Top 10 HomeKit Mistakes - Technology News of the Week

 

Top 10 HomeKit Mistakes - Technology News of the Week

Today we're gonna talk

about my top 10 biggest

HomeKit mistakes to avoid.

Having bad Wi-Fi is a huge, huge mistake.

I've seen a lot of people have

issues with their smart home

not realizing it's a Wi-Fi issue

and not a smart home product issue.

60 to 70% of home care

products on the market

are all Wi-Fi bases.

So if you don't have good

Wi-Fi coverage in your home

you're going to start having issues.

There are a ton of different

Wi-Fi routers on the market

and a lot of them are going

to advertise their speed.

But honestly, when you're

talking about your smart home

the speed for Wi-Fi doesn't matter.

If you're a gamer and

you're a heavy computer user

absolutely go for the most

expensive Wi-Fi router out there

that's going to give you that top speed,

but for smart home use,

it really comes down to good coverage.

You might think I'm crazy

I've actually been using

this Apple Airport router

for years now, and it's quite old.

I'm about to replace it

but I have two other Airports

spread out through my house.

It has a wired backbone,

so it's very similar

to a mesh router, and I

have great, great coverage.

I'm actually going to be

upgrading that pretty soon

to this Linksys 5 router

that has HomeKit compatibility

for extra security

and really more control

over my home care home.

So I'm looking forward to doing that.

After having bad Wi-Fi,

I think the second-biggest

the mistake that you can make

is not choosing to have a HomeKit Hub.

Having a HomeKit Hub is gonna allow you

do automation with the home.

And most importantly,

control your smart home

even when you're not.

And with apples end to end

encryption, this reassures you

that no one else has

access to your smart home

except for yourself in any

authorized family members.

Plus if you start having HomeKit cameras

with HomeKit secure video,

your HomeKit Hub is gonna

be the local processor.

So all your footage is

gonna be processed locally

on your HomeKit Hub not

sending-off that works

to another server.

There are four HomeKit Hubs

that you can choose from.

You can have multiples of all these hubs

or just have one depending

on the size of your house.

You can choose from having

the original HomePod.

If you have a leftover old iPad

as think is running iOS 13 above

you can turn that into a HomeKit Hub.

You can also use an Apple TV.

I think it's a

fourth-generation or better.

And of course the most affordable

and newest HomePod Mini

coming in at only $99.

Having a home on full

automation is the Holy grail

of having a smart home,

but not thinking about

those automation ahead of time

is a huge mistake.

Not only do you want

planned out each automation

but you wanna see how it was

going to work in real life.

I remember this one time

where I had an automation

for a motion sensor, turn on

the light in the family room

as someone walked in, the only

the issue I didn't think about

is if I was sitting on the couch

and turned off the lights

and a second person will walk in

the lights will turn

on as I'm watching TV.

Hey.

Now a lot of problems

with this automation

can easily be fixed using apps

like the Eve App or

the Home+ I think they,

it's a five now Home+ App

where you can have conditions.

So you can say if one device on

and the motion sensor sees

motion and then see the TV on

it won't turn on the light.

Now this won't work for

every single scenario

but I'm just trying to explain

how you could set this up

and think about your

automation ahead of time.

Now, having automation is

a wonderful, wonderful thing

but there is such thing of

having too much automation.

In your home app, yes

you can have lists of all your automation.

Now, unfortunately, currently

there's no way to find one.

So if you have a hundred of them

you're not gonna be able to search for it.

Now a pro tip, if you get the Home+ App,

it's a Home+ 5 now, you

actually have the ability

to search for your automation,

which I think is very, very cool.

In addition to the new searching feature

in the Home+ 5 App

you can now create folders

for your automation

to help you organize your

automation even further.

But the thing is when you start

having too many automation

not only are they hard to locate

when you need to work on them,

but they start just overlapping, working

against each other.

And you just got to have this smart home

that's just complete chaos.

So you really wanna think

about your automation

and have as few as possible,

but at the same time

you want enough to have that smart home.

Another thing to think about

is where you're placing that automation.

If you're using the home app

exclusively, that's right

you're not gonna have any issues

but if you started getting

into more advanced things

you might have automation

in other third-party apps

like the Phillips Hue app.

And those are great.

There's very specific

things for those products.

But the thing is that you tend to forget

that you create that automation.

So years later, you're still having issues

or you wanna change things.

And you actually forget

that you created that

automation in a different app.

So my advice to you is

definitely concentrate

inputting them all at one

place, use the Home+ App

or the Eve app, which is all

connected to the home app.

But if you do want to get more events,

start writing them down, keep

track where you placing them

and what you're doing with all of them.

Now, I see a lot of smart homes

where people don't use any automation,

I don't completely understand

why they use Siri.

they use all sorts of control

but the holy grail of having a smart home

is to have the homework

for you and be automated.

My suggestion from basic

automation is for instance

a very simple timer.

If you have outdoor

lighting, you want to turn

that on at sunset, and then

turn it off at sunrise,

very simple, there's no

additional devices needed.

You want then take that

to one next step up.

We can start getting some triggers where

you can have like motion

sensors, door sensors

start triggering other devices

in your home automatically.

So as you're walking into a room

or you're opening a door lights

will automatically turn on.

And then you can also think

about your safety and security.

For instance, say you have

some HomeKit door locks.

You can say every night at 10 o'clock

you can automatically lock all your doors

or if you want to start using NFC Tags,

that's another great idea,

is when you have a good night scene,

you can be in bed, hit the NFC Tag,

it locks your doors,

turn off all your lights

and shut down the house for the night.

And of course, you can group

a lot of this automation together,

otherwise known as scenes.

