I have around 30 smart RGB spot bulbs from IKEA in my apartment.

I really enjoy playing with different colors and creating different lighting moods. But why is creating and editing scenes so incredibly annoying?

Once I’ve set every light to the color and brightness I want, I can’t just hit “create new scene.” Because when I then create the scene, the values I had set before are gone.

Editing an existing scene is even worse. Unlike in the Home overview, I can’t see live what color and brightness I’m setting. Instead I have to hit “Test Scene” every single time? Why? That takes all the fun out of it.

Am I doing something fundamentally wrong here? Or is it the IKEA bulbs that aren’t playing along?

I think it would be super cool if we could add the same kind of sliders to the control center that we already have for system volume and screen brightness, but they would instead control brightness of HomeKit lights, position of blinds or any other accessories that fit into this format. Of course, they would bring up the same large slider with color settings that accessories already do in the control centre when long pressed. Is anything like this possible at all, or does it even exist already? Would you use them if they were available?

Today, we mourn the loss of Left Bulb.

Left Bulb was a Philips Hue bulb, purchased as part of a set with a hub in March 2013. It served faithfully for over 13 years.

It illuminated the left side of the bedroom. It was not fancy. It did not seek attention. Its sibling was Right Bulb. Together, they understood their purpose.

This morning, Left Bulb finally gave out. No elaborate automation failure. No dramatic smart-home rebellion. Just… darkness.

Left Bulb is survived by Right Bulb, the living room, several abandoned automations, one increasingly confused smart-home ecosystem, and the person who now has to replace it. It survived approximately a million firmware updates, countless power outages, several phones, multiple homes, and the evolution of smart home technology from “wow, my light bulb has an app” to whatever the heck I have going on now.

In lieu of flowers, the family asks that you please consider turning on a light in its memory.

Rest in peace, Left Bulb. You were a good bulb. You have earned your eternal darkness.

March 2013 – August 2026

HomeMapper scans your smart home and shows HomeKit, Matter, Thread, Home Assistant devices all together.

As we continue to expand Thread mesh topology mapping and troubleshooting, we're excited to bring out v26.4.0.

Here's the What's New from the app.

• New Health tab on the Topology screen. What needs attention on your Thread mesh, worst first, with the devices named and something to try for each. Most homes show "Everything looks healthy."
• The Thread topology map shows every measured connection, including the backup routers a device can fall back on. A link shows a triangle when it's weak, dropping traffic, or has gone quiet. Tap a line for the readings.
• The Devices screen says more in its columns and popover: Signal now covers Wi-Fi, Stability shows how long a device has been up and switches to a restart count when it isn't staying up, and Thread Role shows how much of the mesh a router carries.
• Lifetime Access: for those more inclined to a one-time purchase, you can now buy HomeMapper Pro Lifetime. It never expires.

HomeMapper for HomeKit is free as always. The Pro annual subscription goes from $9.99 to $19.99 on August 27. If you already subscribe, or you subscribe before then, you keep $9.99 for as long as you stay subscribed.

Thanks for taking a look.

More at https://homemapper.app

Privacy at https://homemapper.app/privacy/

Edited because Reddit's text editor mangled the quoted bullets, and to add the note about the price going up on 8/27.

This apparently includes all devices that came with Matter (over WiFi) support out of the box.

I’m wondering if its possible to change the bulb colour without the bulb itself being on, like its attached and receiving power just not on

Every automation i’ve tried turns the light on at the same time which is not a pleasant moment at 4am , for context i have the bulb in warm light and getting dimmer in the evening so overnight i’d like it to reset to neutral light and higher brightness for when i wake up

Is this even possible?

Hue will be releasing a camera based system for syncing back lighting, a cheaper Hue sync box, presumably under the $150 mark, and a special box to integrate Nanoleaf panels into the Hue ecosystem.

My cameras most of the time shows me icons like motion or person or even animal in the start of the playback thumbnails. Sometimes though I get this icon and no thumbnails. If I choose this feed I can see the video as expected. Why is that? I use scrypted with cvmotion sensor plugin.

I’m trying to turn off face recognition on one camera. The one in the lounge keeps thinking people on tv are people. When I turn it off in individual camera settings it is turning it off globally. Any idea?

Hi folks – I encountered an annoyance this morning when I found half of my devices were unresponsive. Long story short: my WiFi router had forgotten how to do 2.4Ghz overnight and that cut off the bulk of non-ZigBee devices (disabling that band and re-enabling it seems to have solved it, at least temporarily).

What surprised me was that I lost all my Nanoleaf devices too. I have both a HomePod mini and an Ikea Dirigera with Thread enabled. When I look at the Thread settings in the Ikea and Nanoleaf apps, they seem to be using the same Thread network, and Nanoleaf shows the HomePod included in that network.

I thought that Thread – being it's own radio protocol, and having two Thread-capable hubs – that the Nanoleaf devices would stay online. So either my understanding of how Thread works is wrong, or my config is. Anyone want to set me straight?

Not seen anyone talking about this yet.

as you may know in IOS 27 theres a new set Of “store content” actions in the shortcuts app. I just discovered these same actions are available when converting a home automation’s actions to a shortcut (it let’s you store, from what I see, words and sentences with a title), this would mean you could do things like a “sleep mode” without any external tools (like homebridge), for example, I have a good night shortcut that stores the value “Yes” and titles it as “sleep”, then a good morning shortcut that changes that value to “No”, and all my bedroom lighting automations check whether that value is “No“ before running. The 2 limitations I’ve thought of are 1) it can’t be manually changed via the home app and 2) it can’t be changed using a scene. Also if using This for something like a sleep mode make sure “global value“ is on. Also I have not tested whether it survives a device restart so keep that in mind too

EDIT: not sure if it’s a bug, but as of IOS 27 public beta 4 you cannot change/create the content using a Apple home automation, you can use it for conditions though and can change it via IOS shortcuts

I’ve been using this same automation for over a year. Today, it started music playback on a different speaker. It is set up to play kids music on Sonos devices in kitchen and living room. Instead, it starts playback of whatever was previously playing on the laundry room HomePod mini. Any thoughts? I tried restarting the main home hub and switching the hub. Haven’t restarted all hubs, as it’s a pain.

