I've slowly been adding HomeKit controlled things around the house and was interested what everyone else may be doing (what should I think of adding).
So far I have this little collection of things:
Ecobee3 Lite
2 additional Ecobee room sensors
2 iHome receptacles
2 Vocolino bulbs
1 Leviton dimmable switch
I am considering adding:
MyQ capability to my garage door opener with their Hub & Bridge
August locks to the front door and interior garage door (either both or just the front door)
The t-stat is at the top of the stairs in a loft/hall area, the two room sensors are in the living room and an upstairs bedroom. The overall performance has been perfect. I have a 1500sf 2 story house with a single zone furnace, so having the room sensors react to the occupied rooms is much more comfortable than always defaulting to the temp at the actual t-stat location.
For the outlets, I have one controlling an LED tape light under the kitchen cabinets and the second outlet I currently have on a plug-in clamp on lamp in the garage.
One bulb is at a bedroom lamp and the other a living room lamp.
The wall switch (with dimmer) I will be installing in the garage to control the overhead lights. (I recently added 2 5-way lamp adaptors each with 5 100w equiv LED bulbs and my very dark 2 bulb garage went from hardly being able to see anything well to looking like a surgical suite.) Previously I'd changed out most of the wall switches and some of the outlets with Legrand Adorne, that I really like the look and function of, so will not be adding other wall switches inside.
for programming I have scenes set up both with geofenced and timed parameters and any scene or individual item can be voice controlled with Siri.
At 530a the bedroom lamp turns on at 10%, the kitchen LED tape turns on and the heat is set to 69.
When leaving, all lights turn off and the heat is set at 58. (by geofence or saying "I'm leaving")
When returning, the garage lamp turns on (will change to the wall switch and find a new home for the outlet), the kitchen LED tape, the living room lamp turn on and the heat is set at 69.
telling Siri "I'm going upstairs" turns on the bedroom lamp and turns off all downstairs lights.
telling Siri "I'm going to bed" sets the heat to 58 and turns all lights off.
This summer, I likely will use an outlet to turn on a fan for the dogs when the temp gets above a certain level. Since I don't have AC, in the past I've turned on on and had it running all the time I was gone and that always seemed wrong from an electricity standpoint.
With what I have so far, for the most part everything has worked really well. Everything I have uses my iPad as its hub, so nothing extra using an outlet. The second iHome outlet I got has shown as un-responsive a couple times, but easily corrected by either waiting, manually hitting its power button on then back off or unplugging and re plugging in (it is also at an outlet that is pretty easily accessible. if it were behind something, I would be much more annoyed with it). The light bulbs I have are color. they easily can be manipulated via the HomeKit app or their own app for that current time, but not so easily to set a temp/hue in the automation settings. I have them as some shade of white, so not using any crazy colors, but you are not able to access the 'saved' colors when in the automation programming. Not sure if this is an issue with the HomeKit app or the info the bulbs provide to the HomeKit app.
Hopefully more lower priced LED bulbs will begin showing up on the market, but at the current prices, it is hard to justify changing out bulbs in overhead lamps that each have 3-5 bulbs. If Legrand released a HomeKit compatible switch to match my other Adorne switches, I'd probably change out a few.
I also have Blink wifi cameras that are great at what they do (provide a totally wireless 'security' camera with free cloud hosting), but they don't have any connectivity to other systems. I think previously they did talk to Smartthings, but I'd not used that and think it has since been abandoned by Blink.
SO... what other useful automation scenarios should I consider?
So far I have this little collection of things:
Ecobee3 Lite
2 additional Ecobee room sensors
2 iHome receptacles
2 Vocolino bulbs
1 Leviton dimmable switch
I am considering adding:
MyQ capability to my garage door opener with their Hub & Bridge
August locks to the front door and interior garage door (either both or just the front door)
The t-stat is at the top of the stairs in a loft/hall area, the two room sensors are in the living room and an upstairs bedroom. The overall performance has been perfect. I have a 1500sf 2 story house with a single zone furnace, so having the room sensors react to the occupied rooms is much more comfortable than always defaulting to the temp at the actual t-stat location.
For the outlets, I have one controlling an LED tape light under the kitchen cabinets and the second outlet I currently have on a plug-in clamp on lamp in the garage.
One bulb is at a bedroom lamp and the other a living room lamp.
The wall switch (with dimmer) I will be installing in the garage to control the overhead lights. (I recently added 2 5-way lamp adaptors each with 5 100w equiv LED bulbs and my very dark 2 bulb garage went from hardly being able to see anything well to looking like a surgical suite.) Previously I'd changed out most of the wall switches and some of the outlets with Legrand Adorne, that I really like the look and function of, so will not be adding other wall switches inside.
for programming I have scenes set up both with geofenced and timed parameters and any scene or individual item can be voice controlled with Siri.
At 530a the bedroom lamp turns on at 10%, the kitchen LED tape turns on and the heat is set to 69.
When leaving, all lights turn off and the heat is set at 58. (by geofence or saying "I'm leaving")
When returning, the garage lamp turns on (will change to the wall switch and find a new home for the outlet), the kitchen LED tape, the living room lamp turn on and the heat is set at 69.
telling Siri "I'm going upstairs" turns on the bedroom lamp and turns off all downstairs lights.
telling Siri "I'm going to bed" sets the heat to 58 and turns all lights off.
This summer, I likely will use an outlet to turn on a fan for the dogs when the temp gets above a certain level. Since I don't have AC, in the past I've turned on on and had it running all the time I was gone and that always seemed wrong from an electricity standpoint.
With what I have so far, for the most part everything has worked really well. Everything I have uses my iPad as its hub, so nothing extra using an outlet. The second iHome outlet I got has shown as un-responsive a couple times, but easily corrected by either waiting, manually hitting its power button on then back off or unplugging and re plugging in (it is also at an outlet that is pretty easily accessible. if it were behind something, I would be much more annoyed with it). The light bulbs I have are color. they easily can be manipulated via the HomeKit app or their own app for that current time, but not so easily to set a temp/hue in the automation settings. I have them as some shade of white, so not using any crazy colors, but you are not able to access the 'saved' colors when in the automation programming. Not sure if this is an issue with the HomeKit app or the info the bulbs provide to the HomeKit app.
Hopefully more lower priced LED bulbs will begin showing up on the market, but at the current prices, it is hard to justify changing out bulbs in overhead lamps that each have 3-5 bulbs. If Legrand released a HomeKit compatible switch to match my other Adorne switches, I'd probably change out a few.
I also have Blink wifi cameras that are great at what they do (provide a totally wireless 'security' camera with free cloud hosting), but they don't have any connectivity to other systems. I think previously they did talk to Smartthings, but I'd not used that and think it has since been abandoned by Blink.
SO... what other useful automation scenarios should I consider?