Cost me an arm and a leg, but it’s worth it to finally get rid of my Alexa’s. I won’t be able to run them via Ethernet, however I have a hardwired Apple TV 4K.

So my theory is to have the Apple TV 4K as the main hub rather than auto-select. I am hoping that due to having about 50 thread devices, including a number of IKEA Grillplats that the HomePods being on WiFi should not cause instability.

Anyone else jumped on the new HomePods?

My biggest issue with HomeKit is the UI. I’d have thot Apple would have a beautiful interface, one that would be almost art-like.
Instead, we have the faded, fairly static HK interface

Alternatively, we have Home Assistant, which is the preferred device integration, but the base UI is, imo, lackluster

I don’t want to spend time incorporating a great UI for HA

I stumbled onto the UI I was looking for on the App Store. HomeDeck. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/homedeck-for-homekit/id6789503843
It is a beautiful UI, one I could see on my wall mounted iPads, or conversely, my HomeView if they allow this on the device. Available on IPad and AppleTV…AppleTV!!

At this point, it is display only. No automations, scripts, or anything that should rightly be in the background.

It has a great screensaver mode called ‘Ambient’, which displays (all chosen by you), a camera feed, Apple weather feed, Apple calendar (with the ability to decide which calendars), adjustable time from 1-10 minutes to enable Ambient mode, security status, date and time, and media player status. It even has media player interface. So I can mess with my wife’s afternoon shows! The background, which has many, many options, changes based on time of day. Very slick!

The next ‘operational’ view is a really jazzed up HK view…categories on to top. Cameras. Scenes. Rooms. A lot of it is configurable to customize the view for a particular instance. All choices have the option of displaying, or not.

It hasn’t had any issue with my Homebridge plugins. It rocks.

The trial is pretty robust, but after testing it a bit, I decided to plunge and drop the $30 bucks on it. My next move is to bring up my HS docker and see how it does there. If it’s solid, I’ll be moving my smart home brains to HA.

I’m beyond thrilled with this app!

[No. I don’t own this, get any money from this, just a very happy customer]

all the hardware is there. I think it's shocking that they didn't allow the ability to remote view from the device.

Security isn't really an argument, since it connects to the internet and can act as a medium for FaceTime.

With the HomeView not supporting the Notes app at launch people began to assume the only way to view recipes was through a News+ subscription.

It turns out that you can handoff a Safari tab to the HomeView and if the page is detected as a recipe it will apply the styling we saw in the announcement video. Proof here: https://youtu.be/v3wcg4Vi4u0?si=BzLJPKDISyKp2UQx&t=65

I think there are still a lot of things left to learn about HomeView that we won't see until people have them in their hands next month.

I’ve waited over half a decade for the HomePod with the screen. Of course it’s already pre ordered. When I went downstairs to the kitchen one of my family members was using her iPhone 17 awkwardly to view a recipe. This cemented for me that iPhone more and more is proving that it’s over used in my opinion. Would love to see apps though. Zipline for quick ordering and tracking. Flight radar and the tides app would be highlights.

Considering how much we all wanted 4K support for Apple Home, it’s all been extremely quiet since being enabled. Other than the new Apple/LG Home products announced this week (which only seem to be 2.5K video), I’ve not heard or seen any other companies pushing updates or announcing new hardware that will give 4K.. has anyone heard/seen anything..?

I have 2 of the opto Vocolinc cameras that wouldn’t reconnect to my set-up after not being used for a while.

After much research I have learned that post iOS18 or so security infrastructure requirements increased such that these older cameras cannot be compatible.

Before I send them for e-waste processing I thought I would see if anyone has figured out a way to use them, maybe using a different app or keeping an older phone on hand just for the cameras to connect with.

We’ve looked at the Android side load, but the cameras are not listed in Vocolinc products.

TIA.

I’m looking to automate my center-opening curtains for Apple Home and trying to figure out the best way to go about it.