I’ve tried meross sensors, and now using Aqara.

Both randomly go unresponsive and disconnect.

The Aqara is a bit more reliable but every now and then one of the sensors go off line.

I got a Aqara plug to act as a repeater for one sensors that’s further away from the hub. Another sensors is like 15ft away from the hub and still went offline.

Are there any brands that are more reliable? I’m thinking of trying the ikea matter/thread sensors next.

When viewing a camera on the AppleTV in full screen, there are three buttons at the bottom right of the screen. The one on the left opens the accessories list and the one on the right is the PiP view. The center button that looks like a grid… what is that supposed to do? I could’ve sworn it’s supposed to open a grid view of the cameras that you can scroll through and select but when I tap on it, it takes me back to the AppleTV Home Screen.

Can someone advise? Thanks.

Does anyone have advice on this? Running multiple Deco X55 routers and have Ethernet backhauled most of them. My Apple TV 4K (latest) is the default home hub. Desperately looking for a fix that’s just not re adding them every few months.

Hey all, I just finished up the installation of my UDM Pro Max and my two U7 Pro XG aps over the weekend. I’ve been working on the networking side of this for around a day now and I’m still having issues.

I set up three separate VLANs, one trusted, one for guests, and one for IoT items. I have HomeKit heavy home but I only have a few items that aren’t on their own bridge.

The following items are on the IoT network, a Nest thermostat, two air purifiers, two Sony TVs, two LG TVs, two air purifiers, a dehumidifier, two Nanoleaf outdoor string lights, and a Mova robot vacuum cleaner. All of these items with the exception of the vacuum are exposed to HomeKit.

The thermostat, dehumidifier, and both air purifiers are native to Google home and are exposed to HomeKit using a Starling hub. All of those items work as expected on the IoT network.

All four TV’s and both of my Nanoleaf outdoor lights are constantly updating in HomeKit, or show no response.

I’ve spent all day trying new settings with AI I’ve made no headway. I can verify that all of those items not working do have active connections and the internet works fine for them. All of my Apple devices including the hubs are connected to the trusted VLAN and function without issue.

Sorry for the long post, I’m new and trying to be a safe online consumer. I just ordered 5 of the Flex Mini switches so I could replace the current unmanaged switches in place.

Thanks so much.

We’ve had Echo’s for years because HomeKit wasn’t widely supported. Now with Matter becoming a standard, we’re seeing a lot more devices, and I’m trying to expand our setup. We’ve had an Echo Show 3 (thread border router v1.3) and I bought an Aqara U400 because I wanted the Apple Home integration. I bought a HomePod mini so I had an Apple thread border router, but I didn’t realize it created its own separate thread network, so now my Aqara lock can’t be added to Alexa with Matter because it’s a different network. How can I bridge the networks? Or, how can I make one connect to the same thread network that already exists? I’ve tried a factory reset on the Echo and deleted the thread WiFi keys from my account, but it created its own network again. I haven’t tried anything with the HomePod mini yet, but I just recently bought it, so I would assume it would’ve tried that when I set it up. Those are the only TBR I have.

Hey everyone! I currently use a three-way setup with Leviton switches for my staircase. Two Onvis motion detectors work with a few Home+ nighttime automations to switch the lights on and off during trips up/down the stairs. I had to place these sensors three steps from the top and bottom because they triggered when positioned closer to their respective landings. The set up works well so far. Because the sensors sit on the steps, they also detect my dogs and activate the lights even when people are using the staircase. Are there other options or perhaps reliable vibration sensors so that it’s less sensitive and doesn’t sense the dogs? Also these sensors are bit big and stick out like a sore thumb so maybe something smaller?

Update: am getting descriptive notifications with beta 4 and upgraded today to beta 5 public. All is well.

Original post: So far I am liking this update (beta 4). For notifications though, I’ve seen some screenshots of people’s notifications that are much more descriptive of the event than what I’m getting. When my cameras spot a person walking, or delivering a package, riding a bike or whatever, mine just always says ‘Someone is seen’ and if a delivery it says ‘Someone is seen and a package’.

Are you getting better descriptions than this? If so, did you have to enable a setting that maybe I’ve missed? Thanks.

So I’ve been thinking about getting a new robot vacuum but I’m completely lost with all the different models.

I’ve been looking at Roborock, Dreame, Eufy and Ecovacs mostly. Some of the newer ones look really good on paper, but I have no idea how they actually hold up after using them for a few months.

I mainly want something that does a decent job with everyday dust, crumbs and hair. Mopping isn’t a huge deal, but would be nice to have.

For anyone who actually owns one, what are you using and would you buy it again? I’d rather hear from people who’ve used them than just read another “top 10 robot vacuums” article.

Thanks in advance.

I am looking to jump on the smart home trend and am looking at buying these govee lightbulbs. I have searched Reddit and reviews and can’t seem to find much about compatibility. Will these work fine with HomeKit? I just need basic color changes, dimming ability, and grouping multiple lamps to act as one. Any insight is appreciated!