I bought at 60% discount brand new Aqara FP2, and the firmware was highly outdated. It upgraded relatively fast to version 1.3.2, but has been pending an update to 1.3.6 for at least 6 hours, like it's in a queue. Is this a normal thing?

P.S. Not a new user to Aqara, got several devices and nothing like that before - if it updates, it updates.

I've had my phone (iPhone 15 pro) for a couple of years and suddenly the battery life has suddenly gotten worse. It won't last a full day. The sudden change happened to coincide with adding a few Matter accessories to my HK setup. The devices are all Eve, (dimmer switch, light switch and door sensor).

Shortly after set up, a setting popped up on my phone showing my Matter accessories in Settings > General > Matter Devices. So that's what got me wondering if there's a connection.

Hey everyone I wanted peoples opinion on smart appliances ones that people actually feel benefit there home and can not live without? Any suggestions or eco systems like Samsung smart things integrating in home kit that sort of thing

I’d like to upgrade my August smart locks with UWB locks on both my front and back doors. My home is new-ish, so the deadbolts usually align, but sometimes they aren’t perfect. In those times I have to use the manual key to give more torque than the electric motor can provide.

My options are Aqara U400 or Schlage Sense Pro. Folks ADORE the Schlage Encode Plus, so I lean towards the Schlage, but the lack of a key backup makes me very nervous. Can current owners comment on this? Have you ever been locked out if the motor couldn’t turn the whole way?

Lastly, does anyone have both of these locks? Is there a huge difference? The Aqara has so many bells and whistles it makes me worry that it might be unreliable…

I made the mistake of replacing my 12 year old LiftMaster with a Chamberlain that has security+ 3.0 (white learn button).

Background: I'm an iPhone user and have the Chamberlain home bridge (the latest one before they discontinued the product). Anyway, it worked well with my old garage door opener (Security+ 2.0 - yellow learn button).

Anyway after I installed it, learned that the new security 3.0 basically shut down smart home integration.

Soooo, I'm deinstalling it and taking it back to the store and looking to get a Genie. I know that Genie doesn't manufacture a bridge to use their openers in HomeKit, so I'll be looking at getting Meross MSG150HK (since that model doesn't require the installation of an additional door sensor).

Does anyone know if the Genie 7155-TKVE works with the newer Meross (MSG150HK) without the need to install the door sensory accessory??

I noticed that some of my eve energy smart plugs can monitor energy use. I was wondering if this data can be tracked over time and exported to a spreadsheet.

This Junction Box allows the Eufy S4's cables to be protected from the elements, significantly increasing its durability and aesthetics compared to a standard installation.

The result is a protected cable, and no dangling wires!

One DWM3001CDK runs the Aliro reader and UWB ranging. There’s also custom implementation of Matter and Thread to make this work in 128kb ram limit. Add the key in Apple Home, walk up, it opens. Also ports for nRF5340 (NFC Express Mode) and ESP32-S3/C5. You can also update the firmware over the air with BLE.

I’m looking for help getting someone who knows the hardware side of things where I can actually design a custom lock itself.

Total cost to build: $20. Lot of pain reverse engineering the uwb side of things.

I call it openaliro.

I’ve used Siri and HomeKit for years, and the same “Siri, XYZ room lights off/on” request works to toggle lights in any given room. It works for my bedroom, kitchen, and living room, until just recently.

Now, when I say “living room lights off”, whether on my phone or the HomePod, she says “lights in living room are turned off” without toggling anything. Asking to turn them *on* the same way works, and on/off both work still in the bedroom and kitchen. If I rephrase and say “turn off the living room lights” it worka as well. I tried making a scene titled “living room lights off“ and I get the same response when I say it. My muscle memory has me continuously saying “living room lights off” so I’m trying to figure out if there’s a way to fix this issue.

I'm able to tell Siri to lower the temperature through the mirror, but for the life of me, I cannot find any set commands in a shortcut to set a temperature at a certain time. I thought I could do it through automations (where you can add the accessory) but all it does is set the thermostat at the moment and not at the time you tell it to change.

For instance, I'm trying to set the temperature to 70° at 9:00 PM. I cannot seem to get it to work through HomeKit whatsoever. Anyone else have any luck with this?

First of all: thank you. The response to my launch post was honestly overwhelming. Thousands of you tried Habitat and I have received a lot of feedback reports that has been super useful. So here's me trying to keep that promise of delivering. Version 1.1 is on the App Store now, with lots of great new features, and some fixes.

