to swallow.

hue lily spot light

Hands-on with the Lily Outdoor spot light

The Philips Hue outdoor lineup is built around the Lily spot light. It’s the most traditional offering of the bunch, serving as a basic spotlight at its core upgraded with 16 million colors, HomeKit control (along with Alexa and Assistant, too), and the usual suite of automatic scheduling features.

A three-pack kit retails for $339.99, but there is also the option to buy a single light for $99.99. The single bundle does not include a power source, for those of you doing the math at home.

Inside the box is a trio of individually-packed lights, plus the power block, three extension cables, and two splitters for connecting multiple lights together. If you’ve installed a Hue light before, the set up process here will be very familiar. Simply screw in the light, which in this case requires the snapping together of two connectors, followed by a screw-on top to keep the weather out. Each light should be attached to the power block prior to plugging in the main outlet because the lights automatically turn on and are blinding. Just take my word for it.

Philips Hue iOS app

Philips includes enough cable length to easily space out each light appropriately. It took five to cover the front of my average-sized home. The installation process is easy with the snap and screw process I explained above. After plugging in the power source, you’ll then open the Hue app and navigate to the add light section. As long as one light is within range of either your Hue Hub or another Hue light, they will automatically be added to your setup and HomeKit. From there you can name, schedule, and place each light into the necessary room or scene within your Home app.

The Lily Outdoor spot light provided ample brightness in my testing. While I might not be testing out all 16 million colors any time soon, the ability to change the warmth of each light individually allows users to create just the right uniform (or not) look. This is particularly helpful if you’re dealing with varying materials on your home, as each one will reflect light differently.

Philips Hue Ludere Light

Hands-on with the Ludere Outdoor floodlights

While the Lily spot lights offer an easy install, the Ludere Outdoor floodlights require a bit more knowledge on the electrical wiring front. If you’ve installed a floodlight before, the experience is rather straightforward. If not, you may find dealing with bare wires to be a bit more intimidating. The Philips Hue Outdoor line does a great job of including detailed instructions with each product. That was a welcome sight for this novice DIYer.

If you’ve seen any of Philips’ other fixture-based lights, then the Ludere Outdoor floodlight will be familiar. What you’re essentially getting here is a traditional light fixture paired with one of Philips’ smart lights. There’s nothing particularly noteworthy about the actual surround that the bulb sits in. You’re paying for Hue to bring it all together in one tidy package, essentially.

After popping off my existing floodlight setup, and turning off the electricity first, install was fairly straight forward. The Ludere Outdoor floodlight fit my existing housing that was already in place, and I simply had to tie the new and old wires together. From there, a single screw on the housing brings everything securely into place and it’s time to test your handiwork.

Philips Hue white bulb

Set up is just the same as the Lily lights detailed above, but one notable difference is the bulb type. Philips includes its Hue White bulb on the Ludere, which means you only have your choice of various warm and cold shades. The 16 million colors to choose from are not an option here.

Wrapping up

Philips Hue Outdoor hits all the marks when it comes to build quality and ease of install. But that price. It’s going to be an issue for many consumers. And while smart home enthusiasts are willing to spend, shelling out $300+ for outdoor lighting is still going to cause most to pause.

Hue Spot Light in woods

If money is no object, I wholeheartedly recommend the Lily Outdoor spot lights. Everything about the experience was top-notch and the easy integration with HomeKit continues to be one of Hue’s greatest strengths.

I was less impressed with Hue’s floodlights. The product worked as intended, but ultimately you’re likely to be better off to either install a single Hue bulb into your existing surround or add a smart light switch to the mix instead. Unless you’re really in love with the actual fixture, your money is likely better spent elsewhere.

The Philips Hue Outdoor lineup reigns supreme as the best landscape lighting for HomeKit users. Its price is high, but well worth the investment if you want a best-in-class experience.

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Arlo has today started rolling out HomeKit support for two of its Arlo Base Stations. These updates enable HomeKit support for the Arlo Pro and Arlo Pro 2 security cameras, fulfilling a promise made by the company in January.

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During CES this year, Arlo announced that it would make HomeKit support available for the Arlo Pro and Pro 2 sometime during the first quarter. While it missed that Q1 deadline, the update is now available.

Owners of the Arlo Base Station VMB4000 and the Arlo Base Station VMB4500 should have a new update available via the Arlo application on iOS. Once you install this update, you’ll be able to use the Arlo app to access your HomeKit code, and add your Pro or Pro 2 cameras to HomeKit.

Adding HomeKit support to the Pro and Pro 2 means that you’ll be able to access live video streams from your camera directly in the Home app. This places the video right alongside your other HomeKit accessories, and means you won’t have to visit the Arlo app itself quite as often.

Of note, iOS 13 adds a new HomeKit Secure Video functionality that records your smart camera video and uploads it to iCloud. This a separate feature from generic HomeKit support, however, and Arlo is not yet on the list of manufacturers who plan to support the functionality. The current manufacturers signed on to support HomeKit Secure Video include Logitech, Eufy, Netatmo, and Robin.

