Apple Home 2.0: Rebuilding My Smart Home

I think there needs to get more discussion as to ones router and settings used.

This is in IMHo planned obsolescence, after updating to ios 16 all my Eve Door & Window (Homekit) stopped working and never had any more notifications.......

Nanoleaf has been a pain in my butt since I bought them 4 months ago.

Nope

This is the type of shit that makes people not want to deal with smart home ish

Just realised I need to buy a new iMac for the home app to work on it again.. pretty unfair

How do you feel about the TP-Link router after 2 months or so?

“I’m going to rebuild from scratch” … proceeds to restore everything he had before 😂

If you have an Apple TV or HomePod, do you still need other vendor border routers? I thought by having an apple home hub it negated the need for the other border routers?

If you did it all again, clean slate, where you had to acquire all of your smart home devices again, would you get nanoleaf devices again or would you try to stick to the Philips hue (or other) ecosystem?

i had issues after a blackout in the house and then my nanoleafs didn't work properly with the apple home mini so i had to reinstall everything from a scratch

Homekit is so poor sometimes easiest automation cannot be done with it... Homeassistant on the other hand is the solution to all of these issues.

With Aqara 2 motion sensor can it activate a Wyze light switch?

You know why i have had 0 problems with my smart home?

No Apple anywhere.

Seems like once every few months I’ll have something stop responding from a simple smart plug to a light switch, or even a Roku TV. Many times just unplugging and plugging back in gets it going again but other times have to remove it and start over again. This is a pain for light switches that have to be removed from the switch gang.

What is there on the wall for adjusting temperature? How is this device called? Is it google nest? How do you connect this to HomeKit?

why did you not use your homey and replace all those hubs?

My home has been broken for a while. Everything shows not responding. I have feared i would have to reset it all and it seems like that time has come for you as well.

Dang this is a NIGHTMARE. I’ve had to start from scratch once from similar problems last year and LORD did it take ages to redo all my automations and scenes. Thankfully my lights are hue so yeah the hub saved me lots of time

Nothing is simple with Homekit. Don't buy too much if you don't want to have to manage unfinished products.

I’m an Alexa user, and not keen on switching to Apple Home. Reason is it’s restricted to iOS which means you’re stuck using an iPhone forever even if you decide to switch to Android eventually

This dude got the sleepiest eyes in the biz

Can we get a video about how the new deco WiFi mesh system is handling the HomeKit devices because….. anything going to no response?

I’ve had NO issues with HomeKit in iOS 17. I can talk to people through HomeKit with my eufy cameras now, AND my Wemo doorbell has been working FLAWLESSLY. I haven’t had to restart it since the update. I usually restart it once every couple weeks.

You went for the most expensive option (Apple HomeKit) and still it was buggy.

This was a fascinating…and frightful video of what you had to go through. It’s also an excellent demonstration of why NOT to automate everything in one’s home (in my humble opinion).

In my younger years, 30-40 years ago, I was a computer nerd and had an X10 based system controlling nearly everything possible in my home. However, after getting older I eventually realized having technology permeating everything in my home was not always a good idea. You inadvertently demonstrated that very thing here. Look at the enormous amount of time you invested in setting this all up to begin with…only having to spend DAYS rebuilding it again. And in some instances, just to avoid flipping a switch only a few feet away… Is that really necessary?

I’m really amused at the beginning of your videos when you say you try to keep things as simple as possible. But the very fact you have a “network room” suggests your setup is anything but simple…and with so many devices and hubs, it certainly is not.

Don’t misunderstand me, I think it’s awesome you are sharing these experiences as it can help those who have much simpler setups and avoid potential pitfalls. That’s the reason I’ve been looking at your videos.

I just moved into a new apartment and after many years of virtually no home automation, I will be venturing back into it via HomeKit. However, I will be using it sparingly—for controlling those items that truly benefit from remote control—for example, dimming table lamps that otherwise could not be dimmed. Now that’s genuinely useful! I refuse to spend hours setting up devices that I could easily just walk over and flip a switch to activate.

My initial dabbling in such things confirms what you said about hubs—they are fantastic. That’s why I’ve decided to get a Lutron Caseta hub. Direct WiFi control of multiple devices would be a huge nightmare in the making. My few experiences with such devices has taught me to never go that route!

Your later review of the Homey Pro suggests it’s “one hub to rule them all.” However, one has to ask, shouldn’t HomeKit really be the unifying factor in a smart home setup? I suspect if HomeKit was as robust as it should be, a Homey Pro wouldn’t even be necessary. It’s a pity with the billions of dollars Apple is sitting on, they can’t make a full hearted effort to make HomeKit a robust, one-stop, smart home solution.

Thanks for sharing your experiences!

