Even before I bought my Apple HomePod Minis I had been planning to dismantle my Internet of things network based on my Amazon echo plus hub. I decided a year or two earlier to build my iot network using an Amazon base. In the states I had smartthings. The version I had did not work in the UK. I tried to revive my Smarthings network first and then learned it was destined for the landfill. I refuse to use Google as my home hub for previously discussed privacy concerns. At the time my Apple TV 4 could be used as a HomeKit hub. The challenge was there were not that many devices compatible. And many of them were expensive.
Flash forward to the fall of 2020 Apple had come along way. It feels like there are more devices compatible still with Amazon or Google. That’s fine since there is a decent enough variety of devices compatible with Apple HomeKit. Since I had the Apple TV already and I own an iPad I did not need to buy any hub per se. All I needed to do was start buying devices.
I had spent some money on Amazon compatible devices previously. That was annoying that I would have to start over. On the plus side I only bought two smart plugs to turn on the lamp in the living room and in the office. Originally they were bought for when we were on holiday to set timers for the lights. I also bought a Ring doorbell as well as a Ring camera for our back garden. They were compatible with the Amazon set up and we’re not compatible with HomeKit. I was prepared to live with the Ring cameras not working with HomeKit until I found HomeBridge. It is a piece of software that at first ran on a Raspberry Pi I had and later simply on a docker container on a Pi I had. It bridges many devices to work with HomeKit. The integration was pretty slick and it solved my “Ring” problem. I at first augmented my Ring camera’s with Eufy camera’s using apple’s secure HomeKit video. That way I did not have video on Ring’s servers but still used the Doorbell as well a smart doorbell for real time feeds.
I simply replaced the smart plugs. The ones I had originally were also not that smart. For some reason they only worked on an older Wi-Fi technology. There was also no way to change the Wi-Fi name. That meant when I changed my Wi-Fi network name and upgraded I had to maintain an old configuration just for those smart devices. It wasn’t very secure and I was glad to be able to dismantle that.
I started my HomeKit network by purchasing the Phillips hue hub and bulb. I also bought two smart plugs to replace the old plugs I had. Since I started writing this post almost two years ago (yes another post I started and never published) I have grown my HomeKit network significantly more than I had with my Amazon based one.
