Apple HomeKit?

[mango]

Does HomeKit really require a bespoke hardware chip to run the SDK? I believe it can all be software and optional hardware that in our case needs to bridge to Insteon hardware.

[mango]

This is how zwave did it:

 

he HomeKit implementation operates as a bridge device, and maps all connected Z-Wave devices into the HomeKit device directory, using Apple's HomeKit device classes.

[mango]

TheFallenAngel, as I have an Apple phone in my pocket and Apple have updated HomeKit in IOS10 to have much better feature set I thought I'd look in to what could be done to make it work with Insteon kit.

[larryllix]

In the old days I ran  a home automation system controlling about 30 X10 devices.

 

Think about this. This system ran numerous timers, had triggers that triggers as many programs as you liked every Second, Minute, Hour Day, Week, Month as well as running logic for all my silly algorithms calculating how often I needed to water the lawn, activate night light, cycle my furnace fan based on occupation of the house, etc...etc...

 

This ran on a piece of software under Window 3.11 running under MSDos.

This ran while serving files to my home network using a 10Base2 Ethernet 75 ohm terminated protocol.

This ran via a bit-banger 1 bit of a parallel interface (the old parallel printer port) to operate the X10 bi-directional protocol.

    This means no hardware and the serial bit-banger, for those that don't know, used software timing loops to shift each bit out at exact times.

This ran on a single core 40MHz..(count 'em.. fourty megahertz)  no GHz here.

This ran simultaneous to an ISP proxy server onto a serial port to  a dial up modem, to serve Internet in my house, to  people on five simultaneous computers surfing the web.

This ran with no detectable speed bumps that I ever detected.

 

 

And somebody want to tell me "The ISY that could" doesn't have enough power to operate a few devices occasionally?

 

The only reason ISY needs a RPi attached to it,  is that it doesn't contain a full O/S to handle all this multi-tasking and  warm and fuzzy, human comfort stuff.

 

Crap the "Little ISY that could" has a lot more CPU power than those huge PDP-8 and PDP-11 main frames did years back with thousands of users attached to them.

 

Think again.

[jtara92101]

 All Apple-centric people for some reason think Apple is a HUGE think

 

 

Having a little trouble parsing that, not quite sure what is meant by a "huge think".

 

One can measure technology companies in many ways. One might look at number of deployed installations. One might look at revenue, profits, employees, etc. etc. etc.

 

One way (for public companies) is market capitalization. For a public company, market cap is the present market value of all of the shares of a company's stock. It's what investors think the company is worth.

 

Let's look at that:

 

 

Click on heading to sort. Rank Company Name Symbol Market Cap ($ 1 Apple AAPL 555.71 2 Alphabet Inc. GOOG 522.09 3 Microsoft MSFT 438.02 4 Facebook FB 364.99 5 Berkshire Hathaway BRK-A 362.67 6 Amazon AMZN 360.36 7 Exxon Mobil XOM 360.10 8 Johnson & Johnson JNJ 323.46 9 General Electric GE 269.82 10 Wells Fargo WFC 245.82

Not just technology companies. ALL companies.

 

Oh - guess what - that goes for world-wide as well.

 

Investors think that Apple is the world's most valuable public company. More valuable than any other publicly-traded company. Anywhere. Doing anything.

 

Saudi Aramco might be bigger. But it is private, so precise numbers are not known. As well, the oil industry has fallen on hard times.

 

BTW, none of Apple, Microsoft, or Google are in the top 50 by revenues.

 

The list of biggest annual profits is interesting. Apple is on the list of the top 26 4 times. (For 4 different years.) Only ExxonMobile appears on the list more times - 8

 

Whatever you think of Apple, you have to admit they are "huuuuuuge".

 

You can say "I don't care what Apple does". And you can say "I don't care what Saudi Aramco does". Both are foolish and unrealistic viewpoints.

[mango]

That was the business daily report brought to you by AppsAreGreat.

[mango]

larry, interesting story. I started with Homeseer and x10 back on Win95 in the UK. Kit was pricey over there.

