I didn’t watch it, but here’s a good compilation of what they announced and linked to today…
1 Like
I’ve got zero interest in these products. But I will be watching on Oct 27, when the new iPad Mini is rumored to be announced. Supposed to have an A20 Pro chip and an OLED display, though it might not be ProMotion, and still gimped at 60 Hz. We shall see.
Yes, as I look, it would be rather expensive to put it together with the doorbell, cameras, Home, and whatever else, I see $1000+ easily… And changing over from my existing AppleTV hub with it’s Logitech doorbell.. I can still ad a couple cameras to it, if I found HomeKit compatibles, haven’t looked that hard, really… So I’ll continue to watch, wait n see… The video showing multiple users, eh, pass..
I’ve had a mostly-but-not-entirely Homekit setup at home for years.
I have four different sets of home cameras, from Arlo 2’s (HomeKit) covering the outside of the house, a Ring doorbell (Amazon), a set of Wyze (not on HomeKit) and one Eufy camera (on HomeKit) for indoors and outdoors (e.g. the inside of our detached garage). Most of the outside perimeter of my house is visible on my iPhone.
I have two Ecobee smart thermostats on HomeKit, though I mostly use their own ecobee app on my iPhone, which gives me more control than HomeKit.
I have a Meross garage door opener, a couple of Meross smart power strips, and a few other standalone controllable power outlets (e.g. to turn on lamps, or off), all on Homekit. I even have a couple of Meross (I think) outdoor WiFi outlets for controlling our Christmas lights during the winter.
I have a Rachio smart sprinkler system that’s nominally on Homekit, but it never seems to stay connected to Homekit despite always being controllable over WiFi with its own iPhone app.
I have a Level smart lock on one door, which I mostly control either via HomeKit on my iPhone or use a fob to lock and unlock. Having it automatically unlock when I get close to home is hit-or-miss, so I don’t bother.
My home alarm system is by ADT and does not interoperate with Homekit, but I have the iPhone app so I can disarm when I get home, before entering the house, or arm it when I forget to arm before leaving.
I’d say most of my stuff is HomeKit compatible, but not all. The main thing is it took years and $$ of slowly accumulating things and getting them to work, so I’m not likely to replace anything any time soon. Starting small and then adding things was the easier way to go for me, rather than try to build an entire home automation system from scratch.
-awlabrador
2 Likes
I’m surprised at the variety of cameras you have working in HomeKit… I’ve been hesitating on adding cameras beyond my Logitech doorbell camera as I haven’t seen that those others were homeKit compatible…
My thermostat, Honeywell, Garage door opener, Ryobi, drip system, Rachio, have their own apps, so I never bothered to try to incorporate them into HomeKit (AppleTV.4K is my hub)…
I do have a couple Outlets for Xmas lights, but they live in a box until needed…Rachio has been solid, with its App, the Logitech doorbell forgets it inner doorbell self so has to occasionally be power cycled to recover,.
Anyway, interesting setup, for sure…
We have tried four different security systems:
- YI
- Blink
- Xfinity
- Ring
Without a doubt the absolute best so far has been Ring. Some are very limited in what they can do, some don’t work at night and some are too complicated.
We finally settled on Ring. Ours came with the doorbell camera and a baby monitor. Well I don’t like the idea of filming the boss and I running around the house half naked but I found that if you point the baby camera out the back window you can monitor your back yard. I wanted our systems to remain indoors to avoid theft so I tried placing the doorbell camera inside view through a glass storm door. I had terrible results with the doorbell camera. After trying several different ways I finally learned the doorbell camera can’t see through glass. Once mounted externally the doorbell camera works like a champ. I’ve since added a couple more baby cameras for other areas of the home (all pointed outdoors or course). Once you figure out how to turn off all the announcements Ring makes it gets a lot better. We were hearing about lost dogs up in the Woodlands about 50 miles North. Who cares? It took a while but we finally got rid of all the announcements.
Only the Arlos and the Eufy work with Homekit. I got Wyze early on. I think they were crowd funded at the time, and the plan was free. I’m keeping them only because they’re cheap and without a subscription.
I got the Eufy last and will likely stick with those for random setups. It also doesn’t require a subscription. It’s Homekit compatible and can distinguish between people and pets, so it can record when a pet is in view but not if only people are in view. I got it to monitor a coffee table because I suspected our little dog (a Shichon) was stealing items off the table and hiding them, only for those items to be found chewed up later. It turns out the dog would hop up to look at the table when nobody else was around, but I caught him on video. I also caught him peeing on the leg of the table, too, so that was an unhappy discovery made possible by the camera.
-awlabrador
1 Like