Hey everyone,

Yesterday, I came across a post about a HomeKit camera notification that used a shortcut or similar method to interact with ChatGPT for image descriptions. I've been trying to locate the post again but haven't had any luck. Can anyone help?

Stephen Robles are you in here? I feel bad for always posting your stuff 😂

As a follow up to my previous post, it looks like iOS 18 will allow for streamlined Shortcut actions for HomeKit! No more if/then actions to toggle accessories!

https://youtube.com/shorts/vL20AC3msz8?si=GSs5MlDtjQOn0YLq

Hi all. I've tried searching for an answer to the issue I'm having, but wasn't able to find any posts in here directly addressing my problem. (Maybe I just didn't search for the right words.)

Prior to today, our HomeKit setup has been two HomePod Minis controlling two smart lightbulbs and one smart plug. Today, however, I introduced the Aqara G2H Pro into the mix. When doing so, I've now got a "Security" option on my home screen, which presents "System" in my Living Room (where I put the camera) with four choices: Home, Away, Night, Off.

When I go to the camera view and hit Settings, under "Recording Options" I'm presented with the ability to set how the camera handles streaming and recording when either we're home or we're away (by tracking if our iPhones are at home). I understand all of that, and trying that today with the idea of everything being off while at home, but streaming and recording when we're away, seemed to work great.

However, here's where I'm running into the problem.. This is what I want:

Home (daytime): Camera is off
Home (nighttime): Camera is not streaming, but motion tracking is on
Away: Streaming and motion tracking

Logic tells me that I should set the camera to know what to do depending on which of those four security modes are set, but for the life of me, I cannot figure this part out. The camera seems to only have those settings for if we (via our iPhones) are home or not, and I can find no other way to tell it what it should be doing depending on which mode is set.

Am I completely misunderstanding what the security modes are, and their potentially ability to set the G2H Pro to a specific set of functions?

Does anyone have any options for HomeKit enabled ceiling fans that AREN’T Hunter fans? This is the third failed fan in 1.5 years with them and I’m done continuing to give them chances.

I cannot just do a standard fan with a smart switch as for who knows what reason the previous homeowner decided the ceiling fan fixture doesn’t need a switch, and I’m not going to pull wire. Plan B would be a standard fan with a remote and abandon the smart functionality, but for fear of losing the remote I would prefer HomeKit or maybe at worst standalone app enabled

I have a gravel bottomed pit in my basement where my basement plumbing drains then an ejector pump grinds waste and pumps it up a pipe and then it goes to the main sewer drain for the house. This is common where I live.

A few years ago during a period of record rainfall ground water also backed up into the pit and the pump failed while working overtime. When I replaced the pump I added an Aqara leak sensor with a float to detect if the pit backed up again.

This evening the leak sensor triggered. I went to investigate and saw water on the floor but the pit was suspiciously low. I decided to manually trigger the pump to see if I could ID the problem. It was immediately obvious that the check valve secured by a slip joint had some how actually slipped down and had spewed water while the pump was cycling. Had that gone unnoticed anyone using the basement plumbing could have caused a big problem.

TL;DR: Leak sensor alerted me to a plumbing issue. Get leak sensors. They’re worth the money.

Hey folks,

We started our journey to renovate a house and now I struggle with the decision on rather use smart relays or smart light bulbs 👀

So if I got smart lights how do I control them with a dedicated switch ? Smart switches wouldn’t fit into the aesthetics of the rooms…

My only solution would be: Using smart relays behind my Switches as inputs and rather hook the lights directly up to the same relay (so only on / off) or use smart lights with an automation when the relay is triggered (so I can use dimmed light or scenes) but then I need to bridge the lights to get always power…

Other ideas are appreciated 🤝🏼

Anyone have any pad lock recommendation that support Home Key? If not, perhaps, a good HomeKit recommendation? It's for indoors to lock a cabinet at a coworking space.

I recently purchased an Eve Weather unit. I placed it in a location that is not in direct sunlight.

I’m noticing that it reads about 5 degrees warmer than it actually is.

Does the Eve Weather calibrate itself over time so it reads accurately?

Any recommendations to having it read accurately?

Do any of you have Hunter Douglas PowerView Gen 3 shades/blinds? If so, what are your thoughts?

Setting up the Aqara U200 today. My first attempt, I did everything through the Aqara app, then added to HomeKit afterwords via the Home app. I was able to get as far as getting the Home Key to appear in my wallet app, but trying to use it only yielded the “Try Again” error.