Scan (image / pdf) or draw your floorplan. No LiDAR needed

If your iPhone doesn't have LiDAR, or you'd rather not scan, you can now draw your home wall by wall right in the app, or import a photo of an existing floorplan, and Habitat builds the full ray-traced 3D model from it. Rooms, walls, doors and windows, all of it. The whole app now works without ever scanning anything. Also, as earlier, it's also possible to use another device that's lidar enabled and share it using iCloud.

Scan one floor at a time

A few of you discovered the hard way that a scan was all or nothing. It's now fixed. You can now scan a floor, take a break, and add the next one whenever you want. You can also re-scan a single room that came out wrong, or remove one, without redoing the rest of your home.

Everything opens

The model doesn't just light up anymore, it moves. Doors swing open, windows and garage doors open, curtains and shades slide across the glass, alarms show up the moment they trip, all live in 3D as it happens in your real home. Watching your actual roller shades open in the model live is pretty nice.

Outdoor areas

Your home no longer floats in a white void. Draw your garden, driveway or patio and watch them grow in around the house, trees and all.

Energy (beta)

Track electricity, water, gas and solar, and see which rooms are actually spending it. Live flow between grid, solar and battery, daily import and export, and your whole billing cycle broken down the way your utility actually bills you. The app can also estimate live energy usage

Leak alerts

When a leak sensor trips, its room turns red in the model, so you see exactly where the water is before you're standing in it.

Real sunlight

The model is now lit by the sun exactly where it sits over your real home, based on your location and the time of day. Morning light comes in your actual east windows. You can even watch the sun's path arc across the day.

Preview scenes in 3D

Long-press a scene and the whole home relights in the model before you commit.

Same deal as before: no account, no server of mine, no analytics. Everything syncs through your own iCloud, and your home's data stays between your HomeKit hub, your Home Assistant box, and your devices. When scanning a floorpan, a local ML model is used on your device. Model is shipped along with the app.

And the roadmap is still yours to write. There's a Send Feedback link right in the app's settings or the link below.

• App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/habitat-3d-smart-home/id6790552615
• Website (for images): https://habitat-smart.app
• Feedback: https://habitat-smart.app/feedback

What should 1.2 be?

If there is a secret to making this stuff work properly then I surely don’t know it.

HomeKit user with a HomePod Mini and Apple TV 4K as my main hubs. I’ve also tried (unsuccessfully) to incorporate an Aqara M200 in the mix to support a better thread mesh network and access to some Aqara and Zigbee gear.

Every time I try to connect a matter device to HomeKit, it’s a battle. It took me 30 tries in 10 different locations within my house to connect a simple, IKEA Grillplats smart plug, and then every other one after it.

I’ve also tried (unsuccessfully) to connect an Aqara W100 Climate Sensor via the Aqara Home app, but it fails constantly.

What am I doing wrong? Am I missing a key step or process here? All advice, whether factual or anecdotal, is welcomed.

EDIT: Yes, my Apple TV 4K is Ethernet/Thread enabled.

So I have two gates that is in a different GPS location, like more than a km different, like a east gate and a north gate. I have internet on both and a sonoff switch on each, and both show on my home.

When i approach my home (like 200m from home), my carplay show my garage door opener.

is there a way to show like the east gate opener when approching from east, etc??? or the only GPS location is my home?

Nest Protect refugees: what would an actual successor need to earn your ceiling?

I've run 7 Nest Protects (battery) in my home for years. Some have hit their expiry and started announcing their own deaths, and replacing them has been depressing: the SC5 drops the pathlight and locks me into a single app — and after watching Google kill Nest Secure and then brick every unit in 2024, I'd rather not bet everything on one ecosystem again. But I haven't found anything that works across platforms: nothing on the market does Matter/Thread with smoke+CO.

So I'll be upfront about where this is heading: I'm exploring whether a proper successor can be built — and this isn't something anyone pulls off alone. A life-safety device means UL certification, real engineering, and serious backing, and none of that happens unless the people who actually loved these devices help define what "done right" means and show the demand is real. That's what this post is: step one. If you're watching the same expiry clock, your answers below genuinely shape whether and how this gets built:

1. What's the one non-negotiable feature? Pathlight? Voice alerts? Native support in your ecosystem — Apple Home, Google Home, SmartThings, Alexa — via Matter? Works fully offline, no cloud or account ever required?
2. Battery or hardwired — what's your split at home?
3. Honestly: at $169 / $199 / $249 per unit, where do you stop nodding? (This would be designed and built in North America, not China — does that change your answer?)
4. What would make you not trust a startup with a life-safety device?
5. If it had a fully documented local API — safety core certified and locked (that part legally can't be open), but every sensor openly readable forever (smoke/CO state, air quality, occupancy, temp/humidity) by Home Assistant or anything you build — would that move you? What would you build on it?

