Homekit support?

[KristianO 15]

What a joke! Now Fibaro is picking up a completely new product line and hopes that this will work in parallel including a New app. I don't understand there strategy!

Whats next they abandon the Z-wave protocol and go all in on Home kit?

 

 

 

[tcviper 20]

...

Edited December 16, 2016 by tcviper

[northyorks 35]

New app looks better and improved interface too.

 

Dissapoonting Existing users left with dated looking app in comparison..

[Sankotronic 2,370]

I took little time to download this new Homekit Fibaro app. I manage immediately to add my Philips HUE bridge to the app with all my 27 lamps. Unfortunately after importing, in Dashboard view and Room view they have all same name "Hue color lamp" and only when you tap on the lamp you can see name that was pulled from bridge. So plus for ease of adding Homekita devices but minus for not replacing default name with name that is pulled from device!

 

Except devices and rooms there is nothing much to see. You can add service groups so that Siri knows relations between devices but there is no smart relations, it is just group of devices that will be turned on or of by one command to Siri. And you can add services where you can change name so that Siri can actually do something with them. For instance name of my lamp in living room is in Croiatian, so can't be used with Siri but then here you can define service like "Living Room Lamp" and that is great. I tested and it is working. Siri was playing with my HUE lamps changing brightness and turning them on and off until I get tired  She on the other hand never get's tired!

 

 Thanks Fibaro for making it possible for me since Apple disabled Siri on my Apple TV 4 and it doesn't work because I live in some small unpresentable country of Croatia. Damned Apple for their racism!! 

 

This Homekita is not home automation! Making Siri able to turn on some lamps or heating or open blinds is not home automation! This is just some fancy replacement for our wall switches and thermostats. That is not home automation. At this moment I don't see any real use of it except to impress somebody who don't know nothing about home automation and what is really about.

 

I'm really disappointed that Fibaro put any resources to join this Apple idea of HA when they have so promising, capable, powerful and wonderful real home automation gateway controller such as Home Center 2! Instead of working and improving Lili or just adding support for already developed solutions like Alexa you decided to follow this stupid Apple idea of home automation which is nothing but yelling all around the house on Siri to do something about lights in the room that kids again forget to tell her to switch off. Ha, ha, ha 

 

But if this makes you happy....

 

 

[T.Konopka 8]

12 minut temu, Sankotronic napisał:

I took little time to download this new Homekit Fibaro app. I manage immediately to add my Philips HUE bridge to the app with all my 27 lamps. Unfortunately after importing, in Dashboard view and Room view they have all same name "Hue color lamp" and only when you tap on the lamp you can see name that was pulled from bridge. So plus for ease of adding Homekita devices but minus for not replacing default name with name that is pulled from device!

 

Except devices and rooms there is nothing much to see. You can add service groups so that Siri knows relations between devices but there is no smart relations, it is just group of devices that will be turned on or of by one command to Siri. And you can add services where you can change name so that Siri can actually do something with them. For instance name of my lamp in living room is in Croiatian, so can't be used with Siri but then here you can define service like "Living Room Lamp" and that is great. I tested and it is working. Siri was playing with my HUE lamps changing brightness and turning them on and off until I get tired  She on the other hand never get's tired!

 

 Thanks Fibaro for making it possible for me since Apple disabled Siri on my Apple TV 4 and it doesn't work because I live in some small unpresentable country of Croatia. Damned Apple for their racism!! 

 

This Homekita is not home automation! Making Siri able to turn on some lamps or heating or open blinds is not home automation! This is just some fancy replacement for our wall switches and thermostats. That is not home automation. At this moment I don't see any real use of it except to impress somebody who don't know nothing about home automation and what is really about.

 

I'm really disappointed that Fibaro put any resources to join this Apple idea of HA when they have so promising, capable, powerful and wonderful real home automation gateway controller such as Home Center 2! Instead of working and improving Lili or just adding support for already developed solutions like Alexa you decided to follow this stupid Apple idea of home automation which is nothing but yelling all around the house on Siri to do something about lights in the room that kids again forget to tell her to switch off. Ha, ha, ha 

 

But if this makes you happy....

Hello @Sankotronic,

 

Thank you very much for your insights. They are very informative as usual. Your post has been already forwarded to our team and appropriate persons.