 

In today's world now we're after shiny. And I mean MORE shiny than ever. Polished front ends to show off, that's a huge factor.

[TheFallenAngel]

It would be nice if people would be so kind to refrain from resorting to Apple bashing.

It would be nice to respect outer people's opinions even from inside your bubble..

 

Cheers,

Alex

[TheFallenAngel]

TheFallenAngel, as I have an Apple phone in my pocket and Apple have updated HomeKit in IOS10 to have much better feature set I thought I'd look in to what could be done to make it work with Insteon kit.

Absolutely it would be - but as I said since Apple like to create and keep closed infrastructure, it is up to them to work with Insteon, not up to UDI who support universal protocols, not proprietary.. If Apple made it easy enough fir others to play with Home Kit, there will be a Node Server in no time, but sadly this is not the case.

 

Cheers,

Alex

[larryllix]

An analogy.

 

I could billboard hundreds of users here as my friends or associates but how many have actually come over and helped me with my HA system? Or even know I am only 13 years old?

 

Apple can list all the "Partners" they want but do things actually work together?

 

I know how the industry "Partnering with" works. Just self promotional hype. Flashing logos around doesn't do it for me but then I don't have to have my wool sheared off that much either.

[TheFallenAngel]

Having a little trouble parsing that, not quite sure what is meant by a "huge think".

 

One can measure technology companies in many ways. One might look at number of deployed installations. One might look at revenue, profits, employees, etc. etc. etc.

 

One way (for public companies) is market capitalization. For a public company, market cap is the present market value of all of the shares of a company's stock. It's what investors think the company is worth.

 

Let's look at that:

 

 

Click on heading to sort. Rank Company Name Symbol Market Cap ($ 1 Apple AAPL 555.71 2 Alphabet Inc. GOOG 522.09 3 Microsoft MSFT 438.02 4 Facebook FB 364.99 5 Berkshire Hathaway BRK-A 362.67 6 Amazon AMZN 360.36 7 Exxon Mobil XOM 360.10 8 Johnson & Johnson JNJ 323.46 9 General Electric GE 269.82 10 Wells Fargo WFC 245.82

Not just technology companies. ALL companies.

 

Oh - guess what - that goes for world-wide as well.

 

Investors think that Apple is the world's most valuable public company. More valuable than any other publicly-traded company. Anywhere. Doing anything.

 

Saudi Aramco might be bigger. But it is private, so precise numbers are not known. As well, the oil industry has fallen on hard times.

 

BTW, none of Apple, Microsoft, or Google are in the top 50 by revenues.

 

The list of biggest annual profits is interesting. Apple is on the list of the top 26 4 times. (For 4 different years.) Only ExxonMobile appears on the list more times - 8

 

Whatever you think of Apple, you have to admit they are "huuuuuuge".

 

You can say "I don't care what Apple does". And you can say "I don't care what Saudi Aramco does". Both are foolish and unrealistic viewpoints.

If you read all I said - it is VERY clear that it has nothing to do with Company Profits, or Socks data, this is business measure that is irrelevant here. What is meant and was made clear was market penetration - how many people use Apple products vs everything else. Why "everything elese"? Because, as again was said, they play well with standard protocols, and play well with each other for that matter..

 

Apple's problem, once again, is that try to make something proprietary by which trying to keep close system. And this hurts in the long run their users (which as I said I were too).

 

Cheers,

Alex

[TheFallenAngel]

AN alogy.

 

I could hundreds of user here as my friends or associates but how many have actually come over and helped me with my HA system? Even know I am only 13 years old?

 

Apple can list all the "Partners" they want but do things actually work together?

 

I know how the industry "Partnering with" works. Just self promotional hype. Flashing logos around doesn't do it for me but then I don't have to have my wool sheared off that much either.

Well if UDI creates a logo wall like that it will be much bigger because it would include every manufacturer of Z-Wave Insteon, ZigBee, etc. protocols. Add to all this that the Node servers already support and will support - that logo wall will have many pages/walls..

 

Cheers,

Alex

[Teken]

It would be nice if people would be so kind to refrain from resorting to Apple bashing.

