- So are you ready to jump in the HomeKit
and you're ready to invest hardworking money.
You're going to be picking up smart plugs,
smart bulbs and other smart home accessories.
But before you do that, you wanna make sure
that you're not making some big HomeKit mistakes.
Today we're gonna talk
about my top 10 biggest HomeKit mistakes to avoid.
Let's jump into the video.
Having bad Wi-Fi is a huge, huge mistake.
I've seen a lot of people have issues with their smart home
not realizing it's a Wi-Fi issue
and not a smart home product issue.
60 to 70% of home care products on the market
are all Wi-Fi base.
So if you don't have good Wi-Fi coverage in your home
you're going to start having issues.
There are a ton of different Wi-Fi routers on the market
and a lot of them are going to advertise their speed.
But honestly, when you're talking about your smart home
the speed for Wi-Fi doesn't matter.
If you're a gamer and you're a heavy computer user
absolutely go for the most expensive Wi-Fi router out there
that's going to give you that top speed,
but for smart home use,
it really comes down to good coverage.
You might think I'm crazy
I've actually been using this Apple Airport router
for years now, and it's quite old.
I'm about to replace it
but I have two other Airports spread out through my house.
It has a wired backbone, so it's very similar
to a mesh router, and I have great, great coverage.
I'm actually going to be upgrading that pretty soon
to this Linksys 5 router
that has HomeKit compatibility for extra security
and really more control over my home care home.
So I'm looking forward to doing that.
After having bad Wi-Fi,
I think the second biggest mistake that you can make
is not choosing to have a HomeKit Hub.
Having a HomeKit Hub is gonna allow you
do automations with the home.
And most importantly, control your smart home
even when you're not.
And with apples end to end encryption, this reassure you
that no one else has access to your smart home
except for yourself in any authorized family members.
Plus if you start having HomeKit cameras
with HomeKit secure video,
your HomeKit Hub is gonna be the local processor.
So all your footage is gonna be processed locally
on your HomeKit Hub not sending off that work
to another server.
There are four HomeKit Hubs that you can choose from.
You can have multiples of all these hubs
or just have one depending on the size of your house.
You can choose from having the original HomePod.
If you have a leftover old iPad
as think is running iOS 13 above
you can turn that into a HomeKit Hub.
You can also use an Apple TV.
I think it's a fourth-generation or better.
And of course the most affordable
and newest HomePod Mini coming in at only $99.
Having a home on full automation is the Holy grail
of having a smart home,
but not thinking about those automations ahead time
is a huge mistake.
Not only do you want planned out each automations
but you wanna see how it was going to work in real life.
I remember this one time where I had an automation
for a motion sensor, turn on the light in the family room
as someone walked in, the only issue I didn't think about
is if I was sitting on the couch
and turned off the lights
and a second person will walk in
the lights will turn on as I'm watching TV.
Hey.
Now a lot of problems with these automations
can easily be fixed using apps
like the Eve App or the Home+ I think they,
it's a five now Home+ App where you can have conditions.
So you can say if one devices on
and the motion sensor sees motion and then see the TV on
it won't turn on the light.
Now this won't work for every single scenario
but I'm just trying to explain how you could set this up
and think about your automations ahead of time.
Now, having automations is a wonderful, wonderful thing
but there is a such thing of having too many automations.
In your home app, yes
you can have lists of all your automation.
Now, unfortunately, currently there's no way to find one.
So if you have a hundred of them
you're not gonna be able to search for it.
Now a pro tip, if you get the Home+ App,
it's a Home+ 5 now, you actually have the ability
to search for your automations,
which I think is very, very cool.
In addition to new searching feature
in the Home+ 5 App
you can now create folders for your automations
to help you organize your automations even further.
But the thing is when you start having too many automations
not only are they hard to locate
when you need to work on them,
but they start just overlapping, working
against each other.
And you just got to have this smart home
that's just a complete chaos.
So you really wanna think about your automations
and have as few as possible, but at the same time
you want enough to have that smart home.
Another thing to think about
is where you're placing those automations.
If you're using the home app exclusively, that's right
you're not gonna have any issues
but if you started getting into more advanced things
you might have automations in other third party apps
like the Phillips Hue app.
And those are great.
There's very specific things for those products.
But the thing is that you tend to forget
that you create that automation.
So years later, you're still having issues
or you wanna change things.
And you actually forget
that you created that automation in a different app.
So my advice to you is definitely concentrate
in putting them all at one place, use the Home+ App
or the Eve app, which is all connected to the home app.
But if you do want to get more events,
start writing them down, keep track where you placing them
and what you're doing with all of them.
Now, I see a lot of smart homes
where people don't use any automations,
I don't completely understand why, they use Siri.
they use all sorts of control
but the holy grail of having a smart home
is to have the homework for you and be automated.
My suggestion from basic automations is for instance
a very simple timer.
If you have outdoor lighting, you want to turn
that on at sunset, and then turn it off at sunrise,
very simple, there's no additional devices needed.
You want then take that to one next step up.
We can start getting some triggers where
you can have like motion sensors, door sensors
start triggering other devices in your home automatically.
So as you're walking into a room
or you're opening a door lights will automatically turn on.
And then you can also think about your safety and security.
For instance, say you have some HomeKit door locks.
You can say every night at 10 o'clock
you can automatically lock all your doors
or if you want to start using NFC Tags,
that's another great idea,
is when you have a good night scene,
you can be in bed, hit the NFC Tag,
it lock your doors, turn off all your lights
and shut down the house for the night.
And of course you can group
a lot of these automations together,
otherwise known as scenes.
So definitely take advantage of scenes within HomeKit.
Now, of course the holy grail
is having a fully autonomous smart home,
but unfortunately in today's world
most people are still gonna need physical controls.