Unfortunately, owners of the Arlo Ultra 4K, which we reviewed back in May, will have to keep waiting for Home support. There’s currently no timetable for when Arlo might roll out support for the newer Ultra cameras.

Arlo Pro and Pro 2 users can head to the Arlo app on iOS now to update their Base Station and start taking advantage of HomeKit support.

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Home control system integration with Apple TV and Siri is one of the few features introduced in tvOS 12, and this week Crestron is releasing an update to its programmable touch screen remote to support the new feature.

Apple announced home control system integration last year at WWDC 2018 alongside Dolby Atmos support and new screen savers designed for Apple TV, although adoption of the smart home feature has been rather slow.

Through a software and firmware update rolling out this week, Crestron’s TSR-310 handheld touch screen remote will be the first home control system to work with Apple TV, Siri, and HomeKit. TSR-310 is a single remote that can control smart home accessories through a 3-inch touch screen or voice control, and the interface can be programmed to control TVs — now including Apple TV.

Crestron TSR-310 can control multiple Apple TVs running tvOS 12 or later, and the voice input button now supports Siri voice control on Apple TV.

From from the manufacturer about the update and new features below:

The SIMPL Windows release is available now:

  • Make sure you are running the Device Database 106.05.001.00 or later
  • For the TSR-310 make sure you are running the latest software and firmware posted here
  • For 3-Series control systems, visit the corresponding product pages to download the latest software and firmware
  • Sample programs can be found here

The device and Crestron databases, available here, will enable this functionality in SIMPL Windows. After updating the firmware you can use the built-in help file to program HomeKit® integration. Refer to the provided documentation for guidance on how to integrate these modules into your programs.

The Apple certified 3-Series SIMPL Windows firmware update will include:

  • Support for 3-Series control systems to enable these new features
  • SIMPL Windows module and TSR-310 extender, with documentation on how to make these new features work in SIMPL Windows
  • Ability to:
  • Control Apple TV with TSR-310
  • Securely connect TSR-310 and HomeKit
  • Control multiple Apple TV units via TSR-310, linked by their device names
  • Route voice via TSR-310 microphone to currently selected Apple TV, once correctly connected in SIMPL Windows

For control via other devices including the HR-310, touch screens, or mobile app, you will need to provide a secondary means of control such as IR or CEC.

Crestron TSR-310, which retails for a cool $1000, is available through certified dealers.

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Nanoleaf has a new update launching today for its Canvas smart lights that transforms the color-shifting tiles into touch-based HomeKit buttons for activating scenes. Touch Actions let you assign HomeKit scenes to specific Canvas tiles for controlling groups of smart home accessories without an app or voice.

That convenience is important in situations where voice isn’t appropriate (like when people are sleeping) and using an app is too fiddly. Using Touch Actions, Nanoleaf puts a HomeKit button for assigning up to three scenes per each tile directly on the wall. Canvas smart lights are square, touch-based accent lights that can also be controlled through HomeKit and Siri.

The new Touch Actions feature requires a HomeKit hub on the network (i.e. an Apple TV, always-on iPad, or HomePod) to run scenes. Using today’s update, Canvas can appear as a HomeKit button in the Home app for configuration. Nanoleaf also offers a hardware control that functions as a HomeKit button.

Nanoleaf Canvas retails from $119 for a starter kit. See our comparison of Nanoleaf Canvas and Nanoleaf Light Tiles for more details.

Nanoleaf Introduces ‘Touch Actions,’ Providing Complete Smart Home Control at the Touch of a Button, Without Taking Out Your Phone

Seamlessly integrating with all Apple HomeKit devices, new upgrade for Nanoleaf’s Canvas Smarter Kit turns lights into “smart buttons,” making smart home commands more accessible than ever before

TORONTO –  August 1, 2019 –  Smart lighting pioneer Nanoleaf has launched Touch Actions, an upgrade to the Canvas Smarter Kit that allows for the control of all HomeKit devices simply by touching one of the light squares. The Nanoleaf Canvas Smarter Kit is a smart, modular lighting system made up of LED light squares that syncs to music in real time. With the new Touch Actions feature, any light square on a Canvas layout can be turned into a touch-reactive “smart button” that can be used to control all HomeKit products without the use of a phone.

Gimmy Chu, Nanoleaf CEO, said “Technology works best when it fits seamlessly into the routines of our daily lives. Touch Actions eliminates the extra steps of taking out your phone, unlocking, swiping, and tapping into the phone’s app. Now, Nanoleaf users can create magical experiences across all of their HomeKit devices whether they’re entertaining guests, relaxing at home, or hanging out with friends simply by tapping a Canvas square in their layout.”

With three touch options to choose from – single press, double press , and long press – Nanoleaf’s Touch Actions take wireless control to a new level of freedom as each Canvas square can be customized for a different occasion, activity, or time of day.