 

First, I like to apologize because history has proven out of the hole I will bash Apple. Having said this, everyone also knows I have no issue throwing any company under the bus. It doesn't matter if its Insteon, Z-Wave, ZigBee, Microsoft, Google, etc. I call out what is factually true not some kind of skewed view of the world.

 

Because I am a realist and don't fall prey to the very common theme of *If you own it - you must champion and argue for it*. If a product is solidly built, designed, and offers true value I call this out. If on the other hand it fails on many fronts I call this out but also balance my replies by at least acknowledging the benefits any product / vendor has.

 

This not only provides others a proper view but also offers balance in terms of the facts and information.

 

My take on the whole Apple Home Kit is on paper its great . . .

 

Because it has the potential to unify the HA market and bring together a semblance of unification / integration. As others have mentioned the problem is the closed nature of the frame work and the added expense on hardware. I won't fault Apple for pushing the envelope of security because they have proven in the last 18 months its important.

 

They did not cede to the FBI, Courts, or anyone else when pushed to reveal and compromise their iOS. As I stated many pages back and in various threads if this frame work has legs it will continue and may very well usher in new features and technology not considered or seen in the HA market.

 

Anyone who counts Apple out of the HA race is naive because at some point they will get serious. The problem is very similar to their Apple TV because for the longest time they (Apple) said this was just a hobby. We all know it wasn't a hobby but when you compare to their other products in terms of sales percentage I suppose its considered a hobby.

 

For others who could state they make upwards of 700 - 1.25 billion dollars per year on a so called hobby would chomp on the bit and do anything to replicate the very same. As seen after more than six years the company (Apple) has pushed forward with the 4th generation Apple TV and its no hobby.

 

Why is any of the above relevant?!?!

 

Because this whole Apple Home Kit is exactly at the stage of Apple Gen 1.

 

The company isn't serious, they are presently too scattered and involved in too many projects. Whether it be the whole self driving car which they most recently just canned hundreds of people from a high point of 1000 employee's. Keeping in mind they scalped hundreds of engineers from various departments which directly impacted other high profit hardware products.

 

Apple has the capacity to move almost anything in the market place but it takes consideration and thought about inclusion. The best thing that ever happen to Apple was Steve Jobs going away because many business decisions and directions would have never happen with him at the helm.

 

Tim Cook is lazered focus and knows business well - But he too is blinded by the *Fairy Dust* that hovers around their environment. Anyone who has ever been to Apple, Microsoft, Google, can attest the atmosphere, working environment, and the type of people that work at the three above is incredibly different.

 

You walk into Google and its like your dealing with a bunch of college frat boys all smoking bongs. You walk into Apple and it appears very quickly many are uptight, prissy, and a iSheep.

 

Microsoft depending upon department like SCOM is like walking into a room full of nerds that have zero social skills and talk, act, and dress like 1980's.

 

What does any of this have to do with Apple Home Kit?

 

It has everything to do with Apple Home Kit because the people at the top leading these teams are fools. They have been drinking the Kool Aid for way too long and really don't think. They simply follow what is said and rinse and repeat what they have done for 25 years.

 

If anyone took the time to view the Apple event you will quickly note the completely stupid and insane *Gold Watch* was killed off. You had to be a complete moron with too much money to lay out $10-16K for a smartwatch.

 

Apple tried to chase the likes of Rolex, Breitling, Omega, Tag Heuer, which is utterly insane.

 

My view is they need to keep pushing and advancing their core products and stop the raping of the consumer. Each and every year the concede just a little bit offering more features, or adding more base memory, or reduce prices.

 

This was all seen in the latest Apple Event - almost every product got a speed bump to increased memory, or a cut in prices. It still doesn't address the very fact this company is determined to hobble their products by not offering the most common features like micro SD card slot to the asinine idea its OK to have one single I/O port using USB Type C for a freaking laptop!

 

You have to be either retarded or determined to screw the consumer to do that.

 

Ultimately Apple will continue to do what Apple does and that is whistle the same tune until people either leave, die, retire, from the company.

