Apple homekit

hi, can anyone when apple homekit will work. I just problem it says it does not work. Brian

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Works for me. I use Siri a lot.

Hi welcome to the community,
For all your questions pls read Trouble with Homey? first. Then search the community and edit your post to add required info.

Iā€™m still on Homey 4.2. I have been using Homey with the HomyKit app for around 6 months now. Iā€™ve never been able to get it to work reliablyā€¦

Homey regularly losses network connection to all of my Apple devices. Mostly when my phone or IPad have gone into standby mode but also randomly happens while Iā€™m actually using them.

Quite often my Apple devices say they canā€™t connect. If im lucky and I wait 30 seconds and then try again it worksā€¦ Im almost guaranteed to lose connection to Homey (via HomeKit) when Iā€™m away from my home and my phone is connected to 4G LTEā€¦

My iPad Pro is acting as the HomeKit hub in my house. The phone i use is an iPhone XRā€¦ All are on the latest apple updatesā€¦

Does anyone else here have issues using Homey with Apple HomeKit ?

When I was still using Homey for Homekit, I had similar issues. It was never really stable. I blame Homeyā€™s networking.

Never any problems as such here. ATV is the hub

I might try an Apple TV or HomePod as a hub instead and see how that goes.

Rob, what do you think the cause is exactly ? Is it something that Athom canā€™t fix in their code. Are there any work aroundā€™s. ?

Do Athom really care about HomeKit ? After all this time they still have it buried in the experiment section and havenā€™t formally made it apart of the system. Have they made any effort to find or encourage another developer to get it up to 100% working . There are many IOS users out thereā€¦

The ironic thing i find is that Homey ā€˜s look and user interface is very much styled off HomeKit yet they donā€™t seem to care about it from what I can seeā€¦

I donā€™t know why Homey can be so unstable when it comes to networking. For some people it works fine, others have lots of issues. Itā€™s not related to a particular app, because other apps also suffer from the same problem. The issue seems to be related to maintaining long-running connections (like for Homekit, or things like websockets).

As for Athomā€™s own Homekit implementation: I donā€™t know why it even exists anymore. I donā€™t think they work on it, it was implemented as part of a ā€œhacky fridayā€ if I remember correctly, and itā€™s quite limited. I guess Athom just wants to be able to tell prospective buyers that ā€œHomey supports Homekitā€.

Hereā€™s an update to my situation ā€¦

I just purchased a new HomePod Mini today and hooked it up to my home network.

I removed my IPad as being the Home Kit Hub in my networkā€¦ That is what I was originally using for all my IOS devices to join to.

I removed and deleted all the settings in the HomeyKit app .

I removed Homey as being a bridge in my IOS devices.

I rebooted Homey and paired my new HomePod mini to Homey. It didnā€™t pair the first time, but paired on the second attempt.

I then rebooted Homey again just to be safeā€¦

Since then Iā€™ve been testing everything for about 3 hours now.

So far so good. :slightly_smiling_face: :slightly_smiling_face::slightly_smiling_face::slightly_smiling_face:

Everything seems to respond fast and quick and is fairly snappy ā€¦ Iā€™ve havenā€™t had any failures to connect my devices at all.

While Iā€™ve been testing everything tonight I also turned off the Wifi connection on my iPhone so itā€™s just connected to 4G LTE. (As if I was away from home)ā€¦ It also hasnā€™t had any failures which previously happened a lot while I was away from homeā€¦

Iā€™ll post an update tomorrow on how my testing ultimately goes but so far so goodā€¦ My iPad was probably the contributing factor to my issues but it sounds like Homey needs to get its code up to scratch.

If it starts to work reliably from now on Iā€™ll be happy but I will still have some very stern comments to make about Athom. :rage:

Their business model and attitude are totally deplorable. This is shared by many comments Iā€™ve seen over the internet.

I spent $600 AUD to buy my Homey Hub. This is ā€œA LOTā€ of money in my country. I can buy a second car for this price. :flushed:

I purchased it as it was advertised has having ā€œApple HomeKit compatibilityā€ !!! plus also other features (which donā€™t really work properly after trying). The inbuilt IR and 433Mhz also really ā€œNEEDā€ to have learning capabilities but Athom arrogantly donā€™t seem care about this after so much negative feedback about thisā€¦

I can buy 3 x Habitat Hubā€™s for $600 AUD. Even Apple donā€™t charge this sort of money. I expect a five star product for this price and that it perform what it advertises to do, and do it reliably. This is not so from my overall experience with the system. .

Im quite pissed off to ā€œnowā€ find out that Athomā€™s Apple HomeKit compatibility feature is essentially just a ā€œjokeā€ to themā€¦ This is crazyā€¦

HomeKit is such a major platform for smart home connectivity in the global marketā€¦ Millions and millions of people use the IOS platform. Its nutā€™s that Athom just treatā€™s this with total contempt and disregard. Iā€™m very disappointed in this information.,

If they donā€™t properly formalise this feature into Homey or they dump it Iā€™ll be returning my Homey Hub back to the retailer for a refund.

