New 'Wemo Bridge' Will Bring HomeKit Support to Belkin's Wemo Line This Fall

[jagooch]

Basically we need a bunch of hubs to use HomeKit , does anyone else think this is inconvenient and kind of sloppy on Apples part?

I agree. I previously used Amazon Alexa to control WeMo switches for my lights, and it also controls my Ecobee thermostat WITHOUT A HUB. Why can't Apple do the same thing(hub-less), or at least have a standard hub that all the manufacturer's can use instead of having to develop their own hubs?

I'm probably going to replace the WeMo switches with Smart Bulbs is I can find the 100Watt LED smartbulbs. It would be nice to have them working with HomeKit TODAY, so that I can declutter by getting rid of the Amazon Alexa devices.
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You can already add HomeKit support to WeMo switches for free with Homebridge. All you need is a computer -- could be a Raspberry Pi, old Windows PC, Mac, etc. I run it on my main machine (2012 Mac mini) and it works really well.

This sounds interesting and give me options since I have a few Mac's, linux VM's , and I'm considering setting up a RetroPie for gaming nostalgia.

How difficult was it to set it up on your Mac? is there a good wiki that explains the process?

 

[Insleep]

How difficult was it to set it up on your Mac? is there a good wiki that explains the process?

It's super easy - I used the official guide here. There are also guides on that page showing how to set it up on Windows/Linux.

 

[jagooch]

It's super easy - I used the official guide here. There are also guides on that page showing how to set it up on Windows/Linux.

I spend an hour and a half on installing it follow instructions from the homebridge and other sites, and it did not work. It was not easy at all. All kinds of compile and permissions errors, even when I got past those problems the homebridge command returned "command not found" . So much for easy. I'll just wait for the bridge.

 

[Insleep]

I spend an hour and a half on installing it follow instructions from the homebridge and other sites, and it did not work. It was not easy at all. All kinds of compile and permissions errors, even when I got past those problems the homebridge command returned "command not found" . So much for easy. I'll just wait for the bridge.

That’s really weird that it didn’t work. Make sure you used the -g flag when installing HomeBridge. It worked great for me

 

[legacyb4]

So with the Bridge being announced for the upcoming CES, this merely enables WEMO products to talk to a Homekit setup, right? You'd still need a base Homekit hub of some sort to be remotely enabled to control the whole setup?