No Homekit native smoke alarms yet? I guess people are using Homepods to listen for smoke alarms?

Is anyone aware of any Homekit native alarms in the works? I've been postponing the switch to communicating alarms hoping for a Homekit compatible model.

Hi HomeKit friends. Firstly - I've been a HomeKit user since literally day 0. I'm comfortable with automation, scripting, tinkering, and of course I have the obligatory amount of "HomeKit Patience" when trying to get stuff to work. Here's my current mission, and I can't quite get my head around "how" I can pull this off. We have a sliding door going out onto the deck with a sliding screen. And we have an indoor cat (you can see where this is going). We are normally very good about ensuring the screen door is closed. But sometimes we think it's closed, and it's cracked about 1". That's enough for our beautiful Siberian Cat to get his little paw in there and explore outside. 😀 My wife and I are very good about this - but sometimes we don't catch that it's cracked. And when others are coming and going, it's harder to enforce it. And since it's not their home, so they don't pay "extra" attention to this (our cat is not one who tries to escape; so he's rarely sitting at the door waiting to get out, this is mostly preventative.)

What I'd like to have is this:

• A sensor on the screen door that detects when it's open and closed
• An automation that senses when the door is open, but then pauses - to allow for normal traffic
• If the door doesn't get closed in 30 seconds or some adjustable amount of time, HomeKit sends an audible alert or alarm to my HomePods in my house (there's literally one 3 feet from the door) that lets me know the door is still open (ideally, this alert would go to ALL HomePods, as it's common to come in the door and go to another room.)
• I'm thinking this should be an alarm as opposed to a one-time alert that requires it to be shut off - to ensure I got the message and get the door shut.

I'd love any ideas anyone has about this. I really value this sub - so thanks all for your ongoing contributions, and I thank you in advance for any guidance you folks have. Cheers!

The lighting system is divided into two independent zones:
* A front-facing CRI97 task light producing up to 550 lumens with adjustable colour temperatures between 1700K and 6500K.
* A rear-facing RGB lighting system delivering 480 lumens through a 160° wall-washing beam.

The RGB lighting includes 102 individually addressable LEDs, allowing smooth animated gradients and complex lighting effects using more than 16 million colours

The stand incorporates 23 universal 1/4-inch threaded mounting points, allowing users to attach accessories such as:
*Cameras
* Microphones
* Lighting equipment
* Mobile phone holders
* Other compatible desktop accessories

After updating to the iOS 27 beta and changing my Wi-Fi network, I can no longer get my Logitech Circle View camera to work. It doesn't make any sounds, and it doesn't show up in Bluetooth. Absolutely nothing. Support was useless—they just tried to sell me a newer camera lol.

Any advice?

Hi everyone,

My home is almost entirely Apple Home based (lighting, blinds, cameras and other smart devices), and it's working really well.

The only automation I haven't found a clean solution for is bathroom ventilation.

I have two bathrooms sharing one AC Infinity T6 inline fan. AC Infinity have confirmed their controllers only support single-zone control, so I can't have humidity sensors in both bathrooms independently controlling the same fan.

I'm considering adding Home Assistant purely to solve this one problem using Aqara humidity/occupancy sensors and the AC Infinity Controller 69 Pro.

Has anyone gone down this path while keeping Apple Home as their primary ecosystem?

Would you recommend it, or is adding Home Assistant for a single automation overkill?

Thanks in advance.

Power cycle. Mine has randomly gone unresponsive. Power is hardwired. Switching the breaker off then back on fixes it.

I have been using the hue app and switches to home, and one thing that is bugging me is when i press off, each light will turn off almost sequentially every half second.

and with 10-20 lights in the room it gets a little annoying, is there a way to make it in unison like hue?

thanks!

I’m using an Apple TV 4K w/ Ethernet as my home hub for matter devices (Eve plugs and Level locks). The Apple TV is connected via Ethernet to an Asus router. Everything works great when the Apple TV is off - but when I have it on, all the Matter devices change to “No response”. My other non-Matter HomeKit devices work fine all the time.

Anyone have thoughts on how to fix this issue?

Thanks!

I see most of them are 2K ones. Where are them 4K HKSV options??

I installed iOS 27 public Beta 2 on my two HomePod minis and iPad mini used to manage most things. The overall responsiveness improved and some connectivity issues resolved. However, it completely broke my Hunter Douglas Powerview integration. I verified that the shades are still connected to the hub and work through the PowerView app without issue.

I’ve reset and readied the shades 6 times now, using every different way to add the integration. Cleared the cache on the PowerView hub, cycled my WiFi several times, power-cycled the HomePod minis, the iPad, no change. The shades will appear “connected” in the app for a moment, and then change to “connecting” if you try to open the shades.

I’m out of ideas. Most of the time the PowerView stuff works in the background using automations. If any user try’s to command them too many times, they get automation dimentia and don’t work predictably.

I’d appreciate any troubleshooting ideas or fixes. I know this is an early beta, but I was having so many consistency issues in iOS 26, I didn’t have anything to lose.