Id dare say many people bought this hub as they thought it would ā€œproperlyā€ integrate with their IOS devices . Iā€™d dare say a class action will ensue if they donā€™t get their act together on thisā€¦

Very disappointedā€¦

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Your comment doesnā€™t make sense. You first find out that the HomeKit delays/disconnects are caused by your setup (slow iPad functioning as HomeKit hub), you see that it works properly now but ā€œwarnsā€ homey for any possible problems that come next. Donā€™t you agree that the initial problems seen have absolutely nothing to do with Homey?

Hi Hannes,

Firstly I never said I had experienced delays. I said that sometimes my iOS devices would not connect to a device but if I then tried issuing the same action ā€œagainā€ with in about 30 seconds it would then work. A delay is when you issue an action , you wait a small amount of time and then the device then turns on ā€¦

I also did not theorise that my connection problems were due to my iPad being slow. My theory was it might of been the cause in general. My iPad has the same processing power as a mid-range laptopā€¦

When I wrote my post I said I had only been running the new setup for a few hours. Since then I have had a some connection issues. Iā€™m currently going through my network setup at the moment and also checking that the new HomePod mini is setup correctly before I cast I final conclusion ā€¦ (Itā€™s the first time Iā€™ve had one of these)

You might also recall I also said i couldnā€™t get my system to pair up with Homey on the first attempt and I had to try twice. When you read through the Homey forum you will find a few posts from other people that have had major issues getting it to pair up ā€¦

Now ā€¦ If you have being attention to this thread did you read Robā€™s comments from before . ?

Rob is a developer for a few of the apps on the Homey platform. From what Iā€™ve read he is highly experienced with the system and probably knows more about it (under the hood) than most people on this forum and also seems to be a quite an honest and straight forward person . (the people I like)

To remind you, this is what he saidā€¦

and

Now taking into account what he said and that itā€™s 2021 and Athomā€™s HomeKit compatibility is still buried in the ā€œexperimentsā€ section, it was never coded properly, it was hasty made, it hasnā€™t been updated in over a year and that Athom obviously donā€™t care about it (itā€™s a joke to them. A Hackey Friday project :flushed:) and that people do experience issues with it (see posts from otherā€™s as well) ā€¦ (my own issues are not concluded yet) are you telling me that there are no problems or issues with Athomā€™s HomeKit implementation ??? . That is what your post basically implies ?

It must be my system thatā€™s at fault. IT CANT BE HOMEY :crazy_face::crazy_face::crazy_face:ā€¦

You seemed to have also missed the overall bigger picture in what I wrote in my post.

When I get 20 straight days with no connection issues we can then say that my problem was ā€œsolelyā€ due to my iPad . Im am currently still experiencing issuesā€¦ As I said before (without doubt) Athom ā€œstillā€ needs to rework this App and get it up to scratch and also make it as a proper formal integrated app in the Homey system like they do with Alexa and Google Home.

I paid ā€œBIGā€ money for my Homeyā€¦ $600AUDā€¦ It was advertised as having HomeKit compatibility. I expect this feature to be properly integrated . I paid Rolls Royce money for this hubā€¦ For this I expect hmmm ā€œA Rolls Royceā€ !!! ā€¦ not a hub with ā€œHackeyā€ Apps that were poorly and hastily coded and were then basically abandoned, with the intent to ā€œsuckerā€ iOS users (like me) into buying their hub saying itā€™s ā€œHome Kit compatibleā€

We are not just talking about a crappy little miscellaneous app that lets you know when your toast is ready. We are taking about Homey having connectivity to one of the top three ā€œbiggestā€ home/mobile platforms on the global marketā€¦ As I said before ā€¦ TOTALLY CRAZYā€¦

What are they thinking . Is Athom run by Monkeys ? or was it just the Directorā€™s overall plan to get this Kickstarter project going to a certain point, make enough cash to buy say a nice house , a couple of fast carā€™s , maybe a yacht or two and then just let it all fizzle out and walk away ? Some of the business decisionā€™s that Iā€™ve seen them make have been extremely backwards. Itā€™s not just me. This is a well known thingā€¦ Itā€™s as if they donā€™t seriously want to get a foothold into the home automation market ., I canā€™t figure it outā€¦

What can I say, I have 80+ non-compatible HomeKit devices presented through homey to HomeKit without a single issue (well maybe that sometimes it takes a second before the devices are updated in HomeKit but i wouldnā€™t really call it an issue). This is just me of course but it also means that there is a difference other than Homey because it can work properly.

Remember that the HomeKit experiment is very, very limited and I am not using that but the HomeyKit app

What would be the plus side for Homey over experimental? In my experience they do the same stuff and lack the same stuff. I cannot control thermostats on/off, only temperature. Rest looks ok.

Control thermostats works perfectly fine with homeykit. Other things are related to not being able to uncheck unwanted devices to pop up and certain device type not being supported by the experimental version.

But can you turn them on and off? MCO Home and termostat for floor heating seems to be not compatibile.

Yes, turn on, off, change temp, receive current temp etc.

Create a virtual device and add some flows and it will work fine

hmm could you help me with this? How creating virtual device allows me to control floor heating via Homekit? Right now i can ONLY change temp.

Siri shortcuts is the alternative when the hardware has not been certified to work with HomeKit.

Correct, this is the ideal approach if you are basically using this as a remote control solution as opposed to an intelligent self-reliant system.

Hello,

Itā€™s a pity that no one can be found to further develop Homeykit or that Athom has always advertised Homekit but has not done anything for years.

greetings

Philipp

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