For example, users can program one square for their “Good Morning” Scene. Simply press the assigned square to get ready in the morning, turning on your Canvas to a bright morning Scene, switch on the bedroom fan and even turn on the kettle (via smart plug) to start boiling water for tea – all at once. The tap of another square might turn off all the lights and turn down the thermostat to save energy while you’re out of the house. Users get to decide which square does exactly what and with HomeKit-enabled smart plugs, non-connected devices can also be included in smart home controls.

Nanoleaf was built on the mission of changing the way we think about lighting. Its modular lights have colored countless homes and offices, creating more vibrant spaces for living, playing, and working. Touch Actions takes this mission a step further, making smart home commands more seamless and accessible than ever before.

Touch Actions is available for iOS devices and requires a connection to a Home Hub device, including the Apple TV, iPad or HomePod. Requires version 1.4.0+ on Nanoleaf Canvas and Nanoleaf iOS App 3.4.0+. To experience Touch Actions, simply set up in the Nanoleaf App and Home App.

Ecobee has become one of the most popular smart thermostat brands on the market. The company has expanded slightly from its flagship product with a smart light switch, but a potential camera release would be a notable expansion for Ecobee in the smart home market.


Update 7/31: Dave has shared a new image of the yet to be released Ecobee smart camera today on Twitter that offers our first look at the device in the wild.

Unfortunately, seeing the whole camera reveals it’s not as svelte as the previous leaked images made it appear. It features a white back instead of matching the black front or silver base. Still no word on when Ecobee might launch this new smart home offering.

In related news, check out our review of the new Ecobee SmartThermostat. It includes a smart secondary sensor, voice control, HomeKit support, and a glass display. It normally retails for about $250.


Dave Zatz at Zatz Not Funny! discovered the new images of the unannounced Ecobee camera. It sports a black design with a silver, conical base. In the two different images (see below), we see the top of the camera features four LEDs, which Zatz notes could be used to indicate the camera’s microphone status, similar to the Ecobee Switch+.

Dave didn’t find any details for pricing, specs, or a release date for the Ecobee camera, but his discoveries have proved accurate in the past. Earlier this year, he uncovered the August View smart doorbell before it was officially unveiled last month.

It’s possible Ecobee’s camera could land with extra functionality like a presence sensor and thermostat to use along with an Ecobee3 lite or Ecobee4. Dave also believes with Amazon’s recent $61 million investment in Ecobee that the new camera will feature Alexa voice control.

As for HomeKit functionality, Dave doesn’t mention it, but Ecobee’s smart thermostats and its Switch+ feature support for the platform. Hopefully, Ecobee sees building in HomeKit to its camera as a great opportunity for itself and users.

HomeKit support for smart home cameras has been slow going. Logitech’s Circle 2 is a popular choice, and D-Link’s Omna (reviewed) was one of the early adopters. It would be awesome to see Ecobee bring a compelling option to the camera market with HomeKit and also spur on other companies.

What do you think? Are you interested in a smart home camera from Ecobee? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

Jamf


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Vizio SmartCast HomeKit AirPlay 2 software update

Not to be outdone by Korea’s LG, which yesterday rolled out AirPlay 2 and HomeKit support for select 2019 OLED and NanoCell 4K TVs, US consumer electronics maker Vizio today released a software update bringing those functions to its own SmartCast TV sets.

iOS 12.3 or later or macOS 10.14.5 or later is required.

The new SmartCast 3.0 update packs in support for Apple’s Airplay 2 and HomeKit technologies and provides backwards compatibility for Vizio’s TV sets dating back to 2016. The new firmware is rolling out via an over-the-air update. It’s a staggered release meaning these new enhancements will continue rolling out over the coming months to new and existing SmartCast TVs until all compatible television sets are updated.

With it, you can stream media from your iOS device to your Vizio TV without needing an Apple TV which acts as an AirPlay receiver. For example, AirPlay 2 lets you stream 4K and Dolby Vision HDR movies and TV shows from Apple’s TV app and other AirPlay-compatible video apps, as well as music, photos and more, directly from an iPhone, iPad and Mac to a SmartCast TV. AirPlay’s screen-mirroring function is supported as well so you can mirror web pages, presentations and other onscreen content to a Vizio TV..

Last but not least, you also get limited Siri functionality in terms of requesting shows to watch and controlling multi-room playback with AirPlay 2. And with HomeKit support, you can control your SmartCast TV by asking Siri or by using the Home app on your iPhone, iPad or May.

Vizio SmartCast TVs can be added to the Home app and included in scenes or automations like any other HomeKit accessory. Customers can also use iPhone and iPad to turn their SmartCast TV on or off from the Home app, change volume and switch inputs and ask Siri from iPhone and iPad to play movies, TV shows or music with AirPlay.

The Vizio software does not include Apple’s TV app.

Samsung is the first and currently the only TV maker to also get the TV app from Apple, giving customers easy and quick access to not only iTunes movie/TV show rentals and purchases but also subscription channels, including HBO NOW, as well as the upcoming original shows launching this fall via the new Apple TV+ video-streaming service.

On the other hand, Samsung has opted not to implement HomeKit support for the time being.

