New Philips HUE devices

[JDRoberts]

@ptdalen

Quick question. It looks like the new hub offers SIRI integration, but it seems to me that in order to do that you need the homekit hub as well. Am I misunderstanding? Other than homekit intergration, what else does the version 2 of the Hue Hub offer?

Three different issues: HomeKit with the Hue Bridge, Siri with SmartThings, and HomeKit with SmartThings

The new Hue bridge has HomeKit integration. The new SmartThings hub does not have any HomeKit integration. That would require a hardware piece which is not in that hub. Maybe a future model but not this one.

If you have the new Hue bridge with HomeKit integration, you will be able to use HomeKit with it directly, bypassing smart things, just like you could use a third-party control app with your Hues. You can still control your Hues from SmartThings as well, but you can’t use HomeKit to control smartthings. I hope that makes sense.

However, before the Amazon echo came out, some of us used “hey Siri” to create voice text messages which were sent to IFTTT and that gave us voice control through the smartthings IFTTT channel.

This is not HomeKit integration, it’s just using Siri as a voice input. It would work with anything that you could control through an IFTTT channel. So you will see a lot of forum topics about using Siri with smartthings, but that’s not a HomeKit integration.

I am quadriparetic with limited hand function, so this was a big deal for me. Smartthings was the only inexpensive hub, and I’m talking about the V1 version, that had reliable voice control. Since I already had an iOS device, and unlimited texting on my mobile plan, it didn’t cost me anything extra. In fact, I ended up buying an Apple Watch specifically to get voice control of smart things.

The main difference between the IFTTT method and real HomeKit is natural language use. To use the IFTTT commands, you have to use very specific phrasing. So “hey Siri, tell House hashtag central underscore Television underscore on.”

Now with echo I can just say “Alexa, turn The TV on.” And if my housemate says “turn on the TV” it still works.

If you want more information about the Siri method without HomeKit, see the following topic (this a clickable link) .

Voice Control Using Siri and IFTTT (not using HomeKit, just voice text)

Hi All - see the below instructions for executing simple SmartThings commands using Siri. The solution involves sending a text to an IFTTT phone number which acts as a trigger to turn on or off devices via SmartThings. You can setup a contact called ‘home’ and then send a message to ‘home’ (use command ‘Tell Home’) with the proper tag to trigger the event. I’d love feedback on the approach. I would rather use more natural language like ‘Tell Home to turn on the kitchen lights’ rather than ‘Tell home hashtag kitchen underscore lights’. Regardless, the approach below executes simple ST actions with use of Siri alone, which is pretty cool. BASIC SETUP Setup an IFTTT account Add the Smarthings channel to IFTTT - make sure to provide access to any devices that you want to control Add th…

For HomeKit integration with smartthings , you’ll just have to wait and see what model smartthings puts out in the future.