 

Anyone who doesn't believe this only needs to look at how Microsoft is running now with out that stupid fool Steve Ballmer! Sadly he and Bill Gates still are on the board so poor Satya can only do so much.

 

What a crying shame . . . 

[fitzpatri8]

To me, HomeKit is relevant because it sets up the infrastructure necessary to move home automation beyond the techies and hackers.

 

Ordinary people want good security, but they don't want the hassle of setting up dynamic IP forwarding or obtaining and installing security certificates--HomeKit takes care of it. People want interoperability between brands, so they can benefit from different companies' expertise and they don't get 'locked in' to one company's offerings--HomeKit does that for the HA module side of things. People want complex home automation gear to be secure and intuitive to set up and easy to use, and that's an area of expertise where Apple excels.

 

That said, I don't think U-D should abandon non-Apple users, that would be foolish. The existing ISY hardware is compact and still powerful enough to keep energy bills under control in commercial environments, where professional installers can deal with more complex setups, and it remains useful for hackers and people using other phone platforms.

 

That said, I think U-D is making the right decision to avoid adding a MFI chip to the existing ISY 'brain'. That process sounds expensive, time-consuming and distracting, and it would 'duplicate' part of HomeKit's functionality.

 

The HomeKit winner will be whomever can be first to cram the intelligence of an ISY into an iPad and Apple TV app. The app should be able to do the same things as the ISY--provide users with variables, timers, calendars, notifications, conditional logic, etc., and be able to control and respond to any HomeKit-compatible device or hub, in addition to using Siri and geofence features built into the latest mobile devices.

 

Apple users will soon be able to play with HomeKit using the new Home app in iOS 10. When they are ready to get serious about HA, they'll just add an app. My question is, will that app be written by U-D or someone else?

[mwester]

Well thought out, and I think your point about homekit addressing a different market is right on.

 

...My question is, will that app be written by U-D or someone else?

 

And my follow-on question is, will that app run without a cellular connection and without an internet connection?   I fear that the answer, based on Apple's historical behavior, and based on the culture around the apps one finds in app-stores, will be a resounding "NO! - You MUST depend on company XYZ's cloud service for our app to run."

 

Somebody prove me wrong -- show me an application that runs locally on a Windows or Linux PC, dependent upon NO internet services whatsoever, that can handle conditional logic and manage a set of homekit-enabled sensors and lights.    Does such a thing exist?  If not, why does it not exist?  Is it because it's not practical, or is it because it's not possible?

 

I'm not trying to be a jerk here -- I'd really appreciate if those who are pushing the homekit stuff on this thread will point to some concrete examples, even if they are just in their infancy, to prove that homekit even overlaps with the sort of needs the users of an ISY tend to have.

[fitzpatri8]

And my follow-on question is, will that app run without a cellular connection and without an internet connection? I fear that the answer, based on Apple's historical behavior, and based on the culture around the apps one finds in app-stores, will be a resounding "NO! - You MUST depend on company XYZ's cloud service for our app to run."

I just ran a test by unplugging my modem and running on wifi only. The results were reassuring.

 

The HomeKit app has to have a way to talk with HomeKit accessories and hubs. Without an internet connection, so long as the app can connect to HomeKit gear via Bluetooth or via the LAN, the app can continue to control devices. Without the Internet, you temporarily lose use of the Siri voice assistant, and you obviously can't control gear while away from home. That's the main reason you'd want an app running all of your timers and conditional logic to live in the house, not reside in the cloud like Stringify.

 

Somebody prove me wrong -- show me an application that runs locally on a Windows or Linux PC, dependent upon NO internet services whatsoever, that can handle conditional logic and manage a set of homekit-enabled sensors and lights. Does such a thing exist? If not, why does it not exist? Is it because it's not practical, or is it because it's not possible?

That's not possible in a commercial product, but it appears that's technically possible by hobbyists who aren't afraid of getting sued. I get the impression the people using software emulators as a HomeKit bridge are using reverse-engineered code and Apple is currently looking the other way.

[mango]

All it requires is a third party to make the software bridge. MobiLinc would be ideal, they are already running a decent app that talks to the ISY.