[KristianO 15]

32 minutes ago, Sankotronic said:

I took little time to download this new Homekit Fibaro app. I manage immediately to add my Philips HUE bridge to the app with all my 27 lamps. Unfortunately after importing, in Dashboard view and Room view they have all same name "Hue color lamp" and only when you tap on the lamp you can see name that was pulled from bridge. So plus for ease of adding Homekita devices but minus for not replacing default name with name that is pulled from device!

 

Except devices and rooms there is nothing much to see. You can add service groups so that Siri knows relations between devices but there is no smart relations, it is just group of devices that will be turned on or of by one command to Siri. And you can add services where you can change name so that Siri can actually do something with them. For instance name of my lamp in living room is in Croiatian, so can't be used with Siri but then here you can define service like "Living Room Lamp" and that is great. I tested and it is working. Siri was playing with my HUE lamps changing brightness and turning them on and off until I get tired  She on the other hand never get's tired!

 

 Thanks Fibaro for making it possible for me since Apple disabled Siri on my Apple TV 4 and it doesn't work because I live in some small unpresentable country of Croatia. Damned Apple for their racism!! 

 

This Homekita is not home automation! Making Siri able to turn on some lamps or heating or open blinds is not home automation! This is just some fancy replacement for our wall switches and thermostats. That is not home automation. At this moment I don't see any real use of it except to impress somebody who don't know nothing about home automation and what is really about.

 

I'm really disappointed that Fibaro put any resources to join this Apple idea of HA when they have so promising, capable, powerful and wonderful real home automation gateway controller such as Home Center 2! Instead of working and improving Lili or just adding support for already developed solutions like Alexa you decided to follow this stupid Apple idea of home automation which is nothing but yelling all around the house on Siri to do something about lights in the room that kids again forget to tell her to switch off. Ha, ha, ha 

 

But if this makes you happy....

 

 

Spot on!

[northyorks 35]

But can't you create scenes in the HomeKit app? That's automation?

[Sankotronic 2,370]

13 minutes ago, northyorks said:

But can't you create scenes in the HomeKit app? That's automation?

What do you mean by word scenes? Scene can be set of lights turned on at some brightness level. Scene can be set of actions that are executed in some order at the specified time. Scene can be some block or LUA or any other code that has some level of decision making and depending on different circumstances executing different set of actions.

 

But, what ever you meant by this word there is nothing of scenes in current version of the Fibaro Homekit app. On the other hand Apple Homekit app has ability to add some basic scenes where you can select devices and set their state, give name to scene and then you have to tap it or ask Siri to run it. If you ask me this is all manual control. This has nothing to do with automation. There is no such thing as real automation which you can have with HC2 and LUA scenes where for example our Angelina wake us up with gradually raising up brightness of lamps in our bedroom with some specified color and gradually raising volume of our Sonos speakers which start playing selected radio station and then starting coffee machine and wishing us good morning and telling us weather forecast for the day coming, and raising blinds if we wake up after sunrise time, etc, etc. All this happens every morning if alarm clock is set to wake us up! That is what I call home automation and not some basic scenes that I have to wake up first to tell Siri tu run them.

[Cameleon 17]

Bit of a shame to see it happen like this but I can see why Fibaro have done it - easiest way to the money. If we're lucky then it might allow them to subsidise the development of HC2 (or 3) more. Now their main devices are Homekit enabled, theres not much more development for them as the grunt work of "automation" is done in iOS/tvOS. So hopefully this will give them a new revenue stream to get Homekit integrated into HC2 (USB dongle/gateway to plug into HC2 would be ideal?). Shame it doesnt integrate with HC2 but I can see why it was done like this, easiest way into the market and not requiring Apple owners to have to buy the expensive HC2 if they just want to dip their toes in HA like people do with Philips HUE etc which is relatively cheap to get into. 

[chaicka 195]

10 hours ago, Sankotronic said:

What do you mean by word scenes? Scene can be set of lights turned on at some brightness level. Scene can be set of actions that are executed in some order at the specified time. Scene can be some block or LUA or any other code that has some level of decision making and depending on different circumstances executing different set of actions.

