Starting with HomeKit basics

Before I explain how HomeKit strong-arms your smart home into harmonic submission, take a look at what you need to get started:

• An iPhone or iPad
• iOS 8 installed on said iPhone or iPad
• The HomeKit app
• A bevy of HomeKit-enabled devices

The first three items on the preceding list are all provided by Apple, but what about the little gems mentioned in that last item? Apple has announced a who’s-who list of its initial partners who have all glommed on to the HomeKit initiative, and I’m more than happy to provide that list for you. Table 14-1 gives you the name of Apple’s partners and their primary product focus (this does not represent the entirety of some of the company’s offerings, mind you) in the home automation market.

Making a scene with HomeKit

Yes, HomeKit can say “light, turn on” and “light, turn off,” but it’s up to doing more than just those menial chores. HomeKit provides you freedom from ever having to flick or adjust a light switch (and other devices) again by enabling you to program “scenes.”

Scenes in HomeKit are sets of commands that you program for single or multiple devices so that they turn on or off or adjust when given a single command. For example, if you’re having folks over for a dinner party you could program the following devices to perform the following tasks:

• Front and back porch lights turn on at full strength.
• Hall lights adjust to 75 percent strength.
• The thermostat is set to a comfy 72 degrees.
• The shades are all set to mid-height.
• Music and speakers are turned on and set to a particular station and volume level.
• Lights in the dining room are set to 50 percent.
• Ceiling fans on the back porch are engaged.

Once you’ve programmed these settings in HomeKit, you give them the title of Dinner Party. When the time comes for guests to begin arriving, you can tell Siri (the name of Apple’s voice recognition program used in iOS) to engage the Dinner Party setting. All the commands in the preceding list are enacted instantly, providing your guests with an entertainment atmosphere they’ll tell their children’s children about. These settings are fixed, changing only when you want them to, so if you frequently host dinner parties you’ll be armed and ready the next time you feel like throwing a little soirée.

Of course, you can create all kinds of scenes to set up as you become more familiar with HomeKit, such as:

• Nighttime: Lock all the doors, set the alarms, turn out most of the lights, set the bathroom lights to low, turn on the baby monitor, and other sleepy time stuff.
• Morning: Get the coffee brewing, set the lights to brighten progressively as the morning marches on, set the kids' alarms to wake them up (so hopefully you don’t have to), and so forth.
• Away from Home: Set certain lights (perhaps those on the porch, in the kitchen, the garage — you get the drift) to come on at various times of the day or night, set the alarms and locks, enable motion detectors, charge up the electric fence (hey, you never know what some folks will use to secure their homes), and the like.
• Date Night: Oh, yeah . . . pipe in the Barry White tunes (yes, he’s still the smoothest and the coolest), dim all the right lights, get the fireplace going, and whatever else you can dream up to make the night right.
• Annoying Company: Make your lights flick on and off like your home is infested with a poltergeist, crank up the stereo with the most annoying sounds known to man (or create a track of your kids at the peak of a Halloween-candy-induced sugar craze), lower the thermostat to 40 degrees, and set your smoke alarms to test. This combination is sure to make even the most ardent of annoying houseguests uncomfortable enough that they’ll be seeking asylum elsewhere in mere moments.

The number of scenes you can set up are limited only by your imagination and by the number of home automation devices that occupy your residence.

Much more will be forthcoming from Apple regarding HomeKit. Check their website at www.apple.com for updates. However, if you’d like to know more now, especially if you’re a techie, visit the HomeKit developer’s site at https://developer.apple.com/homekit/.

How Wink works

Wink has developed an API (application programming interface) that home auto-device manufacturers can incorporate into their devices. Once the API is part of a device, said device can be controlled via the Wink app, which runs on your iOS or Android smartphone. You can then control your home devices from anywhere in the world, so long as you have a connection to the Internet.