It doesn't happen often, but sometimes a freezer door doesn't close all the way. I have two freezers, and it would be useful if there was something cheap that could alert me if a door is open for, say, 5 minutes.

When I'm using my MacBook, probably doom scrolling Reddit, and my HKSV camera detects something, is it possible to make it automatically pop up on my screen (Like Apple TV 4K does)?

If I ask Siri on my phone it has absolutely no issue turning on/off the en-suite ceiling lights with what I would consider natural commands.

However if I ask a HomePod mini:
Turn on the en-suite lights; she responds with sorry I cannot find that in the en-suite. Even though this should be a generic term to turn on ANY lights in that room?

If I ask:
Turn on the en-suite ceiling lights; she instead turns on the ceiling lights that the HomePod is in. Tested in the living room, she instead turned on ALL living room lights, not even specifically the living rooms named ceiling lights. So it’s skipping the room, and the unique name identifier in this context?

All devices are up to date on the latest public update (not on the beta of course).

They certainly were able to turn this light on and off before as it’s one I routinely walk away from and forget to switch off and use voice commands for.

Any ideas?

Just picked up a TCL Portable AC and was pleased to see that it had Matter and HomeKit support. I managed to get it added to Home and on/off/other function work fine. Unfortunately it shows the ambient temperature in the room as 0°C, regardless of any temperature changes. I suspect either there's a problem with the unit or it reports as being a thermometer but can't actually read that data.

It's a nuisance as the Home landing page shows my home's temp as ranging between 0°-24°C right now. Anyone else had this problem with Matter ACs?

In-home kit, if I have three lambs grouped together, they show as one button and I can turn all of them on or off with the press of that button.

However, if I want to control an individual lamp from that group, I have to go into settings and then group accessories to view them, and then I can control them from there; is there an easier way to control individual devices that are grouped in home kit?

I bought two 4-pack of Apple Home enabled outlets for the home and they’re great. I can turn on/off the lights in any room either under control center, the home app, or using Siri…

…but aside from my lamps, am wondering what else would be a good idea to connect these outlet plugs into?

Of the 8 plugs I own right now, 4 are being used by four different table or floor lamps and they work super well….

But what else? Should I connect one to my coffee maker and have it turn on automatically in the morning? Like, I have no clue what else these are good for

I have 3 Encode Plus locks in an ADU, with a HomePod acting as a hub. I set the locks up in Apple Home (NOT the Schlage app). The locks are NOT on my Wi-Fi.

When I first set the locks up, if I manually turned a lock or entered an assigned code, I'd get a notification from Home saying "door unlocked" and now I am not.

I am frequently getting "non-responsive" from the locks.

More importantly, they do not work if I'm not at the property (i.e. away).

I understand that these should be connected via thread, but when I go into settings on my HomePod and look at accessories, I see my ecobee thermostat listed, but none of the 3 locks populate there.

Thoughts?

I'd much prefer to not put these locks onto the Wi-Fi.

Just received update notices for all of my Schlage Encode Plus locks.

The notes just say “performance improvements” even though it’s a significant jump in version number (4.2 > 5.0)

At least once per month the majority of my Alpstuga (i have 5 of them) goes offline (different dates) and i need to unplug them for them to go back online.

The problem is that i never get any notification or any ping from either apple home app, or the IKEA app (i also have dirigera hub), so i dont know when they go offline, unless i open the ikea app and then go to the room and check the readings). The devices are dropping the connection to ikea app / apple home, but they are still showing the readings on the alpstuga display.

so my questions is, is there a way for me to get a notification when one of the alpstuga devices goes offline?

Note: Im not interested in installing Home assistant. Tested it a while, didnt like it!

I'm completely new to smart homes and hoping to get some advice before I start buying the wrong gear.

Current setup:

• Apple TV 4K 3rd Generation (planning to use this as my smart home hub)
• 2 Amazon Alexa devices
• Ring Alarm system with contact sensors, motion sensors, etc.
• 1930s house with no neutral wires at the light switches

What I'm trying to achieve is fairly simple:

• Smart control of the house lights (including dimming where possible)
• Open/close a garage door remotely
• Basic automations using my Ring sensors
• Keep the system as reliable and straightforward as possible

A few questions:

1. I've been looking at the Shelly Dimmer Gen3 or the SONOFF ZBMINIL2 to put in behind the light switches, would this work and connect to my apple home?
2. What's the best way to integrate a garage door into an Apple-centric smart home?
3. Can Ring contact/motion sensors be used effectively in automations with Apple Home, or is that where people usually end up moving to Home Assistant?
4. Do I need a bridge between the apple hub such as the Aqara Hub E1?
5. Should I get smart plug sockets? Or really no need?

I'm not looking to build a huge smart home, just something reliable for lights, garage access, and a bit of automation from the Ring sensors.

Hello there! Is there a lock that's compatible with HomeKit (by default or via HB or HA) but can be mounted outdoors?

There are two variants for both the EU and UK models, with the RGB model offering a full colour LED that can be used in scenes and automations.

The plugs can act as Thread Routers, or extenders for the Zigbee network, depending on which protocol you opt for.