Requires hardware change (could be a USB dongle I suppose) and has to go through Appleās rigorous certification program. Iād much rather see Smartthings push their efforts towards integration with products that will work directly with it, as opposed to Homekit which basically just allows me to use Siri, native app and maybe widgets.
From my understanding, Homekit integration requires SmartThings to follow hardware and software standards that are counter to their current business/engineering philosophy. Itās the same reason there arenāt official Nest integrations or Lutron integrations. The companies require too many restrictions to be placed on the platform in order to give the āOKā for the integration.
The UI from appleās demo looks amazing. But as others pointed out, integration with homekit would take away a lot of the things that makes SmartThings well SmartThings
I set home bridge up to get Siri to work with smarthings. I donāt use it nearly as much as I thought we would. And all the apps I found to use are worse that STs app (no small feet to get under that bar).
End of the day, I would rather see ST get Siri instead of HomeKit.
I compeletly forgot about homebridge.
However, although I am addicted to apple, I will never be able to leave SmartThings because of the powerful community.
I will try homebridge with the new HomeKit app to see if it works together.
However, it seems Apple just expanded the list of compatible products, adding most of the products I have in my home. All I can say is that HomeKit has a better UI that ST and that is why I would like to control my home with HomeKit.
They all needed to come with new versions since Apple added a hardware requirement for a security chip. But multiple vendors were able to do so without breaking their business models which is evidence that others choose not to do it rather than being technically prevented from doing it.
If HomeKit had unreasonable technical requirements like a chip that required a substantial price increase in the product or required that the product only work with HomeKit, Iād view those as substantial technical barriers. However, the new AppleKit-compliant versions sold at a similar price and donāt require HomeKit to operate. Nest doesnāt support AppleKit because it isnāt in the strategic business interest of Google, not because of technical requirements that would be hard to meet. The same thing goes for Samsung and SmartThings.
Insteon has taken a somewhat different path than Hue and Lutron by releasing a HomeKit-only hub at double the price of their non-HomeKit hub. However, the Hue/Lutron examples make me think that was more a market segmentation strategy than a technical strategy.
The challenge for Apple is strengthening the functional capabilities of HomeKit while convincing 3rd-party companies that thereās money to be made selling HomeKit products. Today, they are shipping a āminimum viable productā while the only people that appear to be making any real money are startups like Nest, DropCam, and SmartThings that get bought out.
LadySapphy, which HK apps have you tried? I find Eve, Home, and Hesperus to work well and a lot more straightforward than the ST app (which I also use some of the time). Siri is infuriating much of the time because it either doesnāt understand the words or doesnāt link the words to the desired action. Things are slowly getting better as it trains me and I train it but it requires way too much effort for limited reward at this point. I got an Echo last week to see if itās any better but itās too soon to tell.
Homebridge with ST seems to work decently once a few issues with the plug-in got sorted.
I tried a few. I still have iDevices and Eve. IMO EVE looks/feels like STs app for the most part, but it misses something. I am not sure what, just feels off. Again, I didnāt set up Homebridge for Homebridge apps, I wanted Siri. And Siri is annoying. Example
Me: Siri Turn off kitchen light
Siri: I do not see any device by that name
Me: (Sigh) Turn off The Kitchen
Siri: I do not see any device by that name
me: (grrrrrr) SIRI TURN OFF KITCHEN!!
Siri: Ok, the kitchen is off
I know I can play with naming, but it is way to picky
I guess that a chip is required as most of the products are reintroduced with a HomeKit-compatible version of that same product.
Rumors say that apple might release a personal assistant like amazon echo and google now with a camera which could know who is in the room ( like netatmo home).
Again, itās not just a technical or just a business decision. Homekit came out after the SmartThings v2 hub was developed which meant there was little chance of it getting the required hardware. Also, the security restrictions on the software side would require then to lock the system down a lot further than they would want to. The reason other hubs have been able to enable homekit is either because they only touch one segment (lighting) or theyāre already a closed system (or both). From my understanding the ability for complete developer control over the devices and applications in the SmartThings hub is directly counter to the requirements of homekit.