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Tour of a HomeKit enabled house with dozens of accessories.

OCDMacGeek

OCDMacGeek

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jul 19, 2007
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I’m a huge fan of Apple, and a big fan of the concept of home automation. Naturally, I was excited when Apple announced HomeKit, and the first HomeKit enabled accessories started rolling out. I am an early adopter, to put it lightly. I have a home built around 1870, and have outfitted it with an extraordinary amount of HomeKit devices, making pretty much the entire home controllable via HomeKit and Siri.

I wanted to provide a tour of my HomeKit-enabled home not only because its cool to control your home with Siri voice control, but also because I wanted to demonstrate some of the practical uses of HomeKit to improve your home. I hope you enjoy the video.

In this video, I discuss the following HomeKit devices in my house:

Lutron Caseta dimmers and remotes
Lutron Serena shades
Phillips Hue bulbs, lightstrips, dimmers, and tap switches
Ecobee 3 thermostats and sensors
iHome SmartPlugs

I also discuss the third party app: Home - Home Automation with HomeKit By Matthias Hochgatterer.
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/home-home-automation-homekit/id995994352?mt=8

By my estimation, this is the best HomeKit app so far.

I have gone through a lot of time setting up these devices, troubleshooting problems, and resolving them. In another video or post I'll discuss some of the common problems you can run into with HomeKit setups.

If you have any HomeKit questions or comments, let me know.

 
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OCDMacGeek said:
I’m a huge fan of Apple, and a big fan of the concept of home automation. Naturally, I was excited when Apple announced HomeKit, and the first HomeKit enabled accessories started rolling out. I am an early adopter, to put it lightly. I have a home built around 1870, and have outfitted it with an extraordinary amount of HomeKit devices, making pretty much the entire home controllable via HomeKit and Siri.

I wanted to provide a tour of my HomeKit-enabled home not only because its cool to control your home with Siri voice control, but also because I wanted to demonstrate some of the practical uses of HomeKit to improve your home. I hope you enjoy the video.

In this video, I discuss the following HomeKit devices in my house:

Lutron Caseta dimmers and remotes
Lutron Serena shades
Phillips Hue bulbs, lightstrips, dimmers, and tap switches
Ecobee 3 thermostats and sensors
iHome SmartPlugs

I also discuss the third party app: Home - Home Automation with HomeKit By Matthias Hochgatterer.
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/home-home-automation-homekit/id995994352?mt=8

By my estimation, this is the best HomeKit app so far.

I have gone through a lot of time setting up these devices, troubleshooting problems, and resolving them. In another video or post I'll discuss some of the common problems you can run into with HomeKit setups.

If you have any HomeKit questions or comments, let me know.

Click to expand...
I watched your video end-to-end and enjoyed it. Thanks for the time you put into the explanation. I have been curious about home automation and wondered what people were using it for. I had the concept but its nice to see it in a practical example. I'm going to look into the thermostats first. My home is fairly new with light switches at each entryway so I don't have that problem to solve but in the future I will consider replacing switches. I can already imagine switches for outside lights that I can activate without having to run inside and turn them on. Garage lights, both standard lights and my hanging florescent work lighting. If I were to ask any question, what has your cost been to this point. You don't have to give exact, you can give a ballpark for a category or however you like. I can look for pricing on the devices you have listed but curious what to expect until I have time to look into this more.
 
I'm really glad you liked the video, and thanks for your post! I'm glad to give you some ideas for improvements on your own home.

The cost has been quite high, as you might expect. The largest expense is the shades. They have great energy efficiency savings because they are lined with aluminum and that gives it a good "R" value, but the shades are about $400 each. It is a bit of an investment that could pay off in energy savings, but adds up very quickly up front.

Each of the Lutron switches is approximately $50, but that includes the pico remote control with it. So as you can see, that also adds up very quickly. Hue dimmer switches are about $25 each, and basic Hue lightbulbs are $19 each.

While most people are not going to swap out every single light switch, hopefully this gives you some ideas on the ones you might want to actually change out.
 
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Awesome! Thanks for the video! Do you have any idea if that app will work with insteon devices running through an insteon hub?
 
wepiii said:
Awesome! Thanks for the video! Do you have any idea if that app will work with insteon devices running through an insteon hub?
Click to expand...

The HomeKit enabled Insteon hub doesn't work with all Insteon devices and it has also gotten pretty bad reviews. If you haven't already invested in Insteon I don't think any of the compatible ones offer anything that Lutron and Hue can't offer. (Although Insteon has cool cameras, they don't work with the HomeKit Insteon hub.) But all that being said, the HomeKit Insteon devices would definitely work with the Home app.
 
wargamer6 said:
Neat. Do you have all Hue bulbs? I have a mix of Hue and Cree.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I have all Hue bulbs -- a mix of color and white bulbs. I did get some GE Link bulbs initially but then I began hearing reports that these bulbs had frequent drop outs with the Hue bridge.
 
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OCDMacGeek said:
Yeah, I have all Hue bulbs -- a mix of color and white bulbs. I did get some GE Link bulbs initially but then I began hearing reports that these bulbs had frequent drop outs with the Hue bridge.
Click to expand...

I heard similar things too, but my Crees have been rock solid so far.
 