Vizio is today rolling out the firmware update for its SmartCast TVs, which enables AirPlay 2 streaming and HomeKit integration for Apple users.

The over-the-air SmartCast 3.0 software update is being released for TVs as far back as 2016. Vizio says the rollout is starting today and will come to new and existing SmartCast TVs over the next few months.

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The TV will show up as an AirPlay target across nearby iOS and macOS devices, so it becomes super simple to beam photos, music or video to the TV screen. As of iOS 12.3, the Apple TV app can stream to the TV in up-to-4K resolution, with Dolby Vision HDR.

HomeKit integration means that Apple customers can add their TV to their Apple Home configuration and control the TV remotely. You can turn the TV on and off, adjust its volume and even change the active input.

These actions can be included in HomeKit scenes and automations too. So, a “Good Night” scene could include turning off the TV as well as your other HomeKit-enabled smart accessories, or a “Movie Night” scene could dim the lights and change the TV to the right input for watching a film.

With HomeKit and AirPlay 2 enabled, users can ask Siri on their phone to play content from the TV app on their named TV set, and have the phone automatically begin playing the content on the big screen.

The Vizio TVs will eventually get the Apple TV app too, along with other manufacturers. For now, the Apple TV app is available only on iOS devices, the Apple TV set-top box, and select Samsung TV sets. The TV app will come to the Mac this fall as part of macOS Catalina. LG began rolling out AirPlay 2 and HomeKit support for its line of TVs yesterday.

Jamf


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After initially slating a July 25 date to enable HomeKit and AirPlay 2 support for some of its 2019 TVs, LG has officially started rolling out software updates for its OLED and NanoCell 4K UHD TVs with ThinQ AI. While the company’s UK press team said last week that 2018 and earlier LG TVs would also be gaining the Apple integration, LG has since said that it has no plans to offer the updates beyond the 2019 models.

LG announced the news in a press release today:

With AirPlay 2, LG 2019 AI TV owners can effortlessly stream content – including Dolby Vision titles – from iPhone, iPad and Mac straight to their TV sets. Users can stream their favorite movies and television shows from the Apple TV app and other video apps as well as view photos directly on their LG AI TVs. Users can also play Apple Podcasts, Apple Music and music from their library or other streaming services through their LG AI TV and other AirPlay 2-compatible speakers in their home at the same time – all in sync.

Owners of 2019 LG OLED TVs with ThinQ AI and NanoCell TVs with ThinQ AI should start seeing the updates (except for the SM8100 series). If you’re looking to pick up a new LG TV, these models start from about $800.

LG notes that more 2019 models will add support for HomeKit and AirPlay 2 later this fall, but didn’t share specifics.

The remaining 4K UHD TV series in LG’s lineup are expected to also receive this update later in 2019.

Many LG TV owners have been frustrated by the company limiting the Apple integration to just 2019. In contrast, Vizio is bringing the same functionality to many of its TVs dating back to 2016. There was some brief hope last week when LG’s UK press team said that older LG models would gain support, but we heard directly from LG that isn’t in fact the case.

LG is the first TV manufacturer to roll out both HomeKit and AirPlay 2 functionality that was announced back in January this year. However, Vizio has been offering Apple integration with a beta program for its users. Samsung released updates to bring AirPlay 2 to its TVs back in May.

Jamf


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Over the last year, I’ve been fully embracing the HomeKit ecosystem. I’ve adopted countless Philips Hue lights, as well as accent lighting from companies like Nanoleaf and Lifx. One thing that I hadn’t tackled until now was a SmartThermostat. Ecobee just released its new SmartThermostat with Voice Control, and I’ve been testing it for the last several weeks. Read on for my full review.

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Installation

One of my biggest reasons for delaying my adoption of a smart thermostat was installation. Swapping out a thermostat isn’t necessarily a daunting task, but I’m admittedly not very good at household projects, and I often try to avoid anything that involves wiring. With a bit of research, however, I found the Ecobee Smart Thermostat very easy to install, as long as your wiring matches up well with what Ecobee shows in its detailed installation guide.

Things would get a bit more complicated if you had to use the included Per Extender Kit. This comes down to whether you have a C wire, which I did. Ecobee notes that if you need to use the Power Extender Kit, you will be required to “handle electrical wiring,” so finding a professional installer might be the best option.

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Image via CNET

Depending on the size of your previous thermostat, and how much of the wall behind it is painted, you might need to use Ecobee’s included “trim plate.” I was lucky in that the wall behind my previous thermostat was completely painted, and the Ecobee unit itself covered the holes from that thermostat. The trim plate doesn’t complicate installation much at all, but it is a bit of an eyesore.

One important step of the Ecobee SmartThermostat installation process is to take a picture of the wires connected to the terminals of your old thermostat. This will make it much easier to follow Ecobee’s guide when it comes time to reconnect those wires.

