Review: iDevices' Switches and Outlets Bring HomeKit to Your Existing Lights and Home Appliances

[CarlJ]

And how much do these toys consume themselves?

a) not toys, and b) very little.
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I have a dozen or so of the Switch units and they work well. I think I got most for about $35 each. I also have a software bridge I did that allows control from software on Windows, macOS, and other non iOS platforms.

I'd be interested to hear more about that - have a couple of their Switch units and the one annoying thing is that I can't send commands to them from a Raspberry Pi.
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Lutron Caseta is ~$50 a switch, it's dimmable, HomeKit compatible and has been around for a while/well-reviewed.
Why on earth would you pay $99?

If I understand correctly, Lutron Caseta requires a hub, which adds $80 or so (the iDevices units are all standalone, talk directly to HomeKit) - if you're doing the whole house, Lutron is likely a better choice; if you only want one or two outlets/switches, iDevices may be competitive.

 

[pubwvj]

Looked at them on Amazon through the provided link... Very expensive! Like 30x more expensive than a dumb switch and almost 10x more expensive than good motion sensor switches. Not feasible at this time.

 

[jw2002]

These home automation options still seem clunky to me. They still have work to do in making the various fixtures support BOTH a manual mode and smart device mode more seamlessly.

In my case I received a bunch of Vera stuff for Christmas (didn't ask for it). After firing up the server I was suddenly like, why bother? This stuff is a solution to a non-existent problem. My place isn't that big and doesn't really need automation. So now I have all these useless and expensive switches and outlets gathering dust...

 

[takasugi]

a) not toys, and b) very little.
[doublepost=1501798540][/doublepost]I'd be interested to hear more about that - have a couple of their Switch units and the one annoying thing is that I can't send commands to them from a Raspberry Pi.
[doublepost=1501798868][/doublepost]If I understand correctly, Lutron Caseta requires a hub, which adds $80 or so (the iDevices units are all standalone, talk directly to HomeKit) - if you're doing the whole house, Lutron is likely a better choice; if you only want one or two outlets/switches, iDevices may be competitive.

Lutron Caseta hub with dimmer switch is $90 on Amazon. Additional switch is ~$50 so for $140 you get 2 switches and the hub. I replaced my Wemo switches with Lutron because of frequent disconnects and have never had a problem since.

 

[Caliber26]

I was waiting for apples response to the echo for home automation, and the homepod made the decision very easy for me, the homepod is 10x the price of the echo dot (when it's on offer). I can't justify one homepod, never mind the 5 I'd need. The dot is affordable and has a much better voice assistant. It's a pity as I thought Apple wanted to be a real player in this market.

I agree. And with Siri being everywhere (Mac, iOS, watch), it would be so convenient to just use any of those devices to give it voice commands, which is something Amazon doesn’t have right now. I get their concerns but this is such a missed opportunity for Apple. Once people have invested too much into Alexa/Echo I cant see them switching over to HomeKit so essily.
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Apple have moved to software certification, so many many more vendors can now jump on board with just a firmware update.

Previously, hardware was the only way. We should see a big spike in the next few months

Ah! I was not aware of this. I’m cerrainly looking forward to it, then. I’ve been holding off patiently so I hope it pays off. Thanks for the info! I’ll have to look it up and read up on it.