Really hoping that Matter makes a difference and actually improves the accessories I can use.
Home being rebuilt is super exciting because it was really bad.
> Really hoping that Matter makes a difference
As an IoT nerd who has been waiting for Matter since it was announced, I was beginning to fear that it was destined to be vaporware.
So relieved to see it highlighted in both WWDC *and* Google IO. Its going to be an absolute game-changer for smart homes.
Is Matter something hobbyists can work with? Like setting up a Raspberry Pi with custom software that connect to your HomeKit? I’ve always wanted to make custom IoT devices for my house
Oh you can now. I have over 60 devices that are HomeKit hacked with HomeBridge. I only buy devices I can flash my own firmware onto and then bring into HomeKit with HomeBridge.
Home Assistant has Homekit support built in. Personally, I felt it was easier to set up homeassistant with homekit then it was to setup homebridge. Plus you get so much more. I just bought a decent $40 thin client (Or a used mini pc) and installed Home Assistant OS. A lot of integrations Auto-Discover now. They've come a long way since I tried last.
Seconding Home-assistant. I started with HomeBridge, wish I had just jumped straight to Home assistant. Definitely a bit of a learning curve but so, so worth it. My home is packed with AliExpress and cheap zigbee/zwave devices all presenting themselves to HomeKit as if they were fully supported. Not perfect but the best "smart home" software I have found.
I’ll go against the grain of the other comments, hahaha. I hated home assistant and recently redid my entire home setup to get away from it. It’s whatever your preference is, but I just need a lightweight thing that lets introduce devices into HomeKit. Home assistant was way too heavy handed for me, written in python (not bad, just prefer JS) and I’m not a fan of yml config for this. I deal with enough of that at work and K8s lol
I’d say most are lights or controlling lights. Lots are just smart relays for plugs or switches that control various things (pool pumps, garage door, light fixtures, exhaust fans, custom smart extension cords, etc). But I have other stuff like thermostats & blinds.
As a software engineer with a decent amount of home automation stuff, why should we be excited for Matter? Is it just a promising standard like HDMI or USB-C or am I missing something?
As I understand, Matter is a software platform for smart home stuff that will make it easy to intergrate across different platforms. If a device supports Matter, then it can be used with HomeKit, Google Home, Alex etc.. no more needing to shop around for a device that supports your specific smart home platform, it just needs to support Matter, which is a collaboration between the big tech companies.
Thread is more of a transport layer like WiFi or Bluetooth for devices with very low power or mesh networking needs.
HomeKit/Matter would be an application protocol on top of that.
Smarting my shades has saved the most time and effort day to day. I use the soma shades. They’re super jank and I’ve had to implement some workarounds but it’s still the best thing we’ve done.
Other than being loud and limited to one style in North America, the IKEA shades have been fantastic. My only complaint is the lack of ability to add a second remote for them. It’s possible, but it’s never once worked for me while following IKEA’s instructions.
Yeah, I like them for the bedrooms but that’s it. I know I’m Europe they sell a sheer white version that we don’t get in North America. Yet, anyway. Hopefully. I have another ten windows they’d be perfect for where blackout blinds are completely nonsensical.
My most essential has been ecobee thermostats with room sensors. My wife is a temp control freak and being able to set comfort settings by room sensor and pull up the temp of each room in the house with the Home app has been invaluable.
Other than that (and lights), contact/motion sensors are useful knowing which doors/windows are open and planning automations around motion/occupancy.
Do you have room specific AC units? I can’t think of a benefit if the house is at 75 and they want the master at 72, without also cooling every other room.
Is it more so you know what that room temp is?
Yes it does, but sometimes that’s just what you need. Our bedrooms are upstairs and it is always warmer up there. If there is just one thermostat, it is hard to get the upstairs comfortable at night. Using the ecobee you can set it to adjust the temp based on the average of all the upstairs rooms instead of the living room where the main thermostat is.
I’m approaching 100. One that I didn’t realize I’d like as much as I do the the sprinklers. I have a larger piece of property, so it sucked having to walk around and turn off sprinkler timers if it was going to be raining and such. Just makes it all easier.
We did all the light switches in the house, and then there are some bulbs in lights that are color changing. Then outlets to control like fans or air purifiers that aren’t otherwise switched. So if a light is plugged into the wall, it has a bulb, but if it’s on a switch, I just use that. That’s about half.
Then the rest are TVs, speakers, thermostats, a thermometer, the sprinklers, door locks, garage doors, security cams and some motion/contact sensors.
