Not at all Mark! I just thought it would be good to fill in the blanks for anyone else who might peruse this thread.
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Youāre a monster!
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I made that mistake last year around this time.. bought a MBP M1 for remote work and testing and also thinking that I could use it to configure Homekit.. uh, no.. found out you needed an iPad or iPhone of which I had neither. Ended up buying the cheapest iPad. 
While we're not completely in the walled garden, the products I have are working fine. Got my wife the same model iPad and she really likes it over her old Samsung Tab.
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I am only in Appleās HomeKit garden as far away as I have to be. I only use it to connect HomeKit only devices to HE. I only swallowed half of the blue pill. 
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I swallowed the whole pill. 
Iām an ex windows server engineer who has moved entirely to macOS, iPhone, iPad and Linux for 99% of my systems.
I had been a Mac user in the 90ās and just got fed up with playing IT support for my wife. So I bought her a MacBook Pro and and myself a Mac mini. The hardest thing I ever have to do now is show her how to use apps.
On the phone front, Iāve had a bunch of windows phones (early compaq and Samsung, then the final versions) and a couple of androids. I loved the the windows phones, especially the final generation, the tile system was really nice. I only ditched them when I couldnāt get the apps I wanted.
Iāve also had almost every generation of iPhone and they have been amazing. I love how I can manage our family iOS devices from my phone and manage the kids Macās from it too.
I never liked the android ownership experience, it was frustrating not getting OS updates till 18 months after release and then having my premium device turn into abandonware!
I was working for HP at the time of owning my last android phone and they threatened to fire anyone caught running a non-factory android install on phones connected to the company servers. That was the final straw for me and Iāve been using and enjoying iPhones every since.
/life story
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Homepod resold on ebay with only 5 loss . Now the lock has to go.
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You werenāt able to return for a refund?
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No bought both on ebay so even if i could doesn't seem right to return just because i fffed up.
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Hi guys,
Do I need a new controller like HomePod to be able to integrate with Hubitat hub to be able to use devices in Apple Home?
@tberty It's better to have one. As I understand it, if you have a HomePod or Apple TV, that will enable you to use Apple Home remotely. However it will still work locally even if you have no other Apple controller.
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Our Internet is down this morning. Using hot spot on phone. Anyway, My Echos refused to do anything. Ditto with my Google Home. But Homepod Mini saved the day. Having local voice control is wonderful.
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This. 
A HomeKit hub (HomePod mini or Apple TV) provides two things: remote access and HomeKit automations.
Edit: Wait a minuteādo you mean that you still had Siri control via that HomePod? Siri does require an Internet connection to process speech, as I understand. (The actual control happens locally, of course.)
Also, when one has an Apple Home Hub capable device running in their home, any HomeKit automations will actually run on that device. Have multiple Apple devices capable of acting as Apple Home Hubs? Now you have automatic, built-in redundant remote access and automation controllers in your home.
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When I told Alexa to turn a light on, pretty dark at 5 am when the dog wanted out, she gave me some lip about no internet access. Not thinking I then told Siri and she did it. I then checked and the internet was out and it was about an hour before it came back up. So maybe there are some things Siri can recognize locally.
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If so, that's fantastic. Apple keeps touting that more speech processing is being done locally on the iPhone, but they usually don't say anything about smaller devices like the HomePod mini.
As of iOS 15, it can actually do some local voice processing. See here for one announcement (scroll down to the section on Siri): Apple advances its privacy leadership with iOS 15, iPadOS 15, macOS Monterey, and watchOS 8 - Apple -- or, I suppose, just turn off Wi-Fi and cell data and see what works. 
However, as far as I know, this never made it to the HomePod, likely because they have older or less powerful processors (A12 or newer is required, so even some older devices that can run iOS 15 don't get this feature -- nor does, I think, any Apple Watch).
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Ah, thanks for the detail! I hadn't dived that deeply. Makes me want to try some experimentsā¦
Maybe I was just lucky and there was a momentary internet back on. Iāll have to do some testing.
I think series 5 and newer have some local processing, although the watch always seems slower than the iPhone. I thought the HomePod mini had the same processor as the watch.
