To say that I outright loathe HomeShit HomeKit is a massive understatement. Apple has fucked up their "smart home" protocol since Day One.
When the technology debuted it was so woefully incomplete that I ditched it immediately and went with INSTEON. When INSTEON died years later, I decided to give HomeKit another chance because so many people were saying that it was finally a worthwhile way to control your home and devices. Since I was in a hurry, I went all-in on HomeKit and replaced every light switch and "smart device" in my home (at great expense). But I didn't trust Apple entirely because I made sure to buy devices that would be upgradable to the "Matter" protocol so if HomeKit ended up being awful I could just migrate to Matter and control everything another way.
SPOILER ALERT: HOMEKIT is still most definitely HOMESHIT!
HomeKit in 2024 is still a brain-dead pile of shit that is wildly inflexible and doesn't work consistently. Apple has been working on this for TEN YEARS and yet automations suddenly stop working for no reason and devices won't act as expected. Even worse, all you get to work with is the most basic of basic controls...
That's pretty much it. That's all you get. It's fucking embarrassing. Apple has always dumbed their stuff down to the lowest common denominator, but this is just beyond fucking useless if you want to have any kind of smarts in your smart home. What I need is something like this...
I've tried multiple times to do something this bloody simple and it always fails. Ideally I'd be able to use a WHILE statement so I don't have to create a second IF/THEN loop to turn them off, but at this point I'll take anything I can get.
What I'm really looking for is something like this, where the roof heat tapes only turn on if it's been snowing for a while so I don't have to waste energy on a tiny amount of snowfall that will melt quickly...
But do you think basic variables or even a rudimentary timer is available in HomeKit? Oh fuck no.
This is all off the top of my head, and I'm sure once I got into the logic of whatever system I end up with, I'll get smarter on how to best approach the automations I'm looking to create. The point is that stuff like this simply isn't possible with HomeKit.
Enter Homey Pro...
I actually bought one of these devices last year, but ended up returning it because it wasn't able to control the devices I had (mostly because my light switch manufacturer hadn't gotten out the Matter upgrade as promised). Fast-forward to Black Friday 2024 and miracle-of-miracles, my light switch manufacturer has finally released their Matter upgrade!
And so I am once again giving Homey Pro a try.
Today I received the device. Tonight I'll install it. Tomorrow I'll get started on upgrading all my stuff to Matter and seeing if Homey Pro will work for my needs.
And you, lucky reader, get to come alpong for the ride!
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Good luck!
I’m rocking Google but I don’t have much more than a Google Mesh network, Speakers (pretty much every room and even out in the garage and detached shed), thermostat, and lights. My stuff is voice activated or by app, although I have used some routines. Nothing so customizable as what you are doing, but it works. This isn’t a dig at Apple, just I’ve mostly lucked out. I do have more to add and we will see if my luck holds out….