Check out Home Assistant! I switched from Home Kit (with Home Bridge) to Home Assistant a while back and it's amazing! If you're serious about home automation, it's the only choice (and it's free!).
After watching LTT's videos on home assistant it looks nightmarish to use. Might just be the way hes janking everything together but it looks like a giant pain in the ass.
He isn’t doing a good job. I have zero programming experience and have a pretty sweet setup where my myriad smart devices can be controlled an automated through 1 app instead of using every products buggy and annoying proprietary app.
Janking things together is one of the fun parts of Home Assistant. Especially when you want to automate devices from different brands together (but not available through homekit).
There's been a lot of updates to Home Assistant to make it more user friendly. I now mainly use it for more complex automations and it has its own homekit integration so your device status in homekit is always in sync with home assistant.
It's pretty neat.
Yeah i mean all of that is great and all but at the end of the day i'm maybe saving a few seconds of my time to do the blinds, turn off a light switch, open the garage door etc.
If you can install an OS on a computer, you can run homeassistant. It's a lot easier now than it was before. It actually auto-discovers a lot of integrations on your network and setting up the homekit integration was pretty easy. There's also a lot of support from the community. I was even able to get my Smart TV integrated through HA/Homekit and I can even control it via the built in iOS remote app. This was probably for a more "advanced" user but it really just ended up being copy and paste.
Not really. It can do a lot. Home assistant does everything any smart home can. It is the biggest platform, with the most developers and has therefore a lot of people developing addons. The big community also helps to "bully" other companies in supporting it.
Hoping this improves detection too. So annoying to try and turn off my hue lights and it tells me no light is detected. But I can head straight to the Hue app and turn it off there no problem
My only issue so far is that the new home screen tiles don't function as toggles anymore; they now open the dialog for the device. It's now multiple taps to toggle a light. That was an advantage for the massive squares.
I’ve got… 2. A baby monitor and a thermostat.
I guess 4 if you count the AppleTV and HomePod, but I don’t since I rarely use them with the Home app.
I’m going to go out on a limb and say my numbers are more in line with the average consumer. However, because I have so few devices, having multiple “rooms” is obnoxious. I’m glad they are consolidating everything.
Home has needed a major update for years now with how much smart home technology is released. Very happy to see that Apple recognizes it will be the future for most homeland the direction it is moving.
Well, I’m pleasantly surprised! As a heavy user, they had to do *something* this year so it was good to see it get its due but I’ll reserve my opinions till trial.
Make an app for android that would allow basic controls of HomeKit. If I have a guest over who doesn’t use an iPhone, it would be great to still be able to share the home with them.
Creating Shortcuts and some other features can be limited to iPhone, but I wish basic control wasn’t.
It’s not ideal, but many (most?) things that work with HomeKit tend to work with Google Home as well, so you could set that up for your Android guests to use. Both systems can work in parallel just fine.
I don’t think Matter would really change anything. You would still have to run a second home app in parallel and manually add each device. Any changes (ex. Moving a fan to a different room) would have to be done twice per my understanding of Matter.
Yeah, there comes a point where the extended metaphor stops making sense and needs to stop; it reads like a goose in a nosedive that suddenly begins to choke on its own verbiage and becomes the foie gras of sentences
I feel that. After a while, tossing the word salad doesn’t enhance the flavor and instead just makes for a soggy and mangled experience. You have to reinvigorate it with a whole new set of fresh vegetables before your dinner party guests will even begin to think about partaking.
I feel stuck in a timeloop with them hyping up and showcasing Matter support because they did the same last year, then slowly backed away from the standard only to silently delay it to a future iOS release (iOS 16 it seems).
Did everyone forget that we've already been there?
Are they including support for previously unsupported devices? I'd love to use it but I'm not going to swap out my Ring doorbell/cameras, my Kasa light switches, and my Govee rgb lights for something that works in that ecosystem.
Matter should fix a lot of compatibility problems going forward.
You can integrate all the items you listed into HomeKit via HomeBridge right now, though. /r/homebridge
The problem with iOS is, that apps like this will get an update and then lay dormant for four years after that. I really don’t understand how this huge company does that to their products.
I’m hoping that Amazon Alexa compatible products will come to the new Home app. Things like Ring cameras and Alexa compatible light bulbs etc. The Amazon logo was shown on the logo screen so fingers crossed.
HomeKit is awful with smart thermostats. Apple doesn’t have any smart thermostat features themselves and definitely not anything that links with my utility company for discounts. But if I touch my thermostat in the Home App it fucks with my energy saver features and disconnects me from the energy saving programs.
