Managing your smart home
There’s a lot more to home automation than simply switching lights on and off
The thing that really turns an ordinary home into a smart home is the ability to create custom actions. In old school computer-speak you might call these macros – triggers for a series of commands that are carried out together or in sequence. Imagine that you’re driving home and want to be assured of a warm welcome. You could simply say, “Hey Siri, I’m coming home” to have Siri relay that command to HomeKit-compatible devices in your house, switching on the lights and the heating so that everything is ready for you when you walk through the front door.
HomeKit also includes support for geofencing – a GPS-based “boundary” around your home that can be set so it automatically locks the doors, closes the windows, switches down the heating and turns off the lights whenever you depart – and it can be set to carry out the opposite actions when you arrive home too.
HomeKit, like most smart home systems, offers different levels of granularity. You can create a “home,” comprising every room and all of the smart home systems contained within them; “rooms,” which can be tailored to control devices in different rooms in your home individually – you could have one called “kitchen” or “bedroom,” for example; and you can also have “zones,” which can comprise whole areas of your home – “upstairs” and “downstairs,” for example.
Another smart home feature is something called a “scene.” Scenes, made up of the commands mentioned earlier, are incredibly powerful and can be both time- and locationbased. Instead of having to wander around the house turning down the heating, switching off the lights and locking all your doors when you’re about to turn in for the night, you could simply create a “bedtime” scene using the smart home app, then tap it or just say “Hey Siri, bedtime” to perform all of these things for you. Clever, eh?
HomeKit devices usually rely on Bluetooth Low Energy (also known as Bluetooth Smart) and/or Wi-Fi to relay the actions that you want to carry out, which is fine when you’re at home. But what if you’re away? Well, iOS 9 can access HomeKit devices remotely using iCloud. Go to Settings > HomeKit and switch on Use iCloud, then to Homes > [your home name] > and switch on Allow Remote Access.
You’ll also need a third-gen or later Apple TV, to have iCloud Drive and iCloud Keychain enabled, and for the devices to be on the same network as your Apple TV, or within 25 feet if triggered using Bluetooth.