U.K. Smart Home Firm Hive Rolls Out HomeKit Support for Active Line of Products

[jimthing]

Anyone know of a website listing all UK HomeKit compatible products?
Be great if one were to exist, offering info for each different product category.

 

[mzanker]

I haven’t gotten into home automation for my heating yet (I have loads of Hue lights...) but I’ve been looking into it recently.

This product looked like it might handle hot water, but that was only based on reading the blurb, not hands-on experience:

tado° Extension Kit Wireless Receiver for tado° Smart Thermostat - Apple (UK)

Apple Store Search Results

www.apple.com

It certainly claims to be able to control a separate boiler and the plate / wiring looks like it would replace the heating control panel in my kitchen (UK).

Yes, the Tado extension kit supports hot water but not via HomeKit, because of HomeKit's limitations. It has a standard UK backplate so should be a quick replacement for many controllers.

 

[justperry]

Hive is a British Gas product. It's in their interest to promote interoperability.

Nest, on the other hand, is firmly embedded in the Google Borg, and there's no impetus to make Nest equipment play nicely with Apple. Just imagine, for instance, if you could take a Nest Camera and make use of your iCloud data account for video. Google would hit the self destruct button first before that happened.

It's a shame, because the Nest thermostat is a lovely piece of design, whereas the Hive thermostat looks like my cheap light dimmer switch from the 1980s. I have a Nest thermostat myself, and the only bad thing about it is that it depends on Google for its existence. It's mildly annoying that we have these competing (and incompatible) standards. It would be great if the EU issued a directive saying that hubs must be designed to be interoperable.

We might get lucky, Apple,Google amongst others (Ziggby..Z-Wave) announced a few months ago to make protocols more interoperable.

 

[runebinder]

It's a shame that it doesn't support hot water, but loving how I can now tell Siri to turn off all of the lights and it switches my Hue and Hive bulbs all off now without having to mess around in Siri Shortcuts.

Also the Siri Shortcuts Automation feature should come in useful for the heating as the Hive app as always been poor in that regard.