# Newbie question **URL:** \ **Category:** Devices\ **Created:** [February 15, 2021, 9:56am UTC](https://community.homey.app/t/newbie-question/43018 "2021-02-15T09:56:48Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![addihetja](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex025/user_avatar/community.homey.app/addihetja/32/33896_2.png) [@addihetja](https://community.homey.app/u/addihetja)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2021, 9:56am UTC](https://community.homey.app/t/newbie-question/43018/1 "2021-02-15T09:56:48Z")
I’m pretty new to the whole home automation world, if you ignore the time I’ve spent using HomeKit. I have set up Home Assistant on my Synology just to try things out but have to say that I don’t think I want to spend any more time in that part of town, but the thing has at least taught me how things work in the Homey/HomeyKit neighborhood in that you can control HomeKit devices using HomeyKit as a controller and if you do that, you control them exclusively. But that also means that I lose some functionality if I decide to go down the Homey path, like adaptive lighting, so I started wondering whether I could bridge the gap, so to speak, by creating a virtual HomeKit device and setting a variable in that device to “off” (or whatever) and make the HomeKit hub use that as a condition to control the devices that I have already bought. I’ve tried Googling this a bit and it seems to be possible to do this the other way around (taking actions in Homey based on external values) but I haven’t found anything that shows a way to tell HomeKit to turn a device on or off based on external triggers…other than moving everything to HomeyKit, where I would be missing some features. So I guess my question is: is there a way to use the data from apps and sensors controlled by Homey to send signals to the HomeKit ecosystem, without requring repairing and moving all the HomeKit devices to Homey? ---
**Author:** ![robertklep](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex025/user_avatar/community.homey.app/robertklep/32/160628_2.png) [@robertklep](https://community.homey.app/u/robertklep)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2021, 11:08am UTC](https://community.homey.app/t/newbie-question/43018/2 "2021-02-15T11:08:20Z")
> [@addihetja](#): > > in that you can control HomeKit devices using HomeyKit as a controller That’s not correct: Homeykit isn’t a controller, it’s a bridge. That means that Homeykit will expose Homey devices to Homekit (i.e. you can control Homey devices from iOS). There is no Homekit _controller_ for Homey, which is something to consider if you have a lot of Homekit-devices for which no Homey app/implementation exists. ---
**Author:** ![addihetja](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex025/user_avatar/community.homey.app/addihetja/32/33896_2.png) [@addihetja](https://community.homey.app/u/addihetja)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2021, 11:38am UTC](https://community.homey.app/t/newbie-question/43018/3 "2021-02-15T11:38:01Z")
Thanks for the clarification. Does that mean my original train of thought was right, that I can create a virtual device, use HomeyKit to expose it to HomeKit and then use the variables in the virtual device as criteria? ---
**Author:** ![robertklep](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex025/user_avatar/community.homey.app/robertklep/32/160628_2.png) [@robertklep](https://community.homey.app/u/robertklep)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2021, 11:40am UTC](https://community.homey.app/t/newbie-question/43018/4 "2021-02-15T11:40:03Z")
I think it should be possible, yes. I don’t have a lot of experience with Homekit automations, but I assume that you can trigger on “a device has changed” (which would be the virtual device) and then perform an action?