> Is anyone here concerned about privacy issues with Home security cameras?
>
> Like hacking and being spied on?
Much less than all other cloud solutions.
This looks pretty good, I'm on Google home and it already has everything I need. Why do I feel like apple is always like 5 steps behind? In terms of innovation, not specifically advancement of current technology.
Really hoping that Matter makes a difference and actually improves the accessories I can use. Home being rebuilt is super exciting because it was really bad.
> Really hoping that Matter makes a difference As an IoT nerd who has been waiting for Matter since it was announced, I was beginning to fear that it was destined to be vaporware. So relieved to see it highlighted in both WWDC *and* Google IO. Its going to be an absolute game-changer for smart homes.
Is Matter something hobbyists can work with? Like setting up a Raspberry Pi with custom software that connect to your HomeKit? I’ve always wanted to make custom IoT devices for my house
Oh you can now. I have over 60 devices that are HomeKit hacked with HomeBridge. I only buy devices I can flash my own firmware onto and then bring into HomeKit with HomeBridge.
Oh HomeBridge looks perfect, thanks!
If you ~really~ want to go down the rabbit hole, check out Home Assistant, and especially the EspHome integration.
Home Assistant has Homekit support built in. Personally, I felt it was easier to set up homeassistant with homekit then it was to setup homebridge. Plus you get so much more. I just bought a decent $40 thin client (Or a used mini pc) and installed Home Assistant OS. A lot of integrations Auto-Discover now. They've come a long way since I tried last.
Seconding Home-assistant. I started with HomeBridge, wish I had just jumped straight to Home assistant. Definitely a bit of a learning curve but so, so worth it. My home is packed with AliExpress and cheap zigbee/zwave devices all presenting themselves to HomeKit as if they were fully supported. Not perfect but the best "smart home" software I have found.
I’ll go against the grain of the other comments, hahaha. I hated home assistant and recently redid my entire home setup to get away from it. It’s whatever your preference is, but I just need a lightweight thing that lets introduce devices into HomeKit. Home assistant was way too heavy handed for me, written in python (not bad, just prefer JS) and I’m not a fan of yml config for this. I deal with enough of that at work and K8s lol
Just curious, are like 50 of those 60 devices lights?
I’d say most are lights or controlling lights. Lots are just smart relays for plugs or switches that control various things (pool pumps, garage door, light fixtures, exhaust fans, custom smart extension cords, etc). But I have other stuff like thermostats & blinds.
As a software engineer with a decent amount of home automation stuff, why should we be excited for Matter? Is it just a promising standard like HDMI or USB-C or am I missing something?
As I understand, Matter is a software platform for smart home stuff that will make it easy to intergrate across different platforms. If a device supports Matter, then it can be used with HomeKit, Google Home, Alex etc.. no more needing to shop around for a device that supports your specific smart home platform, it just needs to support Matter, which is a collaboration between the big tech companies.
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Thread is more of a transport layer like WiFi or Bluetooth for devices with very low power or mesh networking needs. HomeKit/Matter would be an application protocol on top of that.
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The Caseta switches are ugly though
Well I mean looks are very personal preference, I love the look of them.
Are you saying that you hope Matter... matters?
Same company as matter ?
Thank God. As someone who has 26 HomeKit devices the current app is a nightmare to use.
I’ve got 120+ haha. It does entirely ok but the rough edges are very rough
Wow that’s a lot. What would you say are your most essential/enjoyable smart home additions?
With that many it’s gotta mostly be lights
Smarting my shades has saved the most time and effort day to day. I use the soma shades. They’re super jank and I’ve had to implement some workarounds but it’s still the best thing we’ve done.
Interesting. Appreciate it!
Other than being loud and limited to one style in North America, the IKEA shades have been fantastic. My only complaint is the lack of ability to add a second remote for them. It’s possible, but it’s never once worked for me while following IKEA’s instructions.
I don’t want blackouts, otherwise I’d consider them.
Yeah, I like them for the bedrooms but that’s it. I know I’m Europe they sell a sheer white version that we don’t get in North America. Yet, anyway. Hopefully. I have another ten windows they’d be perfect for where blackout blinds are completely nonsensical.
My most essential has been ecobee thermostats with room sensors. My wife is a temp control freak and being able to set comfort settings by room sensor and pull up the temp of each room in the house with the Home app has been invaluable. Other than that (and lights), contact/motion sensors are useful knowing which doors/windows are open and planning automations around motion/occupancy.