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Once you get the actual unit connected and installed, it will walk you through the setup process for connecting to Wi-Fi and the Ecobee app for iOS, as well as testing your A/C and furnace to ensure everything is connected properly. The HomeKit setup was also easy, as the HomeKit code will appear directly on the SmartThermostat itself.

Ultimately, the Ecobee SmartThermostat with Voice Control was relatively easy to install. Even I was able to knock it out in less than an hour. I’d highly recommend using Ecobee’s online compatibility checker to see whether you’ll need to use the Power Extender Kit.

Design

The headlining change of the new Ecobee SmartThermostat is that it features a new glass design. In its announcement, Ecobee touted that the fifth-generation SmartThermostat was “redesigned and reengineered,” while retaining its “iconic squirrel shape.”

The biggest design change is a new glass finish and LCD screen, which is a major update from the previous plastic cover used in prior models. In practice, the new design looks more high-end, but the plastic finish of the actual thermostat body is a bit disappointing.

The Ecobee SmartThermostat also touts a quad-core processor, and support for 2.4 GHz and 5 Ghz dual-band Wi-Fi.

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When you approach the Ecobee SmartThermostat, you’ll see the current temperature, your desired range for heating and cooling, whether the A/C or furnace is running, and humidity levels. Its “screensaver” is simply the indoor temperature, as well as outside weather conditions. It’s a pretty basic interface, but one that makes it easy to quickly see the details of your home.

I am still envious of the Nest design, and find the rounded knob design incredibly sleek and futuristic. The Nest, of course, doesn’t support HomeKit, which makes it a no-go for me. Other HomeKit options, such as one from Honeywell, also leave much to be desired in terms of design. This makes the Ecobee SmartThermostat the best option on the market if you need HomeKit, but it’s still not perfect.

Alexa

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In 2017, the ecobee4 added support for Amazon Alexa, and that same Alexa control is what you’ll get with the new SmartThermostat, but with a few improvements.

By default, Alexa is disabled, but you can enable it by tapping the microphone icon and going through the setup process. Once you’ve done that, it works like most Alexa-enabled devices. When you trigger Alexa, there’s a blue LED along the top that lights up to let you know the microphone is listening.

The Ecobee SmartThermostat adds support for Alexa Calling, Messaging, and Drop In. Alexa Calling allows you to use your voice to make calls to Alexa-to-Alexa contacts, while Messaging lets you send a voice message to anyone on your contact list. Lastly, Alexa Drop In lets you have a two-way conversation with anyone in your home.

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Ecobee also says that the new SmartThermostat features “an audio experience you’d never expect from a thermostat.” The device features a more powerful speaker with “twice the intensity” of its predecessor. There’s also support for Bluetooth, so you can control playback from the Ecobee, and send it to a standalone speaker.

These new Alexa features are certainly useful if you live in Amazon-focused household. My personal use, however, didn’t entail me using Alexa much at all.

Ecobee app

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When it comes to controlling your SmartThermostat, Ecobee offers applications for iOS as well as Apple Watch, and a web interface. In a world where smart home applications are usually lacking, the Ecobee app works surprisingly well.

During setup, the Ecobee app will ask you things like your optimal temperature while home, while away, and while sleeping. It will then use this information to create a schedule for automating thermostat control.

For instance, when you’re home during the day, Ecobee would keep the house cooled to 73 degrees, or heated to 66 degrees, depending on the season. When you’re away from home, it would loosen those restrictions to help ensure you aren’t heating an empty house.

The “Sleep” portion of the schedule allows you to further refine your climate, and often take advantage of the off-peak energy rates provided by your electric company. Personally, I like keeping it very cold overnight, so I found the “Sleep” option in the Ecobee app particularly useful.

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Otherwise, the Ecobee app works a lot like you’d expect it. You can configure schedules, enable a “Vacation” mode, monitor your system, and more. You can also control temperature and other settings from the Ecobee SmartThermostat unit itself, which is useful if you have guests who don’t have access to the app.

The web version of Ecobee’s app offers all of the same controls as the iPhone app, as well as a “Home IQ” feature that provides insight into things like your home’s efficiency, the weather’s effect on your home temperature, and more. These are all things that aren’t necessarily easy (or possible) to find with a “dumb” thermostat.

Home app with iOS 13 and watchOS 6

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My primary way of interacting with the Ecobee SmartThermostat has been through the Home app on iOS 13 and watchOS 6. While the Ecobee app can handle almost anything, if you’re already a HomeKit household, it’s great being able to integrate the SmartThermostat into existing automations.

The Ecobee app provides advanced scheduling options, but I prefer to use the Home app. This way, I have automations for certain times of day, as well as ones for when I leave home and arrive home.

For instance, at 9 p.m. each night, the temperature drops to 66 degrees, which allows me to take advantage of the “free” overnight power offered by my electrical company, and also ensure a cool night’s sleep. At 9 a.m., things go back to normal. When I leave, thresholds are adjusted accordingly so I don’t cool or heat an empty home.

You can also integrate the Ecobee SmartThermostat into scenes. This means when you enable a scene like “Relaxation,” the temperature can drop a few degrees to ensure comfort.