So I removed the lock from my Home, reset it and started from scratch, this time bypassing the Aqara app and setting it up via the Home app. Same result.

And both times, I can’t seem to enable access codes at all. It tries and tries, and eventually times out saying that I am unable to turn on access codes.

My current Home Hub is the 2017 Apple TV 4K, which I believe is the 1st gen of the 4K line…? Could that be the issue? Any other thoughts/help?

I've checked a few alarm system plans, and found that for all of them, the tier that includes Professional Monitoring (automatically requesting dispatch) also includes unlimited camera recordings. Since HomeKit Secure Video already includes the video streaming and recording storages, I feel paying for something I don't need. Are there any systems that provide plans only including professional monitoring but not video recording?

Checked the eve app and it’s saying thread is disabled .

I have a thread network through my Apple TV so I’m not sure what’s up ?

Looking for a keypad for the front door with log information. I’d like to see when my kids, cleaners, etc. are coming in. Does this even exist?

I’ve few years old Samsung Tv that supports Airplay but doesnt support homekit :/ I know that I can buy Hoobs but can I just buy homepod mini to add it to my homekit?

TV model: UE55TU8072UXXH

I have Apple HomeKit setup on Apple TV and ofcourse all my iOS devices at home. My son deleted the app on one of my devices and now nothing shows up on all my other devices. Everything looks like it has been fully wiped out.

On another iPhone I checked and first it said no connectivity to home hub.

What do I do? To recover.

Any solutions other than rebuilding everything again?

My iPad mini is running iOS 18 developer beta. I just clicked on HomeKit to check my lights and thermostat, and I received a pop up to connect my local power company to track usage over HomeKit.

First some callouts: I’m speaking only to Eve accessories, not HomeKit over Thread in general. My Schlage lock and Onvis contact sensors, all using HomeKit over Thread, are nearly flawless.

When Eve first rolled out the optional Matter upgrade, and then Matter only Thread devices, the Eve HomeKit over Thread devices seemed far more stable. If there was a No Response it was almost certainly one of the Matter ones.

Ever since 17.5.x, I am observing the opposite. My Eve Matter over Thread devices seem more reliable than my remaining Eve HomeKit over Thread devices. Really strange. As mentioned, this is purely anecdotal. But curious if any other Eve users with a mix of HomeKit and Matter over Thread devices have noticed anything similar?

I recently bought an Apple TV 4K and set it up as a home hub for my holiday home. I want to be able to receive notifications when the hub is not reachable, as seen in this thread. I intend to do this so I am aware of any unexpected power outages. I have tried cutting out the power from my router, my apple tv or both at the same time, expecting to get a notification, but I never got one.

Am I doing something wrong or am I misunderstanding the way these notifications are supposed to be sent, if sent at all?

Here's the situation:

• I have:

  • A Hue bridge with about 20 lights connected to it. Most of them official Hue products, some of them third party zigbee strips.
  • A bunch of Govee lights, which I have set up a Homebridge VM on my local network to control.
  • A HomePod mini
  • A Samsung Smartthings hub (probably not relevant, just used for non-lighting devices, but just mentioning it here in case someone knows of a way to use it to solve my problems...)
  • A bunch of Google Home/Nest devices (also, not really relevant, but whatever)

• Last year, I switched to iPhone and want to remove Google from my life as much as possible. The Google Home app was using a lot of battery on my iPhone and the presence sensing wasn't working reliably, so I uninstalled the Google Home app and set up the apple Home app to automate my lighting.

• The problem is that the lights all look horrible when they are turned on by the apple automations - they won't be at full brightness, they'll be different colors, sometimes random but usually a super hard blueish white instead of the warm white that I want. I went into the automations and tapped on each individual light and tried to find one that looked good, but they all look pretty bad compared to what I can set in the Google Home, Govee or Hue apps. Even when I set them to something approaching acceptable, they don't seem to reliably turn on to this color.

• So, I decided to go into the Hue app and create scenes for each of my rooms as well as for the whole home. I create a daytime scene (that sets all lights to a warm white hue), an evening one that makes lights even warmer and turns off lights I don't like being on when watching TV, and a bedtime one that turns off most but sets dim red glows here and there. They all work great in the Hue app and Google Home, but I can't figure out how to add them to the apple Home?