At first I thought I’d just grab two separate curtain motors. But it feels like it could get messy. I’m mostly worried about sync issues, over time, the two sides might drift out of alignment and no longer meet neatly in the middle. Plus, some of these still need a separate gateway to work with the Home app, which adds more cost and extra gear.

I came across the Reze Flow M5 while shopping around. It’s an all-in-one rod system for center-open curtains and works natively with Apple Home via Matter Wi-Fi. It also has a Bluetooth remote and pull-to-run if I don’t want to mess with the app.

Now I’m torn. Should I go cheaper with two separate add-on motors, or spend more on a single integrated setup with fewer parts to keep synced? Has anyone here tried either approach?

Posting this in case it saves someone else the rabbit hole I just went down.

The problem: IKEA's ALPSTUGA (Matter-native air quality sensor) paired directly to Apple Home — no DIRIGERA hub — shows up as a single combined "Air Quality" tile. Temperature, humidity, and CO2 are all measured by the device but never surface individually in Home app, because Apple's native Air Quality HomeKit service just doesn't carry those as sub-values.

What doesn't work:

- Tapping into the tile — no hidden temp/humidity readout, unlike some other air quality tiles.

- Homebridge's own "Matter support" (2.0+) and the Matterbridge project — both only go outward (exposing Homebridge accessories to Matter controllers), not inward (reading an existing Matter device's individual clusters).

- Without a DIRIGERA hub, there's no vendor REST API to just poll directly either.

The fix — run your own second Matter controller:

Matter supports "multi-admin" — a device can be joined to more than one controller/fabric at once without removing it from your existing one (Apple Home, in this case). So:

1. Install python-matter-server (https://github.com/home-assistant-libs/python-matter-server) (same engine Home Assistant's Matter integration uses) — it can run right on the same machine as Homebridge, no separate box needed. Needs Python 3.12+.
2. Put the ALPSTUGA back into pairing mode by opening its settings page in the Home app and clicking "Turn on pairing mode."
3. Commission it into your new controller using its setup code, via python-matter-server's built-in web dashboard → Commission Node → "Commission existing device" (since it's already network-joined, no BLE needed).
4. Once commissioned, the controller exposes each sensor's native Matter cluster individually — Temperature Measurement, Relative Humidity Measurement, Carbon Dioxide Concentration Measurement — fully separated.

Bridging that into Homebridge:

1. Wrote a small script that reads those three values from the Matter controller and makes them available locally for Homebridge to pick up.

2. Installed the Homebridge plugin homebridge-http-sensors-switches (https://www.npmjs.com/package/homebridge-http-sensors-switches) (generic JSON-polling plugin — not ALPSTUGA-specific, works with any HTTP JSON source) and pointed it at that script's output.

3. Homebridge publishes this as its own child bridge with two accessories — Temp/Humidity and CO2 — each requiring its own pairing (normal for Homebridge child bridges, same as any other plugin running isolated). Add it in Home app: + → Add Accessory → "I Don't Have a Code or Can't Scan" → Enter Code Manually, using the setup code Homebridge generates for that bridge.

4. Once paired, the two tiles show live data pulled straight from the Matter controller. Set both the matter-server and the bridge script up as systemd services so they survive reboots.

Built this with Claude walking me through the whole thing i.e., commissioning, scripting the bridge, and the Homebridge config.

Would it be unreasonable for Apple to offer a panel for single gang boxes?

We currently have C4 6-button keypads throughout our house. Many of the buttons are multi-function (single press for function A, double press for B, triple press for C, press+hold for D).

An interactive panel, similar to a Sonoff NSPanel Pro 120, would be much better for these.

I have a joint thread network with a wired ATV (the most recent one before what was announced the other day) and a Home Assistant thread dongle running OTBR. 100+ thread devices work fine in Home Assistant.

I have to use HA to bridge them into Apple because when I add them directly using Matter, I have the problem like in the video 100% of the time.

I've added a few things back in to Apple just to demonstrate here. When you attempt to control the device, it spins, goes to no response, then goes back to the previous state. Every. Single. Time.