In iOS 13, the Home app has undergone several interface changes. For instance, the design for adjusting your home’s temperature has been refreshed, and while it looks very sleek, it’s a bit tricky to move the temperature by a single degree.

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Siri can be used to change the temperature, read back the current temperature , enable scenes, and more. On the Apple Watch, Siri control is particularly useful, as the Ecobee watchOS app does not support changing the temperature.

Sensors

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In conjunction with the SmartThermostat, Ecobee also unveiled a redesigned version of its SmartSensor, featuring an all-new shape and size with an aluminum base. The new SmartSensor also packs longer pairing range, enhanced wide-angle detection, and five-year battery life.

These SmartSensors are meant to be placed around your home to provide hyperlocal temperatures in different rooms. For instance, I have one in my bedroom, so I can make sure it’s properly being cooled down before I head to bed.

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One particularly useful feature enabled by SmartSensors is something called “Follow Me.” This uses the sensors to detect which rooms in your house are occupied, and adjust the temperature accordingly, depending on your current comfort setting.

Ecobee includes one SmartSensor with the purchase of the SmartThermostat, but you can buy more from Amazon. A 2-pack will run you $75.

Wrap up

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One of the most important things to note about smart thermostats, including the new Ecobee model, is that they get better over time. For instance, Ecobee is reportedly readying a new Eco+ feature that would allow you to maximize energy savings. This sort of improvement in intelligence is what sets certain thermostats apart from the others.

Being able to control your thermostat from your phone or wrist is incredibly useful, but the true power of the Ecobee SmartThermostat lies in things like scheduling, automation, Home IQ, and more. All of these features are designed to help you gain more insight into your home’s efficiency, and gradually automate everything to ensure you’re being as conscious as possible.

In terms of design, the Ecobee SmartThermostat is a notable improvement, but still not perfect. I was lucky in that I did not have use the included trim plate, which I feel would have only called more attention to the device. I hope one day for a Nest-like HomeKit thermostat, but that doesn’t seem to be anywhere on the horizon.

The biggest thing that makes the Ecobee SmartThermostat stand out from the crowd, however, is support for HomeKit. The SmartThermostat is one of the few options that integrate with Alexa, Assistant, and HomeKit, and that alone makes it a very compelling option for many households. While I’d certainly like to see more competition in the HomeKit thermostat pace, the Ecobee is the best choice available at the moment.

The Ecobee SmartThermostat with Voice Control retails for $249 on Amazon. If you want to forgo new features like the glass design, the Ecobee3 lite is still a viable option and is more affordable at $169. A two-pack of SmartSensors is available for $74.95.

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The latest AirPlay 2 TV news is that LG is set to roll out HomeKit and AirPlay 2 support to its 2019 models next week.

That’s great news for owners of the 2019 models; not so much if you bought a 2017 or 2018 one. As many owners of older models have commented, their TVs are almost certainly capable of receiving the update …

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NordVPN

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Thanks to the short-sighted decision to milk a few people for a few bucks by ignoring perfectly capable 2018 models, you’ve lost a bunch of customers. I love my C8 but i will never buy another LG product. Not supporting HomeKit and AirPlay on still current models is a travesty.

Thanks for not caring for the 2017 & 2018 models owners. Those TVs are totally capable for AirPlay 2 / HomeKit support hardware wise. But I guess those are bought already so why should you care? Never buying from LG again.

Is ridiculous and only a marketing technique that only 2019 TVs will gonna update, bad PR LG when you will learn?

Really regretting my LG OLED purchase. Top of the line TV, distinguishable from other brands only by features and not updated in less than a year. I think this is truly awful service.

Are you enabling airplay for your 2018 models like ALL your other competitors??

Indeed, when LG first announced the policy, a petition was created to try to persuade the company to extend support to older models.

The benefits of AirPlay 2 TV support

HomeKit and AirPlay 2 TV support was first announced by Apple back in January.

AirPlay lets you share videos, photos, music, and more from Apple devices to your Apple TV, favorite speakers, and popular smart TVs. And what you share always stays personal and private. So sit back and enjoy everything you love — in more places than ever.

Leading TV manufacturers are integrating AirPlay 2 directly into their TVs, so now you can effortlessly share or mirror almost anything from your iOS device or Mac directly to your AirPlay 2–enabled smart TV. You can even play music on the TV and sync it with other AirPlay 2–compatible speakers anywhere in your home.

With AirPlay 2 and HomeKit, you can use Siri on your iPhone to send a video to your TV. Better yet, ask Siri to play a specific show in a specific room.

When Siri suggests a show to watch — on the Lock screen or in search — it will also include an option to use AirPlay. So one quick tap on a Siri suggestion, and you’re watching your favorite show on your favorite screen.

Support varies by TV brand

Support for AirPlay 2 was announced for four brands: LG, Samsung, Sony, and Vizio. The feature is, as you’d expected, limited to higher-end models. But the four companies took very different approaches.