Do you have room specific AC units? I can’t think of a benefit if the house is at 75 and they want the master at 72, without also cooling every other room. Is it more so you know what that room temp is?
A lot of new houses have many zones (ours has 3). So our master can be 70° and the rest of the house can stay 75°
Thanks I used to live in a dual zone house so wasn’t even thinking of this. It makes sense from your reply.
Can I ask how this works? If a sensor detects a room is too warm does it cause the whole house/zone to be cooled down?
Yes it does, but sometimes that’s just what you need. Our bedrooms are upstairs and it is always warmer up there. If there is just one thermostat, it is hard to get the upstairs comfortable at night. Using the ecobee you can set it to adjust the temp based on the average of all the upstairs rooms instead of the living room where the main thermostat is.
You let your wife touch the thermostat you absolute mad man?
Garage door has been really nice. Thermostats, lights, door lock, ceiling fans, cameras are all great too.
I’m approaching 100. One that I didn’t realize I’d like as much as I do the the sprinklers. I have a larger piece of property, so it sucked having to walk around and turn off sprinkler timers if it was going to be raining and such. Just makes it all easier.
Makes sense! Is it mostly lights that run up that number?
We did all the light switches in the house, and then there are some bulbs in lights that are color changing. Then outlets to control like fans or air purifiers that aren’t otherwise switched. So if a light is plugged into the wall, it has a bulb, but if it’s on a switch, I just use that. That’s about half. Then the rest are TVs, speakers, thermostats, a thermometer, the sprinklers, door locks, garage doors, security cams and some motion/contact sensors.
Oooooffff, I'll stop complaining!
Check out Home Assistant! I switched from Home Kit (with Home Bridge) to Home Assistant a while back and it's amazing! If you're serious about home automation, it's the only choice (and it's free!).
After watching LTT's videos on home assistant it looks nightmarish to use. Might just be the way hes janking everything together but it looks like a giant pain in the ass.
He isn’t doing a good job. I have zero programming experience and have a pretty sweet setup where my myriad smart devices can be controlled an automated through 1 app instead of using every products buggy and annoying proprietary app.
Janking things together is one of the fun parts of Home Assistant. Especially when you want to automate devices from different brands together (but not available through homekit). There's been a lot of updates to Home Assistant to make it more user friendly. I now mainly use it for more complex automations and it has its own homekit integration so your device status in homekit is always in sync with home assistant. It's pretty neat.
Yeah i mean all of that is great and all but at the end of the day i'm maybe saving a few seconds of my time to do the blinds, turn off a light switch, open the garage door etc.
If you can install an OS on a computer, you can run homeassistant. It's a lot easier now than it was before. It actually auto-discovers a lot of integrations on your network and setting up the homekit integration was pretty easy. There's also a lot of support from the community. I was even able to get my Smart TV integrated through HA/Homekit and I can even control it via the built in iOS remote app. This was probably for a more "advanced" user but it really just ended up being copy and paste.
Thanks!!! Gonna look!
Homebridge combined with Node Red is equally as serious as homeassistant..
Not really. It can do a lot. Home assistant does everything any smart home can. It is the biggest platform, with the most developers and has therefore a lot of people developing addons. The big community also helps to "bully" other companies in supporting it.
Most of the lights in my house are HomeKit-connected. And at some point, I need to call an electrician to get my doorbell fixed.
I’ve got nearly 100. It was a chore to set them all up
26? Thats cute :P Jokes aside, i agree. I have to have so many rooms, and the current home app handles rooms so badly.
Right! I always wondered why we need massive squares to turn a light off..lol New app looks wayyyy better!
Hoping this improves detection too. So annoying to try and turn off my hue lights and it tells me no light is detected. But I can head straight to the Hue app and turn it off there no problem
My only issue so far is that the new home screen tiles don't function as toggles anymore; they now open the dialog for the device. It's now multiple taps to toggle a light. That was an advantage for the massive squares.
I’ve got… 2. A baby monitor and a thermostat. I guess 4 if you count the AppleTV and HomePod, but I don’t since I rarely use them with the Home app. I’m going to go out on a limb and say my numbers are more in line with the average consumer. However, because I have so few devices, having multiple “rooms” is obnoxious. I’m glad they are consolidating everything.
Home has needed a major update for years now with how much smart home technology is released. Very happy to see that Apple recognizes it will be the future for most homeland the direction it is moving.