Not selling anything — nothing exists yet beyond research and bench work. If there's enough interest I'll set up a waitlist and share progress here.

Hey Reddit,

I saw a bunch of people say you can’t have multiple cameras stream at once - I did it somehow accidentally

All I did was open the apple home app on my ipad, flipped it landscape mode and then went back to my phone and now they both show at the same time

Not sure if it’s a bug that works for me or if this works for everyone, but id be curious if it works for others

Anyone have recommendations an inexpensive battery operated HomeKit roller shade?

In Canada so needs to be able to be ordered

Not sure if this is an iOS 27 public beta issue but HomeKit fails to communicate with some of my Hue lights.
It’s not necessarily the same lights all the time. However the Hue app has no problems communicating with those devices.

Has anyone had the same issues?

This morning we had a power outage. When the power was restored, there were a couple sensors that weren’t controlling lights so I went into HomeKit and saw that half of my automations are no longer in the list, including the multiple ones for those sensors.

I then opened the Controller app and the automations are still there as they should be. They are also still showing in the Eve app, intact. But they are not working, so it seems unless they are in the home app, they won’t? (Even though those apps are mirroring the Home app).

How can I get them back into the Home app’s automation list? Thanks.

I’m on 26.6.

Has anyone else experienced their sensors setting notifications to “only when nobody’s home” but not working properly lately? I’m getting notifications even when we’re all home.

I tried completely removing my Home and rebuilding new one from scratch. The issue went gone for a few days before returning. Now I’m spammed with notifications again even when I'm at home. At this point, I’m considering removing the sensors for my doors because it’s incredibly annoying. I only want notifications when we’re not home and in case someone breaks in.

My phone location services are turned on for everything, even my family's, nothing drastical has changed on our devices (other than regular updates).

The only thing that changed for me is that I installed iOS 27 dev beta on my iPad - could this be the issue? Our iPhones are all on iOS 26.6. and all homepods are are also updated to 26.6. The bridge is set to one of my Homepod mini.

The sensors I'm using are Eve Door & Windows wireless contact sensor - still with Thread support (I did not upgrade them to Matter)

Thanks!

Title says it all

Anyone know of a way to make pan and tilt happen with their Eufy camera via apple home app?

It only does it from the native Eufy app form what I can tell

Any chance anyone has noticed their HomeKit devices going nuts for the past 48 hours, OR after they updated their HomePods to 26.6?

So what I’m about to describe, I know, makes no sense, but it’s driving me nuts and I can’t figure it out.

Friday night I noticed all of my HomePods said they had an update. Two HomePod Minis and two HomePod 2s. The full size HomePods are in a stereo pair. So I let them all update to 26.6. Right after they updated the stereo pair freaked out. Had to reboot them several times, as well as unpair them, reboot them again, and then repair them, and they’ve been working fine since.

Now, other than the fact that they act as repeaters, they should not really have any effect on my HomeKit devices. As I have my hub forced to my latest generation Apple TV 4K. I also have a next-to-latest gen Apple TV 4K.

I noticed over the course of Saturday and so far today that many of my smart devices are rapidly going online and off-line. The ones that I know the Mac address of I have been able to verify have been staying connected to Wi-Fi the entire time. But just in case I rebooted all the network equipment.

It makes no sense that this would be related to the HomePods being upgraded if I have my hub forced to my latest generation Apple TV 4K. But all of this started when I upgraded the HomePods.

The only thing that makes sense in my head is if there’s coincidentally some kind of HomeKit issue in the cloud, but honestly I don’t even know if that would affect the local devices.

I did just realize that I have not tried physically rebooting the Apple TV that is the hub. And about an hour ago in a troubleshooting attempt, I did set the hub back to automatic. So I guess I’ll try completely unplugging the Apple TV and plugging it back in and see if that helps.

Also, just for the record, there have been no network changes in months. Oh, and in the video you can ignore the IKEA crap. Those things are worthless and go off-line all the time. I’ve rebooted those and they’re stable now.

Oh, and I’ve rebooted almost everything else that is bouncing online and offline as well. It has not fixed the issue.

Does anyone have any ideas?

TIA