Two brands, LG and Sony, limited support to their 2019 models. Samsung and Vizio, in contrast, extended it to older models too. In Samsung’s case, to a range of 2018 models:

Vizio went even further, announcing support for some models back as far as 2016:

This is a massive PR fail

Now, if a particular model doesn’t have the processing power or remote update capabilities to support the protocols, that’s fair enough. But given that some three-year-old Vizio models can support the standards, it seems unlikely that very new, very premium LG and Sony models would have inadequate hardware. The more likely explanation is that the two companies hope to use the feature to upsell people to new models.

The problem with the LG and Sony approach is that people don’t replace their TVs very often. It used to be common for people to hold onto their TV for a decade or two. That’s probably a little less common these days, given the huge technological developments we’ve seen of late (like affordable OLED and 4K), but it’s still not a product you expect to change frequently.

So if you shelled out for a premium model in 2017 or 2018, and the company expects you to buy a brand new one to get an update that your own model could support, then you’re not exactly going to be impressed with the brand.

And when owners of LG and Sony TVs can see that they’d have received the update if they’d bought a different brand, that just adds insult to injury.

Far from encouraging customers to upgrade their existing model to the latest one, for people who care about AirPlay 2 and HomeKit — which is likely the upper end of a brand’s demographic — it pretty much guarantees they will never buy another LG or Sony TV ever again.

This policy is an own-goal of the dumbest kind.


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Apple TV Plus teaser

LG’s Australian support account confirmed in a tweet that a firmware update for its 2019 Smart TVs brining support for Apple’s HomeKit platform for the connected home and AirPlay 2 device-to-device media streaming technology is arriving during the next week.

Responding to a customer inquiring about HomeKit availability on LG’s Smart TV platform, the manufacturer responded this morning by stating that a firmware update is releasing in one week. “Users require iOS 12.4 update to do AirPlay 2,” reads the tweet. Coincidentally, Apple yesterday released the iOS 12.4 software for public consumption.

Ahead of CES 2019 in January, the iPhone maker announced that it would permit LG, Sony, Samsung, Vizio and other major TV manufacturers to incorporate support for AirPlay 2 and HomeKit software in their TV sets to be released throughout 2019.

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LG’s W9 OLED TV is one of the models getting AirPlay 2 and HomeKit support soon.

According to Apple’s HomeKite website, all of the LG OLED, NanoCell SM9X, NanoCell SM8X and UHD UM7X television sets from 2019 will be supported. The Cupertino tech giant is doing this as the narrative shifted from decelerating iPhone sales to services.

Coming this fall, Apple’s worldwide video-streaming service will start feeding original TV shows, documentaries and movies to subscribers. To widen the addressable market for the service, the company’s decided to let TV manufacturers implement AirPlay 2 and HomeKit support so that owners of non-Apple devices could subscribe to Apple TV+ when it launches and use Apple’s TV app to stream the shows directly on their TV, no Apple TV or another Apple device needed. Other benefits of AirPlay/HomeKit integration include limited Siri control of the television and integration with HomeKit automations for the connected home.

Earlier this year, LG released its first 2019 TVs that would eventually gain support for HomeKit and AirPlay 2. Now, the TV maker says that updates will soon start to roll out that add support for those features.

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sylvania homekit strips

Sylvania HomeKit Light Strip

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In a tweet, LG’s Australian support account says that HomeKit and AirPlay 2 updates will start rolling out to users in one week. This means that users could start seeing support as early as next Monday. The support account notes that users will be required to be running iOS 12.4 in order to take advantage of these features.

Somewhat controversially, LG has said that only its 2019 TVs will support AirPlay 2 and HomeKit, with the company not making updates available for older models. This means the cheapest option from LG is the 55-inch C9, which is available for just under $1,800.

With AirPlay 2 and HomeKit support, TVs can integrate directly into the Home app on iOS and with things like HomePod for multi-room experiences.

LG was among the first TV manufacturers to announce support for AirPlay 2 – but Samsung has already started rolling out AirPlay 2 updates. Vizio is also in the process of beta testing AirPlay 2 and HomeKit support, which could be a more affordable option for some people. Unlike Samsung, Vizio is making AirPlay 2 and HomeKit support available to all SmartCast-enabled TVs since 2016.

As always, launch information from support accounts on Twitter should be treated with some skepticism. We’ve reached out to LG for official confirmation and will update when we hear back.

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After first unveiling the hardware two years ago, leading HomeKit accessory maker Eve is announcing launch details for its upcoming Extend Bluetooth range booster. Eve Extend is designed to solve the problem of Bluetooth signal limitations for HomeKit accessories that can’t connect over Wi-Fi.

Bluetooth HomeKit accessories have a limited range compared to Wi-Fi Bluetooth accessories by default. HomeKit hubs (Apple TV, iPad, HomePod) can help alleviate the problem, but placement typically relies on other factors.

Eve Extend connects anywhere with a power outlet on your existing Wi-Fi network to make up to eight hard-to-reach Eve Bluetooth accessories work anywhere within Wi-Fi range. This is especially useful for HomeKit accessories like Eve Aqua and Eve Degree that can be placed outdoors.

