Because they are not avail in places like Canada. This Mixtile product is vapourware at the moment.
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CES 2017: Mixtile Hub Promises to Expand HomeKit to ZigBee and Z-Wave Smart Home Devices
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Because they are not avail in places like Canada. This Mixtile product is vapourware at the moment.
Me too. I was actually just looking at some Z Wave thermostats (my electric baseboard heating system isn't compatible with any HomeKIt thermostat I've ever seen), and was thinking of figuring out some HomeBridge way of getting them to work with HomeKit, but if this works as I hope it'll work, it would probably be much easier. If it works with Nest, that'd just be icing on the cake.
Except that nobody uses it. Why? Because a) it's a mess (mixing bluetooth, Z-Wave, Zigbee and proprietary standards, a plethora of base stations etc.) and b) because Siri sucks. I'd be extremely wary to invest in home kit products, to be honest, because until there's finally a clear standard for IoT, everything you buy now will be obsolete in 2 years. And that stuff isn't cheap.
Homekit, as of now, is also very limited in functionality. If you want to do something relatively inexpensive and semi-cohesive, get a Samsung Smartthings hub and pair it with an Echo or a Google Home hub. That way you at least have some control what's going on.
why connect to your TV if it also has a smartphone app to connect to it? Seems unnecessary. Hopefully its usable without connecting to a TV as it'd be easier to hide away in a cupboard.
Also I just started looking at homekit after getting some hue lights, and some 3rd party innr lights that work with the hue app (but not homekit). The app seems quite a mess and not at all user-friendly. Much easier for me to just use the hue app or a third party hue app. Maybe it is more usable if you start adding multiple accessories (one central place to control them) but as the app seems so confusing to use with just hue, it'd possibly be even worse with more accessories.
It really needs a much better way to visualise your accessories and set up routines/scenes, also triggering them (does it really not have a widget??)
Also I just started looking at homekit after getting some hue lights, and some 3rd party innr lights that work with the hue app (but not homekit). The app seems quite a mess and not at all user-friendly. Much easier for me to just use the hue app or a third party hue app. Maybe it is more usable if you start adding multiple accessories (one central place to control them) but as the app seems so confusing to use with just hue, it'd possibly be even worse with more accessories.
It really needs a much better way to visualise your accessories and set up routines/scenes, also triggering them (does it really not have a widget??)
Can’t help much if all the other devices go out as well, including lights, plugs, and even the router that it uses to communicate with your smartphone.
This is good for those who have equipment from other standards but don't have the skillset or patience to bridge them using Homebridge. While I enjoy using my ISY-994i with HomeKit via Homebridge, as I prepare to sell my home, I'm running into a crossroads for my current setup and preparing for new owners. The Mixtile seems like a good easier to use bridge to provide options for those who want to tie some of my non-Insteon devices into HomeKit without being a programmer. For the other standards, there are other bridges and hubs that they can buy.
I think I agree. There is no information about when this product will be available. Moreover, I seriously doubt they will ever be HomeKit certified as I would think Apple has no interest in certifying products like this. And what are the internal guts of this product? From what little information we have, I would not be surprised to find that it is simply a linux based single board computer running open source Homebridge. That would be far superior in my opinion than someone attempting to go about this with their own proprietary solution.
I think the only way to take on Apple at this game is to get a good open source movement going and drive some adoption. If we can get enough momentum before Apple tries to close the door, they wont. At the moment it seems to me the thing slowing down Homebridge adoption is a plug and play hardware platform.
The battery is probably there so it can still communicate via Bluetooth to your Bluetooth, battery powered door locks and your smartphone, so if there's a power cut you don't get locked out.
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