Charge extra for the Homekit module. Done.

[larryllix]

Imagine somebody writing an app that would listen to Internet traffic in and out of the house and create automatic apps that can substitute for the cloud repsonses.

 

Worth a few bucks eh?

[jtara92101]

Without the Internet, you temporarily lose use of the Siri voice assistant

 

 

However, I believe that Apple is working toward voice command recognition directly on the device without need for the cloud.

 

Offline dictation is available on iPhone 8S from iOS8. (You have to change a setting.) I believe I saw something in the presentation regarding iOS10 having even greater local voice recognition capability.

 

Sure, Apple will still want to collect statistics and probably details and upload them so that they can improve their algorithms. But it will just be batched once the Internet connection is available.

 

Problem has been that the hardware wasn't up to it. But now it certainly is.

 

I worked on some TTS and STT on Linux a few years ago using popular licensed libraries. It was a "remote medical assistance" kind of device. What was then a fairly high-end PC. iPhone now has that much firepower. So, the technical ability is there, and Apple is moving in that direction.

[mwester]

I'm getting multiple answers here.

 

fitzpatri8, thanks for checking.  That's hopeful, then -- apparently from a technical point of view, it is possible to control a homekit device without requiring a "cloud" service to act as a proxy.  You then mention that it's not possible for a commercial product to do this -- do I take this to mean that the only official "legal" way to control a homekit device is by using an Apple device -- Apple TV, iPhone, iPad?

 

mango, thanks for your input.  Please clarify if you can -- would such a software bridge permit me to accept triggers and status changes from a homekit device, as well as control a homekit device?  It sounds like a perfect candidate for a node server -- make the homekit devices appear as if they are nodes like any other to an ISY.  That wouldn't require any modifications to the ISY at all.  So, is such a software bridge legal?  Are there examples you can point to?

[lilyoyo1]

All this talk of apps for home kit for the ISY is a waste. The ISY still needs the hardware. Apple has simply made it easier for apps to control home kit devices. The hardware still needs to have the chip.

[mango]

I'm just touching the edge of this whole thing and throwing out my thoughts.

I am unaware of Apples Ts and Cs but will investigate further.

[fitzpatri8]

All this talk of apps for home kit for the ISY is a waste. The ISY still needs the hardware. Apple has simply made it easier for apps to control home kit devices. The hardware still needs to have the chip.

I'm not seeing your point. Why does the ISY need to run on its own hardware, why can't an app with similar conditional logic run on an Apple device in the home instead? An app would employ the MFi key/encoder/decoder built into the Apple device it is running on to get access to HomeKit accessories directly, bridges like the Insteon HomeKit Hub to access other Insteon devices without the MFi chip built-in, and, potentially, http to control legacy, non-HomeKit gear.

[mwester]

I'm not seeing your point. Why does the ISY need to run on its own hardware, why can't an app with similar conditional logic run on an Apple device in the home instead? An app would employ the MFi key/encoder/decoder built into the Apple device it is running on to get access to HomeKit accessories directly, bridges like the Insteon HomeKit Hub to access other Insteon devices without the MFi chip built-in, and, potentially, http to control legacy, non-HomeKit gear.

 

Perhaps I'm missing your point.  Do I understand that you are advocating that UDI port the ISY functionality to run on the Apple TV, or on an iPad?

 

That might be nice, but that's not at all interesting to me -- Apple is a closed ecosystem, and an app running on ios is pretty much "sandboxed" in.  Meaning I can't extend it easily, nor can I build upon it easily.  Not to mention that I'm just not that interested in learning how to write apps for ios; my leisure time is too limited to learn yet another environment, especially one so proprietary and closed.

 

Back to my original question -- someone claims that we can write a software bridge such that a linux or windows system can act as a proxy between the ISY and the homekit devices.  That seems to solve all the problems here -- the ISY remains as-is, homekit remains as-is, and all we need is a little code on a Raspberry Pi (which is a he** of a lot cheaper than an iPad!).

[larryllix]

"Total control. End to end"

...Steve Jobs