• So, I went into Shortcuts and created shortcuts that will set the Hue scenes. Those work, but now I don't know how to get them to happen when I get home or by Siri voice commands. I tell Siri "run (shortcut name)" but she never does, no matter what I call them.

• For Govee/homebridge... I just don't know what to do in order to automate these lights to a shade that is horrible, all the colors are just wrong. I'll be happy if I can just get the Hue lights working tho TBH.

The main thing I want is for presence sensing to turn on my daytime Hue lighting scene whenever I get home. It would also be nice if I could somehow automate the evening scene to happen either when I turn on my Sony TV (which is in homekit and can be controlled correctly) or when the sun sets.

I've been struggling with and Googling into this stuff for months now, so any advice is appreciated. I just can't believe how hard it is to get homekit to do the same things I had easily set Google Home up to do. I really want to love the Apple ecosystem (and definitely do overall), but this is just such a sore spot for me.

So in my basement I have about 8 smart lights and I also have a motion/occupancy sensor. I’ve set up an automation in the home app to turn the lights on when occupancy is detected and they will also turn off when no occupancy is detected. Problem is, sometimes when I don’t move for a while (while watching a movie for example) it stops detecting occupancy and turns the lights off. However when it detects me again, it’ll turn the lights on but they’ll all be different colour than they were before they turned off. Is there a way to set them to turn back on to the last used colours?

Hi, news for the Aqara U200 users. As an Aqara Home app user, you will be able to receive the Smart Lock U200 v65 firmware update now.

To update, please follow these steps:

1. Make sure you have the Aqara Home app installed on your device.
2. Update the Aqara Home app to version 5.0.0.
3. Open the app and go to the “Profile> Firmware Update> Settings”.
4. Enable the “Beta version update" feature.
5. Once enabled, you will receive the U200 v65 firmware update.

If you are a Home app user, we expect that you will also be able to receive the new updates on the next Friday within the Home app.

The key focuses of our V65 update:

(1) When "Pull Spring" feature is enabled, users will be prompted that the home keys feature will only support tap to unlock, making it easier for them to retract the door latch.

(2) Matter: Support "Lock jammed" event 

(3) Matter: Support displaying the battery percentage of the door lock

(4) Aqara Home: Support "Auto-Lock" and "Door Lock Volume" settings

We sincerely thank the Aqara Beta users and Kickstarter backers for their valuable feedback!

https://preview.redd.it/6apuokww7wbd1.png?width=1816&format=png&auto=webp&s=d97a46942953c0e3c7f35f9941d862d4274aba09

I have HomePods and apple tv's hooked up to receivers for the in ceiling speakers.

I have wiring on my patio for outdoor speakers that I went to hook up. AirPort Express for airplay2 might be the cheapest way, but are there any inexpensive mini amps on there that have auto power on and off?

Cheers,

I’ve created two automations. They’re identical. One is a “personal” automation. One is a “home” automation. The personal one works, but the home one doesn’t. I’ve got other home automations that are working that control lights and scenes. The automations in question are converted to shortcuts.

My assumption is that the personal automations only work when my iPad is home and connected to Wi-Fi. I want to build out automations that will work whether I’m home or not. I have an iPhone, but it’s more convenient to build out the automations on my iPad.

Here’s a screenshot of the shortcut. When I hit the play button on the bottom, it runs perfectly. https://i.imgur.com/VGpbNG8.jpeg

Here’s a screenshot of the automation. If I hit the Test Automation option, it doesn’t work. https://i.imgur.com/42C9HkK.jpeg

Is there a known issue with home automations running as shortcuts? Am I missing something?

Also, what limits are there on the number of personal automations and/or home automations I can have?

I got the new Matter Aqara Door Sensor and connected directly to HomeKit. I want to be able to use it simultaneously with Google home. Is that possible ? I keep getting fail error. Online I read it is possible but haven’t been able to get it to work for me.

I feel like I’ve been up and down Reddit comments and haven’t found an answer so now I’m pleading.

My requirements are that

• Is battery operated
• Has HKSV compatibility
• Doesn’t use 3rd party servers
• Is compatible with scrypted/Home Assistant/Home Bridge

I feel like something like this doesn’t exist.

Eufy is ruled out because of their security issues

Logitech and Unifi don’t have battery doorbells

Arlo requires an account and doesn’t support local access

I feel like this product doesn’t exist on the market. Am I missing something or is it just a waiting game until someone releases something that actually works?