HomeKit Smart Outlet Roundup

[thiggins]

Should you turn to HomeKit to control your smart outlets? We look at three products to help you decide.

Read on SmallNetBuilder

 

[trek_520]

Tim - do any of these offer an autoping "watchdog" type feature?

I have an Amazon Fire TV that seems to need to be rebooted frequently - it would be nice if one of these could watch the Fire and reboot it if it drops off line.

Thanks for the great write up! It will be interesting to see this category a year from now.

 

[Craig Ellison]

Hello

That's an interesting idea, but no. None of the devices have an auto ping watchdog feature. That would be a differentiating feature that I would have discussed and called out in the At A Glance summaries.

Yes, there finally seem to be more product introductions. And with more digital home assistants hitting the market that bridge the gap between vendors, more consumers will find the market segment more compelling. I currently control 8 Smart Home devices using Amazon Echo.

 

[Paualsh112]

anyone know how scheduling works with these devices? For example if I want the iDevices switch to turn on my yard lights everyday at sunset what device remembers the schedule? Can HomeKit on Apple TV bridge act as a scheduler? One would not want to depend on a iPhone/Pad app to be available 24 x 7 to runs lights and things AND if one is traveling away from the house, it would be crazy to think the iPhone app could reliably connect back to the home to turn on the lights. Any one know? thanks.

 

[Craig Ellison]

anyone know how scheduling works with these devices? For example if I want the iDevices switch to turn on my yard lights everyday at sunset what device remembers the schedule? Can HomeKit on Apple TV bridge act as a scheduler? One would not want to depend on a iPhone/Pad app to be available 24 x 7 to runs lights and things AND if one is traveling away from the house, it would be crazy to think the iPhone app could reliably connect back to the home to turn on the lights. Any one know? thanks.

Hello -
It's my understanding that you need either a dedicated iPad enabled to act as a bridge or an Apple TV in order to schedule events. The Apple TV is also a bridge that can be used in place of having a dedicated iPad left behind at home. However, I don't have an Apple TV, so I was unable to test that feature.

Here's a link to an Apple support article that discusses this:
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207057

The requirements are explicit. You need either

• Apple TV (4th generation) with tvOS 10
• iPad with iOS 10

It doesn't say anything about using an iPhone.

Hope this helps.

-craig-

 

[coxhaus]

Your EVE link in your article does not work any more. Is this the replacement?

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01M3PK5WH/?tag=snbforums-20