spiv wrote:...Home automation is about having things happen, fully automatically and without intervention. Indigo triggers that I have configured based on sunrise/sunset, motion sensors, door open/close sensors, etc. are true "Home Automation". Once configured, it simply works and for everyone in our house, not just the geek/guru (me).
Obviously, most of us use "Home Control" alongside "Home Automation", but the more we automate (geolocation triggers, Nest learning thermostats, etc.) and the less we need to use manual control (even if by "cutesy" voice recognition), the more we are happy.
For true DIY Home Automation, Indigo is still the best and I don't see Apple/HomeKit heading in this direction for quite a while. The core architecture of HomeKit - local personal device/scene database kept physically inside your iPhone and sync'd through iCloud to multiple iDevices is problematic when compared with the client/server architecture of Indigo.
It is still early days for Homekit. Homekit in iOS 9 added event triggers in which an accessory reports an event to HK and, if other conditions are met, an action is taken automatically. The example used was:
Event: door unlocked
Condition 1: motion detected
Condition 2: certain time period
Action taken: set a scene ("I'm home")
Including timer triggers that were in iOS 8, Homekit can currently trigger based on:
Time (before, after, on)
Sunset/sunrise (before, after and including an offset such as "30 minutes after sunset")
Accessory characteristic change (motion detected on, door unlocked,
Geofence (iOS devices enters/leaves location)
So, Homekit is
designed to include much of the Home Automation that you are looking for. The
implementation isn't there, yet. Elgato have posted that their Eve sensors require a firmware upgrade to support triggering in iOS 9.
[url]https://help.elgato.com/customer/en/portal/articles/2150056-eve-door-window-—-do-i-need-to-be-in-bluetooth-range-to-see-whether-my-door-or-window-is-open-?b_id=360[/url]
We also need apps that give us access to set up triggers. I've been using MyTouchHome to test out sunset triggers. After some back and forth with the developer, I'm hopeful that the next version will make this work reliably. Other reports praise the "Home" app by Hochgatterer.
iTunes links:
MyTouchHome ($) -
https://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/mytouch ... 42360?mt=8Home ($$)-
https://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/home-sm ... 94352?mt=8Maybe some of the new products coming to market will kick off support for triggers. For example, opening the garage door at night would be an obvious trigger for a scene. As we've been doing for 18 months, now, we just need to wait some more!
Craig