A few videos you might enjoy! - Smart Kitchen ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-zHWUWihnh3M.html - Smart Theater ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-XTs3dM0ESq0.html - Smart Home Maintenance Reminders ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-DhU2Jw2-op8.html
Great video with one question which I think I know the answer (which I won't be happy about). If HomeKit has been up and running before setting Home Assistant, do I have to remove everything from my existing Home?
Thank you for this. I will be using this next week when I set up HASS to run our smart home. I’ll slowly be switching from Amazon to Apple because of this and other recommendations!
Just stumbled across your channel and appreciated the video because what you describe is exactly how I function. Got frustrated with limitations to building automations in HomeKit so took the plunge with Home Assistant and have never looked back. Like you my wife would run the other way from HA so I keep a suite of basic automations in HK and build the stuff that requires some heft in HA (far and away most of my automations). The other nice thing about HA is that it exposes far more features in devices (Aqara is a great example) than HK does reducing the number of devices required for many automations. Love the Apple ecosystem but Apple builds their smart home platform for the masses (which I get) rather than for those of use who want to be power users.
Hi Don! Thanks for sharing! I have Aqara devices (most of them unused). Have you found a way to connect to them locally without hooking them up to their cloud? I'm also curious to know what features the HA integration adds to Aqara.
@@abrindeyev most of my Aqara devices are added to HA via Zigbee2MQTT using a Sonoff Zigbee coordinator. Does not involve an Aqara hub so no cloud. This approach exposes most everything that the Aqara devices have to offer (e.g. light sensors on their motion sensors). If a feature is available in the sensor more often than not it is exposed in HA via Z2M. Generally this works great except that I have not found that OTA firmware updates to be all that reliable. Even so, as long as the senors work I do not worry about it.
I’m so glad I found you, and I'm looking forward to seeing all your videos. I’ve never used Home Assistant and am looking forward to trying it. What do I do if I already have things in HomeKit? Do I have to delete them and re-have them into HomeKit through Home Assistant?
Great video mate 👍🏻 Subscribed. I need some help please… I’ve just bought some native HomeKit home automation products that are a mix of WiFi and Thread for their wireless connections and some of the Thread products are also Matter certified. I haven’t got a Home Assistant bridge setup or anything yet but keen to at a later date if it means I can then purchase cheaper home automation products and integrate them into a HomeKit setup through Home Assistant for a family setup with all Apple devices. Can I begin to setup the products I’ve bought and create HomeKit scenes and then migrate these over at a later date once I include a HA bridge? What issues may I face with the mix of WiFi and Thread devices and also how does Matter affect things or not when it all mixes with HA? I do have an Apple TV 4K which I assume will allow my Thread devices to get connected. Have not tried anything as of yet.
Thanks for the video. Nice summary. I used to use Alexa (echo voice clients), Home Assistant (automations) and HomeKit (mobile client) but have stopped maintaining HomeKit for about 6 months. I was getting very bad battery drain from devices constantly trying to reconnect on my iPad. Also, I found the requirement to add a new bridge for cameras, locks, media players (to make use of their full feature set) and so on quite confusing and difficult to maintain. Any idea if this is still needed? I couldn’t see it covered in your video.
I haven’t experienced any noticeable battery drain but will keep an eye out. And yes, cameras require a bit of trickery. I have nest cameras so mostly use the nest app.
Trying to figure out how to set this stuff up. If you integrate home assistant to HomeKit, does any of the data go through the apple cloud? Or is everything still local
It does go to Apple cloud in the sense that I can remote in to my home when I’m away through the Home app. Also I can share my home with others and they can control the home. If you are local, it’ll communicate locally.
Thank you so much for the kind words!! I’ve been subscribed to you for a while. Would love to come on the show, but maybe in a bit, need to build back up some momentum after taking a month off. The YT algorithmic gods did not like that gap 😂
I’m just getting started with home assistant and would love to implement your dual solution here, but can you please help me understand if I need to buy a HomeKit bridge too? I’m overwhelmed at all the usb adapters that it seems like I need to buy (zigbee, Z wave, Bluetooth, etc). I probably have too many adapters already because of my confusion. Thanks for your help!