 

But, what ever you meant by this word there is nothing of scenes in current version of the Fibaro Homekit app. On the other hand Apple Homekit app has ability to add some basic scenes where you can select devices and set their state, give name to scene and then you have to tap it or ask Siri to run it. If you ask me this is all manual control. This has nothing to do with automation. There is no such thing as real automation which you can have with HC2 and LUA scenes where for example our Angelina wake us up with gradually raising up brightness of lamps in our bedroom with some specified color and gradually raising volume of our Sonos speakers which start playing selected radio station and then starting coffee machine and wishing us good morning and telling us weather forecast for the day coming, and raising blinds if we wake up after sunrise time, etc, etc. All this happens every morning if alarm clock is set to wake us up! That is what I call home automation and not some basic scenes that I have to wake up first to tell Siri tu run them.

 

Apple's own 'Home' app is unable to create scenes to say 'turn on living room lights when motion detected'?

[Sankotronic 2,370]

4 hours ago, chaicka said:

 

Apple's own 'Home' app is unable to create scenes to say 'turn on living room lights when motion detected'?

Hi @chaicka,

 

Since I have only HUE bulbs included in Homekit I can't test it. Apple Homekit app is not offering me nothing more than just give name to the scene and add devices and their preferred state when is activated. Maybe if I have more Homekit devices I get more possibilities.

 

 

[darren-mc 11]

Yes you can trigger scenes with apple HomeKit. I have a netamo home coach which works with HomeKit and that I can create a trigger based on a CO2 sensor alert and perform an action. The problem is that you are wholly reliant on the manufacturer. So the Home Coach does not expose the temp (which is measures) as a sensor so you can't use that in HomeKit. Its very basic and I think it could be become very hard to complete a total "automation " system through it. I have 97 zwave devices on my network with a few more on order but I can't begin to imagine doing that through HomeKit.

 

However, that being said was is very good is to use the location based triggers through HomeKit then use the raspberry PI link to push that into fibaro virtual...works nicely and better than the fibaro app.

[barend121 13]

Fibaro would be better of with two devisions,

 

one for zware/WiFi/blue actors like motion, smoke etc; go wild on HomeKit, zwave,echo and others 

 

one for controllers hce and hc2; fully focus on adding as much devices and value in the platform (redundancy, WiFi switches, new vd's, stability).

 

this current combination is not optimal for Both Groups.  They create a lock-in on eachother.

 

Bussiness wise is a very smart step for fibaro to sell their actors to a wide range of controllers including HomeKit (ofcourse)

[darren-mc 11]

Agreed I was really really hoping for a bridge of some sort...its really disappointing there is deep logic in the Fibaro/HomeSeer etc platforms which HomeKit is not able to do...however there are real nice things which Fibaro don't do...so a bridge would have been perfect.

[AutoFrank 372]

Hi, 

I was looking at the homekit pages at 

Please login or register to see this link.

 and noticed what looked like an integrated wall mount for the fibaro motion sensor

 

 

If this just a concept for the marketing (like the HC2 connected to the TV (fibaro multimedia) in some earlier promo's) or something that is available ?

 

Thanks

-frank

Please login or register to see this attachment.

Edited December 17, 2016 by AutoFrank

[tcviper 20]

I dont understand why people are so difficult about this? There is a really good option to simply add Homekit support to existing Fibaro HC2/Lite. Simply install 

Please login or register to see this link.

 and 

Please login or register to see this link.

 and it will add all Fibaro devices into homekit. Install this on a RPI, Mac, PC or any computer available and done, couldnt be easier.

[AutoFrank 372]

43 minutes ago, tcviper said:

I dont understand why people are so difficult about this? There is a really good option to simply add Homekit support to existing Fibaro HC2/Lite. Simply install 

Please login or register to see this link.

 and 

Please login or register to see this link.

 and it will add all Fibaro devices into homekit. Install this on a RPI, Mac, PC or any computer available and done, couldnt be easier.

 

I'm trying to understand what this new addition will bring to my existing hc2 setup 

 

Any takers??

[northyorks 35]

3 hours ago, AutoFrank said:

 

I'm trying to understand what this new addition will bring to my existing hc2 setup 

 

Any takers??

It adds nothing.

 

i know people keep saying homebridge can be run on a different device to enable HomeKit but for people who want simple HA and not good at coding this is not desirable..

