Strange. I have no problem using apple music, spotify, pandora, or any other app that uses casting. Now when you say hey siri play whatever it will use the last app of that session, but to fix that you say Hey Siri play whatever on spotify (or apple music or pandora or what have you)
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Thanks for the tip. I'll delve into this again. I d**d around with so much and couldn't get it back on track when factory resetting was no big deal at all.
Would the free radio stations that came with the pod be on "Apple Music"?
On another note, I was able to control a Z-Wave switch with the Home Integration app. Way cool. Yes, it's cloud based (I unplugged the ethernet cable between modem and router to verify). Would matter devices also depend on cloud after initial setup, I wonder?
edit: I just put all the kitchen switches in a room in Home and said "Siri, turn all kitchen off", and it worked. Cool.
airplay is local not cloud based. (Using the homekit app outside the network is cloud based)
Matter and thread devices connected to homekit are also local...
Not sure why in your case it disconnected. Maybe that's something that @bcopeland could chime in on since he wrote it.
I don't have any matter or thread devices. I'll try again.
On another note, I'm getting the hang of AirPlay. It's pretty deeply integrated in the phone, not that I know what I'm talking about.
Okay, now I'm going have to get into rooms, lol.
Nice how the Homekit integration synchronizes rooms.
Can turn off entire room lights at one shot.
Endless hours of amusement.
edit: I could even create a room in Hubitat for my motion overrides, and turn on/off all overrides with one command.
I'll have to see if room commands can be done in Rule Machine.
Couldn't replicate this, alas.
@velvetfoot, HomeKit does not synchronize the HE rooms with the rooms in Home. You have to organize the lights, switches, fans, etc into the appropriate room in Home. Know that you can change the type in Home - if you have a smart outlet with a lamp plugged in, but assign it in Home as a light, then when you say "turn on the lights", the lamp will also turn on. The converse also works - if you have a light you don't want to control with a generic "lights" command, assign it something other than light.
Another bit of convenience: in Home, if you have the room "Family Room" and the items in the room start with Family Room, then Home can hide the room name - so Family Room Fan shows as Fan, Family Room Lamp -> Lamp, Family Room Light -> Light.
Thanks.
I'm currently agonizing over rooms in Hubitat.
I haven't used them to date.
I give the device a short abbreviation so that it doesn't take too much room on the dashboard tile.
Of course, that's hard to remember, so I'd have to change the device name in Home.
I have text boxes in my dashboard corresponding to room groups, so I could live without the abbreviations.
One problem is adding tiles in dashboard: I'd have a bunch of plugs to choose to add, but I don't think I'd know which room they go to.
I have to think about it some more.
There are categories, though, right?
It seems that there are a limited number of categories, and that you can't add a custom one.
Unless I'm missing something.
No, can't add any other types. I consider them less a category, and more a specification or type. The type chosen governs how home controls or interacts with the device.
if you scroll further down in the device, you'll see the device id. That will help you figure which device is which. This is through Homebridge:
This is through HomeKit:
And another tidbit: Put the hub in the Home app into a separate room. Then any new devices shared to Homekit will appear in that "room". Then you can easily see which devices need to be organized.
For routine, daily use, I have completely moved over to the Home app, which is easy for my wife to also use and is intuitive to her, and also works locally and remotely as opposed to HE dashboard web links that I've saved for local and remote use, which she disliked. I continue to use HE dashboards for things that Homekit doesn't support and for dashboards that are just for me.
I know you're just getting started, but know there is a 150 device limit per bridge. Between Homekit and Homebridge, I have over 250 devices in Home. Between the two, I like the extensive customizability of devices through Homebridge. Before you go down the rabbithole of setting up a ton of devices, consider going the Homebridge route. It was a pain (re)setting up devices in their rooms in Home when I was forced to add Homebridge and move devices there.
My 2 cents after experience with transitioning from Alexa to Siri, HE dashboards to Homekit, and HE Homekit to Homebridge.
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Thanks much.
I believe I'm up to 120 devices.
They probably don't all need to be 'voiced' though.
A vast majority of my devices do not need to be "voiced" either. I just like having everything together in one place.
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For me sensors such as leak, motion, and contact, don't display on the Home dashboard like other accessories such as switches. I have to click on the Security category and get the below. Normal?
Yeah that's normal. It's a bit annoying as Security might just say '1 open' and you need to click to identify which one. It would be preferred if contacts and sensors could be shown as a full tile like a switch.
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Last night, when fooling around with Siri and the HomePods, I must have inadvertently turned off the Presence switch by what I said to Siri. Perhaps I said 'Turn Off All', or something like that.
Is it possible to lock out a switch from Siri? I've found nothing so far.
Thanks.
Yes, as johnwill1 mentioned, it's annoying that you can't have a status display on the main screen.
You can "lock" it out from responding to a "room" command by turning off the option "Include in Home Summaries". Then it doesn't get added to the summary list of lights.
To bring a status to the Home main page, I am trying to hack together a virtual contact driver that would appear as a switch, but not do anything if flipped. It currently ignores the flip, but does not yet reset/refresh the on/off status on the Home side. Still learning.
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Are you looking for something like this?
Thanks. I'll have to check that out.
It would give some measure of protection when I mis-speak.
Excellent question and offered solution. Yes and no. Yes in the sense that one capability (contact) is mirrored into another capability (switch). No in the sense that when the switch is toggled in Home, it should have no effect in Hubitat, and Hubitat/HomeKit/Homebridge sends an update back to reflect the original state of the HE contact/switch. Currently, Home sends the command to turn a switch off, my driver hack ignores the change in switch, but the switch continues to show off. I need a way to send a message to Home saying "hey, that switch you turned off is currently on, please show it as on." That refresh does not currently happen for me until Home is forced closed and reopened, at which time updates the status of all devices.
That didn't work. Still responds. Only way seems to be to disable in HomeKit Integration app. That can't be done for the presence switch.
On a side note, regarding Siri, I've lit up entire rooms if I leave a little gap between the spoken room and device. Mouth must be connected to brain, before Siri-ing, lol.
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