And not having these physical controls
are definitely gonna start pissing people off.
I know from firsthand experience.
Now having wires, switches is just one
of the very first things that you can do
for physical controls.
You might not want to mess with electricity
which I totally understand, or hire electrician there
which can be extremely expensive.
So there's other options for wireless, physical controls.
Some of the ones that I have is the Coraline.
This is a double switch.
So you have two switches.
You can do one click, two click or two clicks together.
There's like six different commands,
you can do all with this one device.
They have a mini switch.
Flick has their little main switches.
There are lots and lots of different choices
that you pick from,
but I highly suggest that you do have some type
of physical control in your house.
Now having smart bulbs is one of the first things
that most people buy.
They are super affordable, they're useful, they're colorful
and you can install a smart bulb in less than 10 seconds.
The thing is a smart bulb is not for every single location
where you a light sockets.
Unfortunately, a lot of people make this mistake
and buy hundreds and hundreds of dollars of smart bulbs
and I don't understand why.
There are definitely reasons to get a smart bulb,
but in most cases unless you need a color smart bulb,
a smart switch is a wiser investment,
where one smart switch can control a bunch of regular bolts.
So my suggestion, if you have two
or more bulbs on a light switch,
look at replacing a light switch instead of the bulb.
There are a lot of great choices
for smart switches in the HomeKit ecosystem.
Meross is one that most recent ones
that has joined HomeKits that come
in like at 25 bucks, extremely affordable.
There's other options out on the market
depending on what you're looking for.
Eve makes one that has no moving parts.
It's just like, I forget the name of it,
but you can just touch it turns on and off.
There's no physical moving parts
which I think is pretty cool.
The list goes on and on,
I'll leave a link down below where you can actually see some
of these different types of smart switches.
Not utilizing smart plugs is the next biggest mistake.
I think smart plugs are affordable, they're easy,
they don't cause any damage,
you can plug them in, plug them out, you can move them.
But a lot of people don't realize what they can actually do
for your smart home.
I see a lot of people buying new HomeKit devices
because they want to have that HomeKit integration
where you might already have a device within your home
like if you have a humidifier,
you don't need to buy a new humidifier
with HomeKit compatibility.
You just get simply a smart plug to turn it on
and off and be done.
Smart plugs can also be used on devices
that you tend to leave on accidentally, for instance,
maybe the hair iron that the wife always leaves on.
The thing is you do wanna check the amperage,
make sure the amperage from the hair iron
doesn't exceed the smart plug,
but having something like a smart plug
in the bathroom is definitely ideal.
So when they leave the house
you can make sure that hair iron is actually off.
And of course, if you have a lamp with multiple bulbs
it's more cost-effective just to add a smart plug
rather than changing all the bulbs within that lamp.
Now, as you're building a HomeKit home
you're gonna start bringing in products
from different manufacturers.
Unfortunately, Apple doesn't make HomeKit products
except for the HomePods.
So are you going to be buying from this brand,
from this brand and bring it all together
in your HomeKit home.
Now, if you can use HomeKit exhaustively
that's going to be your best solution.
But unfortunately there are some products that you have to
or want to use their third-party app.
So you have to make a user ID.
You have to give them access to your HomeKit home
and that can definitely open up some concerns.
What access do they have to your home data?
What access do they have to your network?
So there are definitely some solutions that you can take
to limit your exposure and not make this mistake.
Having good password management
is the very first step that you want to take.
You wanna make sure you're using different passwords
for different manufacturers.
Don't use the same password
it's too easy to know your username, password,
to log into another account, use different passwords,
use a password keeper
but definitely keep those passwords different.
The other thing that I suggest
is that you have network segregation.
That way you have all your smart home products
all on one Wi-Fi network
where then you have your computers, your phones
and more secure stuff on another network.
Love network routers, Wi-Fi routers out there
have multiple SSIDs or are gonna create other network
where a lot of times it's called like a guest network.
So you can have one network that's for all your secure stuff
and then have a second network with the same router
for all your smart home.
That helps to segregate all your smart home stuff
away from all the personal stuff.
So if someone hacks into your smart home network
they're not gonna easily be able to get
into your personal data on the other network.
And with HomeKit routers now coming out,
you can now actually allow your HomeKit data to be monitored
to having a HomeKit router is a huge plus.
Now I haven't gotten into my Linksys 5 router yet
but I'm going to do that in the very near future.
So definitely staying forward to seeing that video come out.
So number ten on my list is not doing the research.
You definitely want to research each product
watch reviews here on YouTube, go read some articles.
There's a lot of great information
on these products and how to set up your smart home.
Just jumping right into it.
Yes, it's part of the fun
but you also want to know what you're doing.
Not only is this gonna save you a lot of time
in the process of building your smart home
but it's gonna save you a ton of money in the long run.
Of course, obviously watch this channel
for all these great reviews on how to's on HomeKits
but also leave a list down below to some other creators here
on YouTube and some other websites.
I think you should definitely read up on.
Now, most of these mistakes are basic and for beginners
but if you're more advanced,
one of the biggest HomeKit mistakes that I personally did
was not getting into hoobs and homebridge sooner.
I actually had products from other non-HomeKit manufacturers
and not using this product in HomeKit was a huge mistake.
If I could go back two or three years
I'd have bought hoobs and Sterling hub years ago
and integrate within my HomeKit home like I do now.
Having these products here in the house
I can actually use now in my HomeKit app is amazing.
So even though it's not the most secure thing
it's not a certified HomeKit product
having hoobs and Sterling hub is a huge plus in my book.
Thanks for watching guys.
I hope you got some value out of that.
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If you guys wanna see the next video in my HomeKit series,
check out that video right there
and I will see you guys later.
$ No nothing can break me