OCDMacGeek said:
The HomeKit enabled Insteon hub doesn't work with all Insteon devices and it has also gotten pretty bad reviews. If you haven't already invested in Insteon I don't think any of the compatible ones offer anything that Lutron and Hue can't offer. (Although Insteon has cool cameras, they don't work with the HomeKit Insteon hub.) But all that being said, the HomeKit Insteon devices would definitely work with the Home app.
Click to expand...


How would I know if they were home kit insteon devices or not? Thanks for the help!
 
Do you think this could foray into location awareness?

In other words, pull into your garage and the lights turn on until you enter your home where it will turn your lights off in the garage and turn on the lights in the room you entered all by proximity. They would be great for efficiency.
 
gixxerfool said:
Do you think this could foray into location awareness?

In other words, pull into your garage and the lights turn on until you enter your home where it will turn your lights off in the garage and turn on the lights in the room you entered all by proximity. They would be great for efficiency.
Click to expand...

You can do this with Triggers in HomeKit (there is no garage door opener for HomeKit just yet) but you can set location aware triggers. The only problem is that they are a bit spotty. They "live" on the iPhone and aren't perfect.
 
OCDMacGeek said:
You can do this with Triggers in HomeKit (there is no garage door opener for HomeKit just yet) but you can set location aware triggers. The only problem is that they are a bit spotty. They "live" on the iPhone and aren't perfect.
Click to expand...

Oh neat. The possibilities are endless as long as the support is there. Can you schedule events to happen? For your blinds say, to open to a certain angle for a certain time of day to allow sunlight in and then correct as the sun moves? You could heat a room pretty well and then close the blind when the sun is passing in order to keep the heat in.
 
Any hub that it's compatible with HomeKit and allow zwave devices to be control by it?
 
OCDMacGeek said:
You can do this with Triggers in HomeKit (there is no garage door opener for HomeKit just yet) but you can set location aware triggers. The only problem is that they are a bit spotty. They "live" on the iPhone and aren't perfect.
Click to expand...

perhaps that's what the rumored Apple Ring is for.
 
Nice video.

Am I able to have smart light switches if I only have two wires at the (current old) switch?
Am I able to have smart power outlets?

Do you have different main ducts running to different areas of the house? I see you have multiple thermostats.

Are you running this on your main WiFi network or you have one dedicated for this?
 
adam9c1 said:
Nice video.

Am I able to have smart light switches if I only have two wires at the (current old) switch?
Am I able to have smart power outlets?

Do you have different main ducts running to different areas of the house? I see you have multiple thermostats.

Are you running this on your main WiFi network or you have one dedicated for this?
Click to expand...

Yes, Lutron only needs two wires, which is awesome for old houses like mine. So far there are no HomeKit smart outlets that wire right in to the wall, but some were just announced. These should only need two wires but I guess we don't know for sure. I have plug in smart outlets.

Yes, my house was zoned and had multiple "dumb" thermostats, so I just replaced them all since I wanted to retain their zoning.

I am running this on my main WiFi network, because to function your phone has to be on the same network.
 
You are my HomeKit idol. I have just recently started my HomeKit home project. I have a mixture of white and color hue bulbs with the 2.0 bridge. The downstairs lights are completely converted and a few upstairs. I just keep adding bulbs every once in a while. I actually ordered the ecobee3 from Apple today so that will be a project for next weekend when it arrives. Setup can be time consuming, but its a hobby. The set up is half the fun. I need to invest in some of the dimmers and switches you use. The window shades are amazing. One thing I noticed in your video is when you say "set the scene good morning" isn't it possible to just say good morning? With my set up (mind you it's less complex with just lights) I have a scene created called good morning and good night and all I have to say is that command without the "set the scene" part. I use the iDevices connected app for my zones, rooms, and scenes. Again excellent video!
 
If you have time would you be able to provide some more info to get started?

1. Barebones you need atv
2. To have smart switch you need abc
3. To have dimmeable smart switch you need this
4. To have smart switch controlled with remote switch you need blah blah blah


My thermostat has 6 wires (4 connected). Am I good to go for ecobee?
I would like to keep fan only on off as a option. With this thermostat can I schedule fan only for certain time?

Big thank You.
 
I usually only get on here at work, and don't have access to youtube. I might have to check it out when I get home.

I've currently got 2 Nest Protect 1st Gen at my home, and installed 4 of them at my parents. I've had a couple false alarms at my house, and my parents have had a bunch. I haven't tried contacting Nest about them yet, but I need to.

I have never been sold on the Nest thermostat though as I prefer to just set the schedule myself for the most part. The first alert thermostat has me interested, and if I go with that I would probably lean toward switching over to the first alert detectors as well.
 
BradWould said:
He's got a review of the smoke detectors on his YouTube channel. Initial review was good. But he ended up smashing one to get it to turn off And returned them all. Haha. I'm a HomeKit fanatic as well and I went with the Nest Protect
Click to expand...

Yep, I hated to do that, but I really couldn't risk it. I really didn't trust the alarms anymore, and I have two young kids, and it terrified them to have the alarm go off in the middle of the night. For the first one that went bad, it was a complete device malfunction. For the second one, it said the device reached the end of it's life after only two months.

I have a theory, which is the FirstAlert did not contemplate having the devices' status being checked constantly. That may cause the 10 year battery to be prematurely drained. It's not like I'm sitting there checking all day long for smoker, but since it is part of my home to configuration, every time I open the Home app, it polls the device for the status.

After I had to smash the darn thing, I saw that it has two very small Li-ion batteries.

Here is the video of that unfortunate incident:

 
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