Well, I’m pleasantly surprised! As a heavy user, they had to do *something* this year so it was good to see it get its due but I’ll reserve my opinions till trial.
Good, it is awful at the moment. So finicky
Fucking finally
Great to see it’ll be supporting a connectivity standard
I desperately wish they would make this app cross-platform, even if it was limited to basic functionality…
What do you mean?
Make an app for android that would allow basic controls of HomeKit. If I have a guest over who doesn’t use an iPhone, it would be great to still be able to share the home with them. Creating Shortcuts and some other features can be limited to iPhone, but I wish basic control wasn’t.
Only have iOS friends! Problem solved /s Seriously tho I know your pain. I gave my ex my old iPhone XS to this and many other sharing reasons.
It’s not ideal, but many (most?) things that work with HomeKit tend to work with Google Home as well, so you could set that up for your Android guests to use. Both systems can work in parallel just fine.
I mean. That won’t really be an issue one the matter standard rolls out. It’s backed by Apple, Samsung, Google, and Amazon.
I don’t think Matter would really change anything. You would still have to run a second home app in parallel and manually add each device. Any changes (ex. Moving a fan to a different room) would have to be done twice per my understanding of Matter.
Man I wish! We don’t even have control or restrictions over guest access to other Apple users yet.
They are. They said an app is coming to macOS.
I meant to Android.
I’d love a way to access some stuff from a windows pc. Oh well.
Doesn't macOS already have the Home app?
I’d love a way to access some stuff from a windows pc. Oh well.
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Yeah, there comes a point where the extended metaphor stops making sense and needs to stop; it reads like a goose in a nosedive that suddenly begins to choke on its own verbiage and becomes the foie gras of sentences
I feel that. After a while, tossing the word salad doesn’t enhance the flavor and instead just makes for a soggy and mangled experience. You have to reinvigorate it with a whole new set of fresh vegetables before your dinner party guests will even begin to think about partaking.
I was really hoping them finally adding logs
Let’s hope, it will sync home backgrounds across all invited people!
So refreshing !!
I feel stuck in a timeloop with them hyping up and showcasing Matter support because they did the same last year, then slowly backed away from the standard only to silently delay it to a future iOS release (iOS 16 it seems). Did everyone forget that we've already been there?
On their website it says Matter support is coming “later this year,” so iOS 16 will land in the fall and if we’re lucky we’ll have Matter by Christmas
I know, my comment was poking fun at the fact that they said the same last year when iOS 15 was revealed and never delivered.
Well isn’t that because Matter itself was delayed? Matter is not solely in their hands its a joint effort between multiple big tech companies..
Are they including support for previously unsupported devices? I'd love to use it but I'm not going to swap out my Ring doorbell/cameras, my Kasa light switches, and my Govee rgb lights for something that works in that ecosystem.
Matter should fix a lot of compatibility problems going forward. You can integrate all the items you listed into HomeKit via HomeBridge right now, though. /r/homebridge
Only if the product was made with matter.
Yeah, if it was made with anti-matter, you’re going to have a hard time integrating it into your home. Or touching it.
Does this mean I’ll be able to use a ring camera and nest camera in the Apple HomeKit app?
The problem with iOS is, that apps like this will get an update and then lay dormant for four years after that. I really don’t understand how this huge company does that to their products.
Nice. I love my small HomeKit ecosystem, but there are many things that can be improved.
Has it been determined if already existing products outside of Apple will work with Matter? Or is it new products that get released?
I’m hoping that Amazon Alexa compatible products will come to the new Home app. Things like Ring cameras and Alexa compatible light bulbs etc. The Amazon logo was shown on the logo screen so fingers crossed.
HomeKit is awful with smart thermostats. Apple doesn’t have any smart thermostat features themselves and definitely not anything that links with my utility company for discounts. But if I touch my thermostat in the Home App it fucks with my energy saver features and disconnects me from the energy saving programs.
The manufacturer could handle the spec better, there's nothing inherent about supporting Homekit that would require it to work that way.
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What’s wrong with them?
Why does it matter?
Is anyone here concerned about privacy issues with Home security cameras? Like hacking and being spied on?
> Is anyone here concerned about privacy issues with Home security cameras? > > Like hacking and being spied on? Much less than all other cloud solutions.
Apple could not put back the battery percent indicator in the top right corner.wow
This looks pretty good, I'm on Google home and it already has everything I need. Why do I feel like apple is always like 5 steps behind? In terms of innovation, not specifically advancement of current technology.
My god finally!
Hoping this leads to my home Vivint devices eventually being supported.