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More info on apple's HomeKit


ravedog

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Posted

It shows the potential of getting things on the same page on the front end and let the messy back end be handled behind the scenes. It's an extremely complex and varied vertical area. Let's see what happens...

 

Ios 8 is out in a week, and let's see how devs start implementing it...

 

I think they chose the right time to address it... HA is blowing up...

 

 

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Posted

It shows the potential of getting things on the same page on the front end and let the messy back end be handled behind the scenes. It's an extremely complex and varied vertical area. Let's see what happens...

 

Ios 8 is out in a week, and let's see how devs start implementing it...

 

I think they chose the right time to address it... HA is blowing up...

 

 

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

 

I agree HA is the new fad everyone wants to ride the wave on.

 

Having more options is always a good thing so long as the utter crap is killed off right away. I am more curious to see if Apple enters the hardware side of things on the Home Kit front.

 

My gut feeling is they wont and will stay with letting 3rd parties do that portion while they refine the iOS to take advantage of all things HA related. The biggest area of opportunity will be a unified UI for the iPad which I hope will bring back some real class and refinements.

 

What I have seen and used thus far is really shoddy and needs some polish.

Posted

Oh they specifically said they aren't. Homekit is about making all existing stuff work together. Nothing more. I think the extent of hardware is their iOS devices computers and probably ibeacons for local proximity.

 

 

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Posted

Oh they specifically said they aren't. Homekit is about making all existing stuff work together. Nothing more. I think the extent of hardware is their iOS devices computers and probably ibeacons for local proximity.

 

 

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

Well that is a shame as I am sure they could show some of these also rands a thing or to. Some of the gear that is out simply looks like aszz!

 

Outside of Insteon in terms of looks and feel UPB, Z-Wave, X-10, Zigbee, all of their gear simply looks like utter crap, cheap feeling, and has that 1980's thing going on.  :mrgreen:

Posted

Agreed. However the real power comes in front end.

 

 

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  • 1 month later...
Posted

The HomeKit vision continues to be revealed and AppleTV as the UI is not a surprising step: as announced this week:

http://appleinsider.com/articles/14/10/07/latest-apple-tv-update-enables-remote-access-relay-for-homekit-connected-accessories

 

Two important things to watch unfolding:

  1. While a lot of control revolves around Siri, a non mobile UI needs to be part of the picture. Apple TV makes a lot sense for this vision. The examples given here are paper thin, which is expected this early in the reveal. It's almost overly simplistic and too tv remote-ish...for example is the garage door in the picture up or down?
  2. Like insteon hub (connect.insteon.com & mobile apps,) and others like Clare Controls, the "concentrator" of these services is the cloud. While direct control of devices will be local in the home, the definition and interactions are being kept and managed cloudside and replicated down to the house level. HA products are evolving towards cloud management.

 

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Posted

MobiLinc has a new app for HomeKit: MobiLinc Home. But it is UI side,not device support side.

 

If UDI's plan is to rely on third party developers to create an integration, that will never happen because there is no money in it for the third party. More likely folks that want the HomeKit experience will just migrate away from their ISY994is to other control units that support HomeKit. That really irks me though because I am already on my second iteration of home automation (X10 and Insteon, and my second UDI product, so really three iterations). I can't afford to scrap everything and start again every 6-8 years. 

Posted

MobiLinc has a new app for HomeKit: MobiLinc Home. But it is UI side,not device support side.

 

If UDI's plan is to rely on third party developers to create an integration, that will never happen because there is no money in it for the third party. More likely folks that want the HomeKit experience will just migrate away from their ISY994is to other control units that support HomeKit. That really irks me though because I am already on my second iteration of home automation (X10 and Insteon, and my second UDI product, so really three iterations). I can't afford to scrap everything and start again every 6-8 years. 

 

Still too early to tell what the environment will bring.

 

I am eager to see what third parties step up to the plate and how they offer their integration solution for various products. Thus far the offerings have been slim and little details as to what to expect.

Posted

kingwr,

 

Can you please let me know what you expect out of HomeKit?

 

Please note that the main standard for IoT and communicating devices is IPSO and not HomeKit. HomeKit is an Apple Only solution so it would be great to know what your expectations are.

 

Also - and unfortunately so - HomeKit requires bluetooth communications at base. So, you might have to change your ISY to a new ISY yet again just to get bluetooth.

