If you’re out and about with your iPhone, then you can’t communicate with devices in your home unless you have a HomeKit home hub, which can be an iPad that’s plugged in, a HomePod or HomePod Mini, or Apple TV. How do you remote control devices?ĭirect control means that there’s one potential problem: remote control. The important thing is that there’s no cloud communication and control has to be direct to a device. There’s not a HomeKit connection protocol, and devices can communicate using any one of a number of protocols, including Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, via a hub or with Thread. For example, you can use the Ring plug-in to control your Ring cameras, doorbell and alarm system through the Home app.Ĭontrol can be limited and companies can shut down or break the plug-in connections, so it’s not a perfect solution. This sets up a device as a bridge (a Raspberry Pi is often used), and then plug-ins connect through cloud services to make devices compatible. There are some workarounds, the most well-known being HomeBridge. For example, RIng devices aren’t natively compatible with Apple’s smart home system. While the number of devices supported by HomeKit has grown, there are still notable gaps. Can you make other devices compatible with HomeKit? Matter is a cross platform, company agnostic smart home protocol designed to let devices communicate regardless of the manufacturer. Out of all of the major smart home systems, including Amazon Alexa, Samsung SmartThings and the Google Assistant, HomeKit has the most limited support, although it has been getting better and the Matter protocol should increase product compatibility going forward. With the latter, for example, adding one bridge will bring all of your devices into the Home app so that you can control them. Secondly, if you connect a bridge, such as the Philips Hue bridge, then everything connected to that bridge becomes HomeKit enabled. First, if a device has its own setup code, such as the Eve Energy Smart Plug, then that will connect to HomeKit automatically as itself. There are two ways that a device can make it into the app. Others have been software upgraded to provide HomeKit, such as the Abode alarm system, which generates a HomeKit code via the app. Most will have a HomeKit setup code that you scan with your phone’s camera or NFC chip, such as the Nanoleaf Lines. Some simply require HomeKit and the Home app to set up, such as the HomePod Mini. The Home app lets you split your home into multiple rooms, and then add compatible devices into rooms for easy control.Īdding a device requires finding ones that are HomeKit compatible. It’s via the Home app that you can add, manage and control smart devices. If you’ve got an iPhone or Mac, then congratulations, you’ve got HomeKit and, more specifically, the Home app. How do I get HomeKit and what’s compatible with it?
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