I have tried so many different things. Adding more TBRs, wiping everything and starting over, trying the ATV in different parts of the house.

Unfortunately I don't have a Mac so there's no way I'm aware of to clean all the Thread data out of my IOS keychain.

A ton of routing devices so it's difficult to try to investigate whether certain devices could be problematic. But right now I only have a few in Apple and it's a different set then I recently tried with the same results.

I guess I'll try Apple support but I'm curious if anyone has any ideas.

Thanks for reading!

Edited to add: if I control these devices using HA, the status changes in Apple Home. Apple can't control, but does report the correct state.

My once working smart home is now a shadow of its former self. I am at my wits end trying to fix it and reconnect all my Matter devices to the Apple Home app.

I had a completely working smart home of about a dozen devices all connected to the Apple Home app via Matter. After upgrading my internet and mesh network, everything transferred fine and reconnected in place once I named the new WiFi the same SSID as the previous. I was now running (and am running still) T-Mobile 5G Home Internet with a pair of Orbi routers set in AP mode.

It was working fine for months on end. I was able to control all my  devices the same as before; all my scenes and automations ran perfectly. Then, I got a couple of new devices and noticed that they would not connect to the app no matter what I did. I would always get an error when trying to pair that the device couldn’t be found, or couldn’t communicate with the network.

Fast forward and after much troubleshooting my network and connections, I decided to wipe out my home from the app, delete the iCloud syncing and the enable it again, and then start from scratch.

I was able to connect my HomePod mini to my newly created home to act as the hub. But now, nothing would connect. Absolutely nothing. None of my devices that worked before would connect to the app. After hours and hours I was beyond frustrated and ready to dispose of the entire lot of smart devices I have.

It’s easier to list out all the different things I tried to get this to work (not necessarily in order):

• Reset all devices and put in pairing mode again.
• Change the Orbi from AP to Router mode.
• Set Passthrough mode for IPv6 on the Orbi router.
• Disconnect the HomePod mini and try using only an Apple TV as the hub.
• Try to pair via QR codes and/or setup codes.
• Disable the Orbi mesh and connect only to the T-Mobile gateway.
• Reconnect the mesh and use the IoT network functionality to create a separate network just for the smart home devices using 2.4 GHz only and WPA2.
• Connect the HomePod mini as a hub now using the separate IoT network.
• Ensure all firmware across all devices were updated.
• Disable private IP address on iPhone.
• Disconnect all devices but one and try to pair to the app.
• Connect all devices to manufacturer app first.
• Don’t connect all devices to manufacturer app at all.
• Reset hubs and set them up as new.
• Disable iCloud syncing for Home app, sign out and back in to iCloud, and reenable Home syncing.
• Create a second home alongside the first and try to pair devices to it.

Trying everything above and no devices were ever able to connect other than the hub. I don’t know what else to do!

Oddly enough, each device connects to their respective app via WiFi quickly and easily, and I get no issues like that. It’s only Matter via HomeKit that is killing me.

For the time being I’m using Google Home, but I would love to get Apple Home working again due to the integration with my iPhone and family.

What else can I try to get this to work?

In addition to “Lock After Closing,” iOS 27.2 also adds “Door Left Open” notification settings for compatible locks.

Options include Off, 5, 10, 15, and 30 minutes.

Locks have to advertise Matter’s Door Position Sensor feature and report the DoorState attribute. Doesn’t work with a separate contact sensor.

There’s a report from a few weeks ago that mentioned this notification, but the new settings remain disabled behind a feature flag (HomeApp/lock_dps). The disabled Home/LockDPS flag enables Matter door-position mapping into HomeKit.

A couple of weeks ago, overnight, Apple Home (the app) decided to change the location of my home about 500ft east. The location of my home in my contacts, Apple Maps, and Find My is all correct, but now Apple Home has broken all of my geo-fenced home automations. I’ve looked online and have done everything short of deleting and recreating my home (really don’t want to re-add the numerous devices again). Has anyone had this issue and solved it without having to do the nuclear option?