 

It may not be so bad if fibaro support at least echo... but neither supported by the HomeCenter....

 

'Everything' it seems - is not connected...

[tcviper 20]

What the addition is? For Apple users to be able to control all Fibaro devices with SIRI / iPhone / iPad and the Homekit app. That's it. If you dont have all that, no need.

[danone1973 4]

On 17/12/2016 at 3:48 AM, Sankotronic said:

What do you mean by word scenes? Scene can be set of lights turned on at some brightness level. Scene can be set of actions that are executed in some order at the specified time. Scene can be some block or LUA or any other code that has some level of decision making and depending on different circumstances executing different set of actions.

 

But, what ever you meant by this word there is nothing of scenes in current version of the Fibaro Homekit app. On the other hand Apple Homekit app has ability to add some basic scenes where you can select devices and set their state, give name to scene and then you have to tap it or ask Siri to run it. If you ask me this is all manual control. This has nothing to do with automation. There is no such thing as real automation which you can have with HC2 and LUA scenes where for example our Angelina wake us up with gradually raising up brightness of lamps in our bedroom with some specified color and gradually raising volume of our Sonos speakers which start playing selected radio station and then starting coffee machine and wishing us good morning and telling us weather forecast for the day coming, and raising blinds if we wake up after sunrise time, etc, etc. All this happens every morning if alarm clock is set to wake us up! That is what I call home automation and not some basic scenes that I have to wake up first to tell Siri tu run them.

 

Hi all, This is my very first post on this forum. Two months ago I started to look at home automation and nearly decided on Insteon when I learned about the HC2 from Fibaro. What really got me excited was exactly what Sankotronic described above! The HC2 is capable of real automation versus the Insteon which can only perform basic logic.

@Sankotronic, just want to take this opportunity to say a big thank you for all the amazing work you put in and most important thank you for sharing this with the community here on this forum. Keep up the good work mate!

 

Anyway, I think a nice combination would be to have a full blown automation combined with some "easy stuff" and I would not mind to every now and then yell at Siri from the comfort of my couch, to turn off the kitchen light left on by my daughter without having to reach for my phone, fibaro swipe, keyfob or other hardware.

 

 

On 17/12/2016 at 4:00 AM, Cameleon said:

Bit of a shame to see it happen like this but I can see why Fibaro have done it - easiest way to the money. If we're lucky then it might allow them to subsidise the development of HC2 (or 3) more. Now their main devices are Homekit enabled, theres not much more development for them as the grunt work of "automation" is done in iOS/tvOS. So hopefully this will give them a new revenue stream to get Homekit integrated into HC2 (USB dongle/gateway to plug into HC2 would be ideal?). Shame it doesnt integrate with HC2 but I can see why it was done like this, easiest way into the market and not requiring Apple owners to have to buy the expensive HC2 if they just want to dip their toes in HA like people do with Philips HUE etc which is relatively cheap to get into. 

 

Yes, this is the scary part for us which invested lots of money in this system, is Fibaro going to invest from now on mainly in the new "HomeKit enabled" devices? Stop 10 people on the street and ask them which system would they use, a simple on/off automation with the capability of few basic logic blocks but with the support, reliability and easy use which Apple is providing the world for the past decade, or a system which requires programming knowledge like HC2 and LUA??

I think you have a good chance that all those 10 people would chose the first option!

Hence I believe that you are right @Cameleon, easy way to the money!!! Fibaro is running a business end of the day.

I really hope that existing customers like us which have chosen this system for the above reasons and spent a good amount of money on the hardware, will not be forgotten (spent over 3,000Euros in the past two months lol and 95% of the sensors are Fibaro) and new development for the Zwave sensors and HC2(3??) will carry on.

 

So I am taking this opportunity to ask @T.Konopka, is there a chance now that the legacy Fibaro for iPhone app will get an update on the old GUI?? I think it is now overdue and I am quite surprised that you have release a new awesome app and not updated in the same time the old one. The new app for Homekit enabled devices is simply awesome vs the outdated old app. The icons of the new app are unbelievable nice. Can we have the same thing with the old app?? I think all of your existing customers will highly appreciate this and recommend Fibaro to friends and work colleagues.

Thank you in advance for your answer!

 

 

Edited December 27, 2016 by danone1973