fshr

The musings of a grumpy hairless ape

Smart Home

Apple Home / HomeKit

While I am largely moving over to Home Assistant for my smart home requirements, at the moment, pretty much all of the devices in the house which are both a) visible, and b) something people interact with (e.g. lights/bulbs, buttons/switches, or plugs/sockets) are still available in HomeKit / Apple Home, with a mix of HomeKit native devices (both Thread & WiFi) plus some newer Matter devices (mainly Thread).

Why do I still use Apple Home? Well, firstly Apple Home was my original choice for smart home before I started with Home Assistant, so it has the benefit of being the “incumbent” solution. Secondly, it has a few advantages for me (for now) when it comes to “things we interact with”:

  • We’re an Apple house when it comes to phones and tablets, and I haven’t given the rest of the family the Home Assistant app yet. so going with Apple Home for “visible” devices makes some general sense and allows people some level of control from phones/tablets.
  • For the past couple of major versions Apple Home has been reliable with little or no problems, drop-outs, etc (and yes YMMV), which provides a good backup option for control should I have issues with Home Assistant.
  • The Apple Home app is fairly intuitive for non-technical people to understand and use for simple control.
  • If you have more than one HomePod / Apple TV then you get resilient controllers as standard with no special configuration.

I should note though that it does come with a few cons:

  • There’s still a shortage of cheaper devices in the market which natively support HomeKit, especially compared to Zigbee and Z-Wave (though hopefully Matter should change this).
  • Apple Home is squarely aimed at the simpler end of the market, and while things have improved you still don’t get the flexibility in things like automations that you get with something like Hubitat or Home Assistant.
  • While it has been reliable in the more recent versions, if things do go wrong, Apple’s lack of logging and troubleshooting tools makes it very difficult to work out what’s going wrong.

As time goes on, and I switch over to more Matter based devices, it’s likely that there will come a point when I switch away from Apple Home in favour of Home Assistant.

Home Assistant

In our house pretty much everything “smart” is now based around Home Assistant. Initially HA just had those devices, components, etc. which were generally hidden from people in the day-to-day, either as they’re a) things which happen without any interaction (e.g. cameras), or b) they’re doing stuff like monitoring and logging of data, but that’s been expanded over time (as I’ve moved from Apple Home) to include all the devices which have “user interaction” as well.

Home Assistant comes with a number of advantages:

  • It has a lot more flexibility than either Apple Home or many other smart home tools, both in the number of different devices and device types it supports, but also in better options for automations, scenes, dashboards, etc
  • It can handle both true smart home style tasks - when ‘x’ happens do ‘y’ - as well as background activities like data logging and statistics
  • It’s accessible from a wider set of clients, I can access it from phones, tablets, and browsers; not just Apple devices via the Home app.
  • It’s extremely expandible / extensible through add-ons and integrations, whether produced by Home Assistant, 3rd parties, or myself (it pretty much can connect to anything which has some form of network connection)

But also a number of disadvantages:

  • It can be overwhelming for a new user to get started in Home Assistant, and it can take greater time and effort to get to a configuration equivalent to Apple Home
  • There’s still a huge reliance on community level support to find out how to do stuff, mainly a combination of the Home Assistant forums and Discord.
  • You don’t get the same options of resiliency as you do with Apple Home (Apple allows you to run multiple Apple TV & HomePod with automated failover).
  • While there’s a large range of Integrations, they’re all of varying quality and level of integration with whatever they talk to (some blatantly use undocumented accesses or reverse engineering to work) which can cause integrations to have issues or just fail to work.

Devices

As for devices/integrations I actually use:

Lighting / Switching

  • Nanoleaf Lines (NL59)
    • On the wall in my home office, providing some ambient light while I’m working.
    • Added to both Apple Home and Home Assitant (Nanoleaf Integration)
  • Nanoleaf Essentials Matter Lightstrip (NL68)
    • Use these in the bedrooms as nightlights at the head of the beds, plus for under counter lighting in the kitchen, and at the foot of the stairs. They work quite well here as they have discrete buttons for power, brightness, and colour selection, meaning they can also be controlled from the bed without a “device”.
    • Added to both Apple Home and Home Assistant (Matter Integration)
  • Nanoleaf Essentials Matter A19 Bulb (NL67)
    • Used in a couple of living room lights and plugged into the wall.
    • Added to both both Apple Home and Home Assistant (Matter Integration)
  • Meross Smart Wi-Fi Plug Mini (MSS110)
    • My go-to for control of Christmas lights. These generally spend December sat outside in a DriBox (in UK winter weather) with my outdoor Christmas lights plugged in. Fingers crossed they’ve been rock solid and haven’t failed (other otherwise had any issues) for the last 2-3 Christmasses.
    • Added to both Apple Home and Home Assitant (Meross LAN Integration)
  • Onvis Smart Plug (S4)
    • Used for a couple of low importance devices
    • Added to both Apple Home and Home Assitant (Matter Integration)
  • Eve Energy (Matter)
    • Used for my 3D printer, mainly as I am interested in knowing it’s power usage!
    • Added to both Apple Home and Home Assistant (Matter Integration)
  • Meross Smart Wi-Fi Ambient Light (MSL430)
    • One of my first HomeKit purchases, now sat as a table light in one of the bedrooms
    • Added to both Apple Home and Home Assitant (Meross LAN Integration)
  • A couple of Zigbee buttons - Sonoff / ThirdReality / Aqara
    • Used for controlling lights
    • Integrated into Home Assistant (Zigbee Integration)

Appliances

  • Samsung Washing Machine
    • Integrated into Home Assistant (SmartThings Integration)
  • LG TV
    • Integrated into Home Assistant (LG WebOS Integration)
  • HP & Epson Printers
    • Integrated into Home Assistant (IPP Integration)

Sensors

  • Mix of Zigbee temperature, motion, door contact, and water sensors - Sonoff / ThirdReality / Aqara
    • Used for various sensing around the house
    • Integrated into Home Assistant (Zigbee Integration)

Other

  • PodPoint
    • Used to monitor electricity usage for charging the car
    • Integrated into Home Assistant (PodPoint Integration)
  • Octopus Energy
    • Used to monitor grid electricity and gas usage
    • Integrated into Home Assistant (Octopus Energy Integration)
    • If you’re thinking about moving to Octopus, here’s my referral link!!!

Previously

  • Nanoleaf Essentials Lightstrip (NL55)
    • Have been completely retired now in favour of the Matter variants
  • Nanoleaf Essentials Bulb (NL45)
    • Have been completely retired now in favour of the Matter variants
  • Onvis 5-key Switch (HS2)
    • Some Apple Home only 5 button smart switches (they’re HomeKit over Thread)
    • Have been retired and no longer in use as they’re not supported in Home Assistant
  • Cololight Plus (LS167)
    • Previously on the wall in the Kitchen to provide some ambient lighting, but replaced with an under counter Matter lightstrip
    • Temporarily retired until I find another use for them (supported in Home Assitant (LifeSmart Cololight Integration))

ESPHome

I’ve also started dabbling in ESPHome, but that’s for later…

Posted 9 October 2024

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