Apple Homekit

deise121

Hi lads, new homeowner here (FINALLY) and looking to set up my own home security. We're an apple household, so was wondering if anyone had any experience with decent hardware that works with homekit? We'd be looking for a video doorbell, door and window sensors, and 2 outdoor cameras. Ideally I'd be storing all the footage locally to a network drive and to cloud storage. I've heard some good things about Eufy and Netamp, but was wondering if anyone else used homekit? Seems most are android or use ring, which I desperately want to stay away from. Thanks in advance.

bk

You should check out the Homekit Secure Video service. Basically stores video in the Apple Cloud for a very low cost and only you have the encryption keys to it as it is encrypted locally.

I’ve got a Logitech Circle 2 cameras that work with this service, though I use them with the Logitech cloud service rather then the Homekit one for the moment, but I’m thinking of changing at some stage. Good cameras, work both indoor and outdoor and they have a doorbell too, though I haven’t tried that.

I also have Meross smart plugs that work with homekit, Lots of Philips Hue smart lights, sensors and switches and Netatmo Thermostat all working with Homekit.

Note I’d also say that Google Home and Alexa works fine on Apple devices too, slightly less well integrated, but if you have GH or Alexa voice devices around your home, not a big deal.

In the future I suspect Matter will help most devices work across all 3 major voice assistants.

deise121

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118391984#Comment_118391984

that's great mate. thanks for all the ideas! you always hear about google home and the amazon services, but rarely anyone talks about homekit. most likely because apple don't do their own hardware i'd say

bk

Yes, in particular Amazon has lots of devices of their own.

Apple were slower to enter the home automation market, but the other issue was that they had very high requirements in terms of security and privacy about what devices they supported. By comparison Amazon will leave anyone and anything integrate.

This ramps up the cost of devices, only higher end, more expensive ones could afford Apple's requirements. This is obviously good in terms of users privacy and security, but also meant Homekit was much slower to take off, more expensive and far less variety of devices.

I’ve already seen this change, with more support for Homekit, but I think Matter will really change this, it will make it much easier for manufacturers to just support GH/Alexa/Homekit by default without much effort on their part.

fasterbetter

Hi there

I have a homekit household with multiple manufacturers kit all working very well together..

Eufy indoor 2K cameras. (Good camera..really cheap

Logitech Circle 2 external camera

Netatmo smoke alarms

Netatmo central heating controller

Eve Energy Power sockets (with power use meter)

Eve door and window sensors

Eve environment sensor (temperature, air quality etc)

Meross power sockets (loads of them)

Meross smart bulbs

Osram light strips

A Xiaomi Aquara zigbee hub with a load of really cheap accessories (motion sensors, Leak detectors, vibration detectors)

I buy mostly from Amazon but sometimes from China

Biggest thing to watch out for is that I have an Eir F2000 hub and its 2.4G band is limited to 16 devices.. a lot of IOT stuff likes the 2.4G so I have run out of space on that....Bluetooth devices and zigbee via aquara are not restricted.

I have an Apple TV and you can view all the cameras on it simultaneously

The main gap in the system is a HomeKit door bell.. Using a Ring at the moment but will replace it as soon as something suitable arrives...the Netatmo looks good but the price is a bit high still (£250).

Good luck with your plans

fasterbetter

deise121

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118410701#Comment_118410701

amazing, thanks. does the eufy doorbell work with homekit, no?

fasterbetter

I don't think so.....it was supposed to but it support never got added....Keeping an eye on CES to see If anything announced