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Re:HomePod Mini by jiggawatts on Wednesday October 14, 2020 @12:28AM (#24773096)
One thing I don't quite understand about the HomeKit "ecosystem" is that there doesn't seem to be much of one...

I've looked on the Apple store, the local electronics store, but everything I would expect to see in a range of smart devices are very notably absent.

For example, I can't find a reasonably sized multi-port Apple HomeKit power board.

I can't find motion or person presence sensors.

In fact, just about the only products that seem to exist are "smart" light bulbs, but I don't see what's so smart about paying AUD 150 for a light bulb...

Re:HomePod Mini by mzgaljic on Wednesday October 14, 2020 @01:05AM (#24773278)
Motion sensor: https://www.amazon.com/Philips-Motion-Sensor-Installation-Fr...

Power strips: https://www.imore.com/best-homekit-power-strips

Most philips hue products are Homekit compatible, if you have a hue bridge.

As far as the “best” lighting/switch products, I would recommend Lutron Caseta. Not cheap though!

If you’d like to reliably detect when someone is home (their phone is on wifi), you can dive into Homebridge. The plug-in you want is this: https://www.npmjs.com/package/homebridge-people

With the homebridge-people plugin, you can expose an occupancy sensor in Homekit, and trigger a scene when everyone leaves the house, for example. Or the inverse, when someone arrives home. This is more reliable than the built in Homekit location based triggers, because those work with GPS. You don’t always want your lights turning on just because you drove past your house. :)

Re:HomePod Mini by jiggawatts on Wednesday October 14, 2020 @01:31AM (#24773415)
I should have specified that I live in Australia, so US power boards are useless.

It seems that vendors aren't manufacturing these for all regional power outlet formats.

Re:HomePod Mini by mzgaljic on Wednesday October 14, 2020 @08:31AM (#24775750)
Oh I see, that stinks. I know this isn’t what you were looking for, but here are some options if you are willing to be creative:

https://www.reddit.com/r/HomeKit/comments/hzc7lr/powerboardp...

Re:HomePod Mini by jiggawatts on Wednesday October 14, 2020 @08:41AM (#24775837)
a) That's an interesting post, thanks!

b) It's crazy that the best option I've seen so far for HomeKit compatible power boards is to custom flash some noname Chinese brand.

I thought Apple was known for their slick, well-suported products!

Re:HomePod Mini by mzgaljic on Wednesday October 14, 2020 @11:06AM (#24777330)
Agreed!
Re:HomePod Mini by 2fast4you on Wednesday October 14, 2020 @02:10AM (#24773642)
Home kit works really nice when combined with something like Home Assistant. I can use any kind of smart device I want while still interacting through the clean native HomeKit interface