HomeKit How can I automate my outlets?

[TehFalcon]

Hi all, I live in a house that doesn't have central ac, only a furnace. I have 3 Window AC Units that are on their own HomeKit outlets, and I also have a HomeKit Smart Thermostat for the Furnace.

How can I automate it so when my Smart Thermostat sees X temperature it will turn off the outlets to the AC Units and when it sees X temperature it will turn them back on, essentially making my own thermostat of sort for the units.

Is this possible?

 

[Itinj24]

Hi all, I live in a house that doesn't have central ac, only a furnace. I have 3 Window AC Units that are on their own HomeKit outlets, and I also have a HomeKit Smart Thermostat for the Furnace.

How can I automate it so when my Smart Thermostat sees X temperature it will turn off the outlets to the AC Units and when it sees X temperature it will turn them back on, essentially making my own thermostat of sort for the units.

Is this possible?

Yes but you will need a third party app for this type of automation since the native Home app doesn’t support it.

The best free one out there is Eve. Some good paid ones too like Controller for HomeKit and Home+ 5.

After creating the automation in the third party app, it will show up in the native Home app and you can edit it from there.

 

[patrick0brien]

I use Indigo (https://www.indigodomo.com) as my Master, HomeKit does interface with it for Siri and for HomeKit-Only devices.

This being said, I use z-Wave Outlets adapters. (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07JFZJNK4/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1)

I do use an Insteaon Thermo and a Nest Thermo in the basement. Running a geeky perl-script, I have a routine that evaluated the temperature difference between the two and turns on the house fan to dig up that sweet cold basement air so I'm not using the full A/C.

"Gee whiz Patrick, that was a lot of ******** - how does that help me?"

Glad you asked. You could use Indigo as the controller, it has the sophistication to handle the math and stuff you need and directly control the z-Wave adapters. Install HomeKit Bridge (a Commend-Line thing) to allow HomeKit to talk to Indigo. Set up Indigo to look at the thermo, and have Indigo control the A/C units per your rules.

Catch: you will likely need a live server to handle this sophistication - do you have a Mac you can leave on 24/7?

This is a very deep subject, if you want to discuss further, DM me.