Indigo Domotics

This article tells you how you can use an Apple TV (3rd generation or later) to securely access your HomeKit home on your iOS device from outside of your home's network:

http://www.howtogeek.com/234180/how-to-enable-remote-access-to-your-homekit-smart-home-via-apple-tv/

-Mike

Do you know how HomeKit handles multiple AppleTV's? I have 3 fourth gen & 4 third gen's throughout my house, what dictates which one(s) respond? I've tried to figure this out but can't find any good info out there. The reason I want to know is besides using your awesome plug-in I have the Bluetooth only Schlage Sense locks, one of the two also works remotely the other is mostly a no. I went so far as to plugin a spare 3rd gen about 7 feet away from it & still nothing. It seems like a single AppleTV is used for remote access which just isn't cutting it for multiple Bluetooth locks.. Just curious if you or anyone else knows how remote access with multiple AppleTV's is supposed to work.

mabrown wrote:

Do you know how HomeKit handles multiple AppleTV's? I have 3 fourth gen & 4 third gen's throughout my house, what dictates which one(s) respond? I've tried to figure this out but can't find any good info out there. The reason I want to know is besides using your awesome plug-in I have the Bluetooth only Schlage Sense locks, one of the two also works remotely the other is mostly a no. I went so far as to plugin a spare 3rd gen about 7 feet away from it & still nothing. It seems like a single AppleTV is used for remote access which just isn't cutting it for multiple Bluetooth locks.. Just curious if you or anyone else knows how remote access with multiple AppleTV's is supposed to work.

I don't know how it works, but I added a second gen 4 to my house and it didn't make any difference - it kept working.

One caveat, I could never get my gen 3 to work with HomeKit. Apparently, the gen 3 TV OS has a hard time if you have 2-factor authentication enabled on your iCloud account. The gen 4 works fine, though.

-Mike

Disclaimer: I'm not a current user of the HomeBridge....

It seems as though Homebridge basically acts to let you use Siri to treat Indigo devices like HomeKit devices, but does it work the other way? i.e. Can Indigo access my HomeKit devices that don't normally have Indigo Access? (I figure the AppleTV would be necessary for this to supply the signal, which is why I'm mentioning in this thread).

I also have a Schlage Sense lock, and I like using it with Siri, but I'd really like Indigo to be able to lock/unlock the lock. (Then I could do things like set doors to lock at certain times, or maybe 20 seconds after I arm the alarm, etc...)

Swancoat wrote:

Disclaimer: I'm not a current user of the HomeBridge....

It seems as though Homebridge basically acts to let you use Siri to treat Indigo devices like HomeKit devices, but does it work the other way? i.e. Can Indigo access my HomeKit devices that don't normally have Indigo Access? (I figure the AppleTV would be necessary for this to supply the signal, which is why I'm mentioning in this thread).

I also have a Schlage Sense lock, and I like using it with Siri, but I'd really like Indigo to be able to lock/unlock the lock. (Then I could do things like set doors to lock at certain times, or maybe 20 seconds after I arm the alarm, etc...)

It is one way only.

Someplace I read that when a gen 3 and a gen 4 Apple TV are on the network, the gen 3 shuts down its HomeKit capabilities. In other words a gen 3 and gen 4 will not work together on a single network.

I just successfully tried two gen 4 Apple TVs on my network. I put one in my detached garage because I have one Schlage Sense lock there. I have two Schlage Sense locks in the house within range of the other gen 4 Apple TV. Now all locks are reachable from inside the network and remotely.

Sorry this is not about the fine homebridge-plugin.

I think that Apple TV 3rd Gen will not work (at least the Home app on iOS3 talks about 4th Gen and eventually iPad)

Also a 3rd gen won't work if you're using iOS 10. And it had all sorts of issues if you had 2FA enabled. And it wasn't terribly reliable even when it was all working.

In other words it was a stop gap solution for Apple and now they've moved onto the AppleTV 4 as far as they're concerned you should abandon trying to use the 3rd gen and just buy an Apple TV 4 or enable the sharing option on an iPad on iOS 10.

My iPad supports only till iOS9, and I have a ATV 3rd Gen...
I found the gift for Christmas (but I bought iPhone 6S last week)

I'm lucky, I've got an ATV 4, an iPad mini 2 running iOS 10 mounted on the wall, plus two iPads we use that both support iOS 10 so got them all sharing to give as big a chance of it working as possible!

Personally I hated that I had to go to the new "billion factor-really-piss-me-off-because-it's-stupidly-redundant" authentication for my HomeKit to be used outside the home but now that it's set up I don't have to worry about it. Like Durosity, I already had a couple AT4 and a ton of IOS10 devices around so enabling HomeKit outside the house was ready to go, but it was quite the shocker after they made that change when all of the sudden it all stopped working

Even if here, 3rd GEN is still listed

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207057

durosity wrote:

Also a 3rd gen won't work if you're using iOS 10. And it had all sorts of issues if you had 2FA enabled. And it wasn't terribly reliable even when it was all working.

In other words it was a stop gap solution for Apple and now they've moved onto the AppleTV 4 as far as they're concerned you should abandon trying to use the 3rd gen and just buy an Apple TV 4 or enable the sharing option on an iPad on iOS 10.

HomeKit requires 2 Factor Authentication in order to work. As well as iCloud Keychain. In order to use your Apple TV 3rd gen as a Home Hub make sure you are signed into iCloud and running the most recent operating system for it (as of this post 7.2.2) which supports 2-Factor natively. Though if you are already signed into iTunes on ATV when you enable 2-Factor it can cause you to end up in a loop. Just log out of the iTunes Store at Settings->iTunes Store and back in again. However, the 3rd gen ATV only enables remote access. In order to use the Automation features of HomeKit requires either an iPad with iOS10 or later or an Apple TV 4th gen.

I currently have 2 4th gen and a 3rd gen setup. I have tested them all individually and they worked as expected. I don't have any bluetooth devices though so having multiple really makes no difference for me.

Yeah, in theory an ATV3 should work BUT there's loads of folks on forums who've reported they just can't get it to work and apple haven't been able to help them. However it's good to hear that you've had luck with it working!