So definitely take advantage

of scenes within HomeKit.

Now, of course, the holy grail

is having a fully autonomous smart home,

but unfortunately in today's world

most people are still gonna

need physical controls.

And not having these physical controls

are definitely gonna

start pissing people off.

I know from firsthand experience.

Now having wires, switches is just one

of the very first things that you can do

for physical controls.

You might not want to

mess with electricity

which I totally understand,

or hire an electrician there

which can be extremely expensive.

So there are other options for

wireless, physical controls.

Some of the ones that

I have is the Coraline.

This is a double switch.

So you have two switches.

You can do one click, two

click or two clicks together.

There's like six different commands,

you can do it all with this one device.

They have a mini switch.

Flick has their little main switches.

There are lots and lots

of different choices

that you pick from,

but I highly suggest that

you do have some type

of physical control in your house.

Now having smart bulbs is

one of the first things

that most people buy.

They are super affordable,

they're useful, they're colorful

and you can install a smart

the bulb in less than 10 seconds.

The thing is a smart bulb is

not for every single location

where you alight sockets.

Unfortunately, a lot of

people make this mistake

and buy hundreds and hundreds

of dollars of smart bulbs

and I don't understand why.

There are definitely

reasons to get a smart bulb,

but in most cases unless

you need a color smart bulb,

a smart switch is a wiser investment,

where one smart switch can

control a bunch of regular bolts.

So my suggestion, if you have two

or more bulbs on a light switch,

look at replacing a light

switch instead of the bulb.

There are a lot of great choices

for smart switches in

the HomeKit ecosystem.

Moss is one the most recent ones

that has joined HomeKits that come

in like at 25 bucks, extremely affordable.

There are other options out on the market

depending on what you're looking for.

Eve makes one that has no moving parts.

It's just like, I forget the name of it,

but you can just touch

it turns on and off.

There are no physical moving parts

which I think is pretty cool.

The list goes on and on,

I'll leave a link down below

where you can actually see some

of these different

types of smart switches.

Not utilizing smart plugs

is the next biggest mistake.

I think smart plugs are

affordable, they're easy,

they don't cause any damage,

you can plug them in, plug

them out, you can move them.

But a lot of people don't

realize what they can actually do

for your smart home.

I see a lot of people

buying new HomeKit devices

because they want to have

that HomeKit integration

where you might already have

a device within your home

like if you have a humidifier,

you don't need to buy a new humidifier

with HomeKit compatibility.

You just get simply a

smart plug to turn it on

and off and be done.

Smart plugs can also be used on devices

that you tend to leave on

accidentally, for instance,

maybe the hair iron that

the wife always leaves on.

The thing is you do

wanna check the amperage,

make sure the amperage from the hair iron

doesn't exceed the smart plug,

but having something like a smart plug

in the bathroom is definitely ideal.

So when they leave the house

you can make sure that

hair iron is actually off.

And of course, if you have

a lamp with multiple bulbs

it's more cost-effective

just to add a smart plug

rather than changing all

the bulbs within that lamp.

Now, as you're building a HomeKit home

you're gonna start bringing in products

from different manufacturers.

Unfortunately, Apple doesn't

make HomeKit products

except for the HomePods.

So are you going to be

buying from this brand,

from this brand and bring it all together

in your HomeKit home.

Now, if you can use HomeKit exhaustively

that's going to be your best solution.

But unfortunately, there are

some products that you have to

or want to use their third-party app.

So you have to make a user ID.

You have to give them

access to your HomeKit home

and that can definitely

open up some concerns.

What access do they

have to your home data?

What access do they have to your network?

So there are definitely some

solutions that you can take

to limit your exposure

and not make this mistake.

Having good password management

is the very first step

that you want to take.

You wanna make sure you're

using different passwords

for different manufacturers.

Don't use the same password

it's too easy to know

your username, password,

to log into another account,

use different passwords,

use a password keeper

but definitely keep those

passwords different.

The other thing that I suggest

is that you have network segregation.

That way you have all

your smart home products

all on one Wi-Fi network

where then you have your

computers, your phones

and more secure stuff on another network.

Love network routers,

Wi-Fi routers out there

have multiple SSIDs or are

gonna create other networks

where a lot of times it's

called like a guest network.

So you can have one network

that's for all your secure stuff

and then have a second

network with the same router

for all your smart home.

That helps to segregate

all your smart home stuff

away from all the personal stuff.

So if someone hacks into

your smart home network

they're not gonna easily be able to get

into your personal data

on the other network.

And with HomeKit routers now coming out,

you can now actually allow your

HomeKit data to be monitored

having a HomeKit router is a huge plus.

So definitely staying forward

to seeing that video come out.

So number ten on my list

is not doing the research.

You definitely want to

research each product

watch reviews here on YouTube,

go read some articles.

There's a lot of great information

on these products and how

to set up your smart home.

Just jumping right into it.

Yes, it's part of the fun

but you also want to

know what you're doing.

Not only is this gonna

save you a lot of time

in the process of building your smart home

but it's gonna save you a

a ton of money in the long run.

I think you should definitely read up on it.

Now, most of these mistakes

are basic and for beginners

but if you're more advanced,

one of the biggest HomeKit

mistakes that I personally did

was not getting into hoobs

and home bridge sooner.

I actually had products from

other non-HomeKit manufacturers

and not using this product in

HomeKit was a huge mistake.

If I could go back two or three years

I'd have bought hoobs and

Sterling hub years ago

and integrate within my

HomeKit home like I does now.

Having these products here in the house

I can actually use it now in

my HomeKit app is amazing.

So even though it's not

the most secure thing

it's not a certified HomeKit product

having hoobs and Sterling hub

is a huge plus in my book.