Ok, yes, I was skeptical too, but whatever this device is it is certified by the Zwave alliance and it appears on the official list of HomeKit accessories at the Apple site.
Maybe they convinced Apple that Z wave certification was enough to meet the security requirements if the bridge also had a special chip, which it does.
This device is expensive: €429 for the European version, so figure probably $550 when they have a US model. But it’s very cool.
Also… Yes, you could immediately see and configure Zwave associations and central scenes for each device.
Also also: everything runs locally except integration to third-party services like voice assistants.
You can already bring Zigbee devices into HomeKit through an Aqara hub, including the G2H camera. If This works the same way for Z wave, that would be pretty amazing.
Until someone gets one and tests it, I still won’t believe it supports ALL z-wave devices in HomeKit without the individual devices getting HomeKit certified. I bet it comes out like Hue where only certain certified devices work in Homekit and others only work in Thinka.
This could be the solution to my smart lighting requirements. With this I could use either Fibaro or Aeotec (or other) Z-Wave micro modules and still have official HomeKit compatibility.
@JDRoberts I have sent Thinka a message but had no reply yet but one of my questions was whether it would be able to link this Thinka hub to Smartthings. This either could be as an IP device or in theory as a Z-Wave slave/master config.
@JDRoberts As far as I am aware the Aqara hub only supports the various Aqara/etc. brand Zigbee products and not even all of those so it is not quite equivalent. Similarly the Philips Hue does not expose all Zigbee devices it supports to HomeKit.
One hopes Thinka add Matter support to their hub in future. I note that Aqara have just announced this on their side. With Matter support in theory nearly all Aqara devices would then be useable via Apple’s iOS15 Home app as Matter devices and not HomeKit devices.
Note: This Thinka Z-Wave hub is not officially available in the UK yet
Unless they do something special, adding the thinkA hub to a smartthings set up should be the same as adding any other zwave secondary: possible, but not necessarily very useful in most instances.
But it’s hard to know until the ThinkA hub is actually available for people to use.
BTW, Aqara already has several hubs with official HomeKit compatibility. For example, I use their G2H camera, which is also a hub, to bring their sensors into HomeKit, where they work with really well with none of the reliability issues often seen in smartthings setups.
Aqara is also adding matter support at their hub level, not at the individual device level. But if smartthings ends up with robust matter support, that would mean you could connect aqara sensors to their own hub and then bring them in to smartthings via matter, which could solve a lot of issues. but we will have to wait and see.
Long (30 minute+) interview with the head of ThinkA about their new Homekit/zwave bridge. It’s interesting, he focuses on the difference between home automation (Z wave) and smart home (HomeKit or, although he doesn’t mention it, smartthings) and the importance of making Smart Home easy to use but with a lot of device choices. Nothing really new, but it definitely sounds like a legitimate project.
There was also an interesting comment that they have been talking with Apple about the issue of locks, which currently bridges are not allowed to support, and Apple is considering the possibility of allowing a bridge to support a lock with S2 security. No promises, but it would make sense given that S2 security is UL listed for security systems.
The US version of ThinkA Will require FCC certification, so no specific timeline for that yet other than 2022.