The whole thing basically works like this:

1. Go to your local Home Depot or visit www.homedepot.com.
2. Comb the store shelves or the website for products that feature the Wink app or Wink Hub logo (shown in Figure 14-1) on their packaging. A white logo (instead of blue) indicates that a Wink hub is required to use the product with the Wink app and other Wink-compatible devices.
3. Download the Wink app to your iPhone or Android smartphone. Open it and create a Wink account. (There is currently no support for the iPad or for Android tablets, but that will be alleviated soon. Check with Wink at www.winkapp.com for availability.)
4. If you purchased the Wink hub, install it per the instructions in the Wink app (download it before trying to set up your hub). You can get more information here: www.winkapp.com/faq#winkhub. Once your Wink hub is installed, it will communicate with the Wink Cloud. (Wink keeps up with your account and devices through the company’s cloud computing network.)

   Since the Wink app and hub work through the Wink Cloud, if your home’s Internet connection goes down you will not be able to control your Wink-compatible devices via the Wink app. That doesn’t mean your house is under some kind of Wink-induced lockdown; it simply means you have to revert to doing things the old-fashioned way until your Internet connection is restored.

5. Set up or install the Wink-compatible product you purchased from Home Depot.
6. Follow the super-simple (for most products, anyway) instructions found in the Wink app for adding the product to your list of Wink-controlled devices.
7. Sit back and relax while Wink makes your life simpler by a hundred fold.

The Wink App logo has a light blue background with a white picture of a house, and indicates that the product will work directly with the Wink app with no need for a Wink hub. The Wink Hub logo has a white background with a light blue picture of a house, and indicates that the product must be used in conjunction with a Wink hub.

Home Depot’s partnership with Wink

Your local Home Depot store or the Home Depot website (www.homedepot.com) are the best places to go to find products that are Wink-compatible. The advantage of going to the store is obviously the hands-on experience, but the advantage to the website is the capability to see all Wink-compatible products quickly and in one location.

For information about the Wink app or hub, skip Home Depot and go directly to Wink’s website. The site has tons of information on how the app and hub work together and with compatible products, and the FAQ section is great for finding answers to your more technical questions. Visit www.winkapp.com for more info.

Wink supports a wide range of devices and manufacturers. The Wink hub currently works well with Z-Wave, ZigBee, Bluetooth LE, Wi-Fi, Lutron ClearConnect, and Kidde home automation communication protocols. However, not all protocols are supported (such as INSTEON), so do your due diligence.

Setting up a Revolv hub

The folks at Revolv have developed a nice product for creating unity among your home automation devices, and it’s obvious they’ve put a lot of effort into their “one hub, one app” solution.

Out-of-the-box setup of the hub is simple and straightforward:

1. Place the hub in a central location of your home to provide maximum wireless coverage for your devices.
2. Connect the hub to a power supply.
3. Download the Revolv app for your preferred device (smartphone or tablet) from the iOS or Android App Store.
4. Link the hub to your Wi-Fi.

   This can be done through a really cool process involving your smartphone “flashing” (called “FlashLink” by Revolv) the security credentials for your wireless network into the Revolv hub using the LED flash on your smartphone, as shown in Figure 14-2.

5. Use the Revolv app to automatically discover devices that have connected with the hub, or manually find them on your network.

You may now control your devices using the Revolv hub and app solution. Easy peasy, as my daughter says. I think Revolv is on to something here.

Updates and compatible devices

You can acquire the Revolv hub and app for a one-time price; it charges no monthly subscription fee to use the services (as some companies may charge), which is a very nice plus in my estimation. All updates to the supported protocols and the app are also free, and those are additional high marks for the Revolv solution.

Revolv has compiled quite a nice list of compatible devices, manufactured by the likes of:

• Belkin
• GE
• Honeywell
• INSTEON
• Leviton
• Nest
• Philips
• Sonos
• Trane

. . . and the list keeps growing! Visit www.revolv.com/devices for an up-to-the-minute listing of manufacturers and devices.