It can be totally overwhelming. You don’t need to buy a HomeKit bridge. If you watch the video you will see it is just a built in component to home assistant. So, nothing to buy!
This is great! Have you had any luck connecting Sonos through home assistant? That’ll be the next thing I look up. I’m trying to set up a permanent iPad in my kitchen to control music and automations and make it simple enough for my wife to use. Thank you for putting this video together. I’m excited to see more
@@FutureSmartHome it’s such a proprietary interface, the AirPlay solution may just be best. I’ll dig into home assistant + Sonos and see which might be better for me. Thx for the content!
Correct. There are a few devices you may end up wanting to add directly, locks & cameras are sometimes problematic passing through to HK from HA but in general adding direct to HA first is the way to go! Thanks for watching!
Yeah I’m trying to set up a Yale lock HomeKit module in HA (which I previously had added directly to HomeKit). No matter what I do it isn’t discovered in HA. 😢
I have been using automations for years using Alexa. I would like to transition to Home assistant can you do something on using Alexa with home assistant. Like your channel just discovered it today.
Hey thanks so much for watching! I'm not personally in the Alexa ecosystem so it would be a bit hard for me to do that at this moment, BUT if the channel continues to grow, that may change.
@FutureSmartHome: Does it also work when my smart home is based on matter and I'm using Matter Thread in combination with a Homepod? How would I do that? Do I need Homebridge for that? I assume no: Because HomeAssistant and Homekit both speak Matter. Am I right?
"You should add devices to home assistant, not Homekit" - I have just installed Home Assistant for the first time. I currently use Homekit. Does this mean that I should be removing my entire home from Homekit, then add them to Home Assistant, and then expose them to Homekit? Will the thread network still work if its done this way?
Yes to all. That’s what I did. Unpaired everything and added to home assistant, then re-added to Home app. Though I’d caveat some things aren’t supported fully, cameras & media devices. I think I talked about this in the video or some commenters mention it. You could keep those in Apple Home directly.
Hi There. I am still very new to Home Assistant (Day 2) lol, but I have been building my HK smart home over the last 2 years. I have managed to get my Yeelights and my Govee lights into Home Assistant and they are working great. NOW I have a really NOOB question..... So I should rather load my devices directly into home assistant instead of HK and then by using the bridge get all of my devices into Home Kit? Thanks for the Video. 👍
What about making scenes in HomeKit and then triggering those scenes from Home Assistant. Or what happens if you add a new device to HomeKit and NOT to Home Assistant. Will it be visible to HA via the HK bridge?
So as an Android and HA user, do I need home kit? So far on my new install I have two homekit items shown up in HA but they also show as WiFi devices. What does homekit give an android user?
HomeKit doesn’t give you anything as an android user - however you do get to add HomeKit devices to Home Assistant. Then you can do a similar thing and publish your HomeKit devices to Google Assistant
A lot of weird stuff going on with some devices coming from home assistant to homekit. I have a few devices that you click on in homekit and then within that there are 3 or 4 more switches named the same thing. 🤷♂️
@FutureSmartHome mostly media players that get weird. I guess you need to add a second bridge for locks, cameras, and media players and then you have to add them as accesory!
You can still add Home Assistant as a new bridge but you will get duplicates. So it’s not overwhelming you could start with one room at a time and within Home Assistant only import devices from that room by selectively including only those devices.
Hi. Nice video! I’m also new to HA. I’m currently running HAOS on a pi4. With HK bridge setup I can control via my iPhone Home app. But what if I need to share that Home to another iPhone users that’s within my family? Do I definitely need to buy a home hub (Apple TV/apple HomePod) in order to allow me to share to others? Thanks.
I believe you do need to have an Apple approved hub that facilitates iCloud sharing. Which is a bummer. But get an Apple TV they are great for lots of other reasons!
@@FutureSmartHome Thanks for the reply! Will try to search one and try it out. Should had tried the concept before they droppped the iPad as HomeKit hub.
I asked this in another video of yours, but what do I do if all or most of my devices are already in Homekit but I want to start using Home Assistant so that I can take advantage of the automations? Do I follow these same steps?