If you need to connect more than eight range-boosted Eve Bluetooth accessories to your HomeKit setup, you can add additional Eve Extends to your Wi-Fi network.

Eve first previewed Extend in January 2017 as part of the smart home lineup at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Earlier this month, Extend surfaced again when a hands-on look at the hardware appeared online. Extend now has a $49.95 price tag with pre-orders starting sometime next month.

We’ll have more coverage of Eve Extend next month. More specs below ahead of release:

Best-in-class privacy

Eve accessories are designed to safeguard personal data. Full local access means they work seamlessly without a cloud or any registration. All collected data is fully encrypted, stored locally and never analyzed, sold or used for advertising purposes. With Eve, private data stays private. Even when accessing the home remotely.

Specifications

Hyper Prime deals


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HUE2

If you’re a fan of the Philips Hue lighting system and also happen to have a jailbroken iPhone, then you might come to appreciate a new jailbreak tweak dubbed HUE2 by iOS developer Antique.

HUE2 is fundamentally a new way to integrate your music-listening experience on iOS with your Philips Hue lighting system. Right out of the box, the tweak colorizes your Philips Hue lights to match the dominant color of the album artwork of any music you might be playing, as depicted above.

As you use HUE2, all the Philips Hue light bulbs that are connected to your selected bridge should change color automatically as your playlist moves from one song to another, providing a seamless and fun experience as you enjoy your music.

HUE2 was designed to interface directly with the official HueSDK, which should help maximize stability during use. Nevertheless, the developer is aware of connection bugs in the current version of the tweak and advises users to report pertinent issues via Twitter such that they can be resolved promptly.

HUE2 doesn’t have any options to configure as of this writing, but that could change in the future as the tweak matures. If you’re interested in giving the tweak a try for yourself, then you can download it for $0.99 from Cydia’s Packix repository. The tweak is compatible with all jailbroken iOS 11 devices and you must have a Philips Hue-branded smart light system to use it.

Have you tried HUE2 yet? Let us know how it worked for you in the comments section below.

Apple's HomeKit platform has expanded to support a variety of device categories since its launch in 2014, now including lights, thermostats, ceiling fans, sprinklers, outlets, and humidifiers.

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Although close in style to humidifiers, one specific accessory missing from HomeKit has been an essential oil diffuser, and now connected smart home brand Vocolinc has introduced the FlowerBud Smart Diffuser to rectify the situation.

Setup

Out of the box, the FlowerBud Smart Diffuser looks somewhat similar to other essential oil diffusers, and it's broken into two parts for quick-and-easy assembly. There's a 6.5-inch wide base that holds the water reservoir, and on its front there is a button for the mood light and one for the diffuser itself.

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The water reservoir holds 300 ml of water, but you'll have to make two passes with the included measuring cup to fill the base to capacity, since it only holds about 150 ml. Underneath, you'll find a port to connect the AC adapter's barrel plug into, and the slightly elevated rubber feet make everything level even with the cord passing through.
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Vizio AirPlay 2 HomeKit support

Vizio today announced that select models of its Smart TV sets will soon pick up support for Apple’s HomeKit platform for the connected home and the AirPlay 2 media-streaming protocol.

This will be realized through SmartCast 3.0, Vizio’s freshly updated software platform, on select TV models. SmartCast 3.0 will launch in beta across the US and Canada in the first quarter before rolling out as a free update to new and existing SmartCast televisions and displays in the second quarter of 2019.

AirPlay 2 support will permit owners of Vizio Smart TV sets to send music, photos or videos from their iPhone, iPad or Mac to their television, no Apple TV required whatsoever, said the Irvine, California-headquartered company. AirPlay 2 also brings multi-room audio.And with HomeKit support, every compatible TV set is automatically discovered and added as a tile in Apple’s Home app, allowing limited Siri control for the TV set.

You’ll be able to send the currently playing song or podcast to multiple Vizio Smart TVs at once or to other AirPlay 2-compatible speakers.. Your TV set will be included in HomeKit scenes or automations, just like any other HomeKit accessory.

“By adding support for Apple AirPlay 2 and HomeKit, users can play content from their iPhone, iPad and Mac directly to SmartCast TVs, as well as enable TV controls through the Home app and Siri,” said Bill Baxter, Vizio’s technology chief.

SmartCast 3.0 also brings support for Amazon Aleza and Google Assistant, with the latter providing access to thousands of Google Chromecast-enabled apps. Lastly, the firmware update includes changes to the user interface and provides access to Vizio’s WatchFree service providing live news, sports, movies, TV shows, viral videos, concerts and more.

Vizio has also unveiled the newest lineup of TVs and new Dolby Atmos soundbars at CES 2019.

Apple yesterday announced that Samsung and other TV makers will soon support AirPlay 2. Samsung Smart TVs will also bring support for a new iTunes Movies and TV Shows app for streaming your purchased or rented movies and television shows from iTunes.

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