I held off and held off buying home automation devices, because I wanted security and ubiquity.
We’re an Apple home in the main, but given that Apple doesn’t always progress it’s initiatives in a timely manner, I wanted to buy devices which would work with Google and Alexa also.
When I did dip my toes into the water, it was slowly, but I was quickly delighted with HomeKit and got to about 10 devices before my first issue.
I have Eero Wifi, and had set up the Homekit integration, but on changing internet providers, I couldn’t run Eero in bridging mode and had to switch them to WiFi only, which meant that all of my Homekit Devices needed setting up again. FROM SCRATCH!
This meant that all of the scenes I built needed recreating and the automations needed devices re-adding. It took me a couple of hours. ARGH!
Yesterday we had a power blip, and off the back of this, 2 of my devices (LIFX lights in this case) were “orphaned” from the Home. They wouldn’t respond and had to be reset to factory settings and re-added. This means that you have to delete the “old” device and add it again, then add it to all scenes and automations again. This is so annoying!
There is no functionality to recognise an existing device again, there is no functionality to replace a broken device with a replacement, you just have to take screenshots of everything and start from scratch.
Don’t get me wrong, the fact that a power blip divorced 2 devices from both WiFi and the Apple Home setup is LIFX’s fault, and I have much ire for them, but Apple do not make it easy to deal with easily foreseeable situations too e.g. a Lightbulb breaks and you wish to slot a replacement in.
It’s not Apple. Home automation is more of a destination rather than a mature industry. Everyone has their own idea how to get there, and we all have our struggles.
As much as I want what Apple is offering in terms of security, I’ve come to realize that the war has been won by Alexa, and I’m not sure that the throne will be toppled anytime soon.
I bought an Echo Show last year, and I’m starting to move stuff over. HomeKit stuff is just way too limited, and Apple spends way too little time working on it for me to be happy with it.
I find HomeKit a frustration myself. But I definitely don’t think it’s right to attribute this case to it. This is all on LIFX. LIFX is already on my S list. Since buying my lights less than two years ago:
They’ve redesigned their great old app into the confusing over-engineered monstrosity it is now.
One of my bulbs has plain died.
Most damning of all, they’ve updated the firmware on half my bulbs, changing the color temperature, so my bulbs don’t coordinate with each other anymore. Half are yellow when half are white. Half are pink when half are mauve. And so on. There was no warning of this, no way to undo the firmware, and it has been over six months of them promising to update the rest of their bulbs “soon”. This literally has me wondering what it takes to do a class action suit.