Of course, I recommend you check out www.revolv.com for more information, including a great video that shows how to set up a Revolv hub and demonstrating the “flashing” technique I describe earlier in this chapter.

How CastleOS works

CastleOS states that it is a “protocol-agnostic system” and its product is intended for use with “any and all home automation protocols,” which is a very good thing for you and me. So, if you’re someone who has a plethora of devices running the gamut of home automation protocols (or if you’re still working on purchasing said plethora), CastleOS just might be a good bet for you.

The first part of the CastleOS puzzle is the Core Service, which acts as the central hub for controlling all the home automation devices in your house. The Core Service software is installed on a Windows-based computer and communicates with your home automation devices via your network.

Accessing the apps

The second piece that is needed to control your devices is one of the CastleOS remote access apps. Currently, CastleOS works with an HTML app (shown in Figure 14-3) and the Microsoft Kinect (for voice control); CastleOS is working on providing native iOS and Android apps as of this writing.

Any device that can run a web browser can access the HTML app:

• Computers: Any web browser will do to access the CastleOS HTML app.
• iOS devices (iPad, iPhone, iPod): Safari is the recommended browser, but other web browser apps can be tried if Safari isn’t your cup of tea.
• Android devices (smartphones and tablets): Google’s Chrome browser is recommended, since it is the native browser for the Android system.
• Windows Mobile, BlackBerry, and others: Use your browser of choice.

The Kinect app is where the coolness factor is kicked up a notch. Using your Kinect, you can tell CastleOS exactly what to do. If you’re a fan of Star Trek you’ll instantly pick up on the verbiage: “Computer, turn on the lights,” “Computer, turn on the television,” and so on. The Kinect relays your voice commands to the CastleOS Core Service software in an instant and executes them with authority!

The CastleOS team provides help on the Download section of the company’s website for users of mobile devices to easily access the HTML app. Just visit www.castleos.com/Download.aspx for the lowdown.

How Staples Connect works

The Connect app talks to the Connect hub, which in turn talks to the Connect-compatible devices in your home. This is pretty standard, as you’ve seen so far with other companies in this chapter, but a couple of differences make Connect stand out:

• Connect uses a web app, along with iOS and Android apps, to control your devices. This affords more options for control of your devices than some of the other folks discussed so far. You can get the app at both the iOS and Android App Stores.
• The iOS and Android apps can run on the iPad and Android-enabled tablets, respectively, while others are currently limited to the iPhone and Android smartphones.

The Connect hub contains hardware and software needed to control devices running Wi-Fi, Z-Wave, and Lutron ClearConnect protocols. While this seems more limited than other options, plans to add support for INSTEON, ZigBee, and Bluetooth are in the works.

The Staples Connect system is as simple as any other on the market to put into action:

1. Head over to your local Staples store or visit the Staples Connect site to find compatible devices and to purchase the Connect hub.
2. Download the Staples Connect app from the Apple App Store or Android App Store, depending on your device.
3. Create an account by tapping the Sign Up button, as seen in Figure 14-4, or use your credentials to sign in with an existing account if you have one.
4. After you create and activate your account, you will receive a setup guide that walks you through simply and quickly adding devices to the Connect hub. This guide is a great help, so bookmark it in your browser or create a PDF of the page and save it for future use.
5. Install the Connect hub to your existing Wi-Fi router and follow the instructions in your app or the setup guide for completing setup.
6. Add devices to your Connect hub as instructed, and start home automating!

A successful partnership

I’ll be honest: I’ve always thought of Staples as a place to go to purchase office products and the like, not as a go-to store for my home needs. However, I must say that through its partnership with Linksys, Staples has done as good a job as anyone with its Connect initiative. I give especially high marks to the Staples Connect website (www.staples.com/sbd/cre/marketing/staples-connect/), which is a great place to learn not just more about Connect, but also about home automation in general. The site has some great articles and a nice FAQ that help home automation newbies hit the ground running. Kudos to Staples for educating the public about home automation!