 

With kind regards,
Michel

Posted

Primarily I am looking for integrated Siri support to my home automation system. I don't want to switch to another app on my phone and use that voice control (e.g. MobiLinc). I don't want to have to integrate a Siri hack with a local server and thus lose all other Siri functionality. I like Siri's mutl-function capability, and I would like to add control of my home to it.

 

As I have discussed before, I don't buy into the whole HomeKit philosophy of home automation. I want a local, central controller performing HA duties 24/7 and being the brains of the operation -- no other scenario makes sense to me. However, i want to be able to interface with that controller from anywhere - in my car (which has Siri), from my TV (which has AppleTV), from my phone (which has Siri), and eventually from my watch (which should have Siri). And it would be nice if the interface was the same across all of these platforms - not different apps and settings/configurations from each. HomeKit can give me that. I just need the ISY994i to expose its devices, scenes, and programs, either directly or through some intermediate device, to HomeKit so that I can get that level of control. 

 

Ideally, a free, open source rasberry PI solution that allows me to define the translation between ISY and HomeKit would be what I want. I am looking to see what, if anything, becomes of this: http://www.homekitbridge.com/

 

PS: I realize that the free and open source portions of the ideal presented above will be unattainable. I mean, this is Apple, after all.

Posted

Wanting local control of the process *and* Siri is a contradiction. Siri relies on network availability, and an server at Apple HQ does the processing. Same with Google Now.

 

It looks, to me, like HomeKit is going to be a cloud dependant solution.

Posted

Wanting local control of the process *and* Siri is a contradiction. Siri relies on network availability, and an server at Apple HQ does the processing. Same with Google Now.

 

It looks, to me, like HomeKit is going to be a cloud dependant solution.

For now, Siri does need the cloud...but that is more for the heavy lifting/searching/determining what the user wants.

 

Local control ("Play albums by XYZ") can be done locally on the device, it used to be called "Voice Control."  That could morph to "Unlock the front door" being done on the device as well.

Posted

Wanting local control of the process *and* Siri is a contradiction. Siri relies on network availability, and an server at Apple HQ does the processing. Same with Google Now.

 

It looks, to me, like HomeKit is going to be a cloud dependant solution.

I didn't say local control, I said a local controller. I want my schedules and programs running locally - not in the cloud. But it's OK for my voice control to use cloud services because that is not a critical function. If the Internet is down, I can still walk over and hit a button on a keypad. But I don't want my lawn to go unwatered or my nightime lights to not come on because the Internet is down.

 

While HomeKit is cloud dependent, HomeKit plus ISY994i doesn't have to be. If a bridge could be implemented, all of the devices controlled by the ISY994i could be enumerated to HomeKit while still retaining all of the same local functionality (programs, schedules, etc.).

Posted

Some random thoughts on HomeKit:

 

If the AppleTV gets apps, all bets are off, IMHO. If good 3rd party devs can leverage the HomeKit framework to provide a robust multi-protocol HA controller that lives on the ATV device, the competition will get fierce. The Indigo guys (among others) could be all over that market.

 

It's still a big pile of work to support each protocol. Just because HomeKit gives you a framework, you still need to have someone write the interface between your software, and the Nest API. And provide support as Google changes that API over time. Same with the Hue Lights, IFTTT, WeMo, etc. Hopefully HomeKit will be able to mitigate some of those difficulties, but each protocol will take effort on the part of a developer.

 

I think the biggest thing that needs to happen before mainstream adoption is for protocols to settle down. Will it be a VHS vs Beta situation where one dominates and the rest fade away? Or instead, will we have a couple, (or a handful, even) that thrive, and that standard controllers migrate towards supporting all of? Hopefully HomeKit can help spur that process along.

 

The iBeacon thing has real potential. That's one of the things I hope gets exploited for use with the ISY in the short term. Location awareness with that level of precision at would be awesome, particularly as the 'wearable' stage of tech gets going.

 

Apple seems hell-bent on encryption at the moment, which is a good sign. I don't think your HA stuff will be run from the cloud, either. It will run on a local device. There will be a back-up in the cloud, but it will be encrypted. You won't need internet access for things to work as long as your network is up.

 

Hopefully manufacturers can get device costs down as the technology matures. If smart devices were $20 each, instead of $50, adoption rates would jump.

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