Can’t Live Without The IoT? Try HomeKit And Home Assistant

Take A Little Control Over Your Smart Toaster

The Internet of Things has grown exponentially as people discovered their love of programmable lightbulbs and the ability to quietly spy on their neighbourhood with their doorbell.  Along the way we’ve discovered this convenience comes with innumerable security risks and an amazing amount of waste as companies completely abandon support of entire lines of products a handful of years after launch.  In addition, the IoT ecosystem is a series of walled gardens made up of devices specifically designed not to be able to interface with each other.

As you would expect, IoT devices attracted the attention of the technically literate, who have been working to find ways to make it more effective or to repurpose it in strange and interesting new ways.  Home Assistant is one way to accomplish that, not just severing your reliance on the companies which created your devices, and may or may not still support them, but also to allow different devices to talk to each other.

Ars Technica spent some time working with Home Assistant to find ways to extend the devices which Apple’s HomeKit app can control.  They managed to link just about any device Home Assistant could talk to into HomeKit, and control it via the app.  If you are interested in having a single app control everything in your home, take a peek at the article and the resources that are linked to within.