Every smarthome builder should invest in a good hub I recommend zigbee Aqara (Homkit) or Smartlife/Tuya Zigbee 3.0 android users fav.

best advice I can give anybody here is to setup home assistant on a raspberry pi or old computer and use that to integrate into homekit. I made the change after everything in my place was unavailable on homekit, and I haven’t had any issues ever since

Apple needs to do with homekit head what they did with one for apple maps! Homekit has so much potential!

Entertaining. If you make a KNX system all of this madness will disappear.

Regarding the lighting automations you use in your home, how do you make lights turn off automatically when there is no activity in a room or area? I've tried various approaches, but have yet to find one that works well.

I have gone all Lutron Caseta and it becomes a forget-me.

As a tiny home (apartment) dweller it is such a short few steps to anything and my cardiologist recommends I walk more, smart home stuff is kind of the wrong direction.

Our smart home had the same issue since the new architecture. We tried everything with apple and their seniors as well. We eventually moved and set everything up new from scratch, and factory reset all the accessories. We also replaced a lot of the accessories. It’s glitching again… beyond frustrating.

Bro I am done with HomeKit , 1. Expensive HomeKit products. 2.Not efficient 3. Thread Border router issue .

I now have more trust with Amazon Alexa as more matter products that sync super properly with Alexa , I had nothing but best experience, Yeh & cheaper than HomeKit. Can’t wait to see more matter products to end Apple’s hypocrisy

The switch from Orbi to D link was an unnecessary expense.

Use Home Assistent Homekit is lame

Yikes. Smart home… until it isn’t.

Great video! I learned A lot of new stuff about controller for HomeKit.

Routers do have a max # of devices.

no its not anything you did wrong, thread is absolute TRASH. I bought in big, tons of switches and other devices, not one day have I woken up and something isn't totally F'd up. often huge delays, a lot of Bluetooth... just trash.

Hey! Just getting into setting up my Apple Home, I’ve been learning a lot through your videos. What do you recommend for a smart sliding door lock? TIA

WOW. JUST WOW on how many people are experiencing the same issues but never had a place to voice their frustrations! Holy S**t! Thanks for your attempts at guiding everyone through this process. I look forward to seeing a video on the resolve of it all, 'cause like everyone else, my Homekit is glitchy and I can never figure out why! I was just about to switch out my Orbi mesh for Eeros, but now I'm going to hold off and see what happens with you first. Thanks for being that honest and our Hero guinea pig!

Man, this makes me realize what a load of unfixable crap people are buying these days.

I built a house from the ground up as a smart home, with a central smart distribution cabinet based on KNX a proven, reliable, enterprise-grade standard for smart buildings.

I am living in my place for 17(!) years now, without a single failure. Not one device unresponsive… ever!

The trick (and challenge) is that all push buttons, motion sensors, thermostats are daisy-chained to a green 30V bus cable, while the switching is all done by actuators in the cabinet.

So … is KNx old? Yes. But so is TCP/IP. Is it outdated? Heck, no!

I have a KNX Alexa Gateway for my Sonos speakers. I use HomeAssistant for visualization & automation and plan to get a KNX Matter Gateway as soon as they are stable and economic.

My 35 lights, 20 dimmers, 20 shutters, 15 heating circuits and all motion sensor & push button channels show up as one device with 135 entities in Home Assistant. My whole house… is one device.

And because KNX works as a decentralized, intelligent bus, every component is smart enough to talk to each other component without the need for a central hub or server. HomeAssistant down? Use Alexa instead.

So again. I understand why people still put all this Homekit-China-Junk in their homes (because their electrics were orginally implemented like in the 1870) but why are we still building new homes with the assumption that a light circuit will be opened and closed by using muscle power to open/close a mechanical contact in a wall.

That is insane. Any smart person would design a system for new homes to do the switching at a central place and connect the sensors voa a low-powered digital cable.

But with the current trend of retrofitting everything into tiny outlets and then use some freakishly complex radio protocol to control the sprawling mess means, that we will never end up with a new paradigm and start doing what‘s right.

In Europe there are at least a few miillion KNX buildings designed for the digital age, but in the US, the situation remains rather hopeless.

Hi Shane great video learning a lot for my new house. I see have homey could you make a video on this

And ima about to build it right with you. What a convenience, especially we are taking the big step in migrating away from traditional systems offered by companies 😂

You should AirBNB your home to developers to test their products!

I’m right there with you. I’m about to reset the world as well, but, waiting until all the new OSs are out. I’m so sick of HomeKit devices getting “lost” by the system. I try to reset them and add them back, but, HomeKit won’t accept them. I’m also having problems with automations just not working. HomeKit secure video motion detection hasn’t worked in months. I hate these black box systems! HomeKit needs a troubleshooting tool that exposes the underlying database and allows judicious editing.