Explained: The Apple hubs that control your home
Explained: The Apple hubs that control your home
🎞️ RELATED VIDEOS
Make your Apple Home more reliable https://youtu.be/LJa0EPiNbX8
Starling Home Hub https://youtu.be/w-uJEHh40us
🛍️ PRODUCTS
Apple TV 4K (with Ethernet) https://geni.us/Srof [BestBuy]
HomePod mini https://geni.us/DNTT [BestBuy]
HomePod 2 https://geni.us/mXFyis [BestBuy]
📖 REFERENCES
Upgrading your Home architecture https://support.apple.com/en-us/102287
Adding an Apple Home Hub https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207057
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CHAPTERS:
00:00 Intro
01:12 What’s an Apple Home Hub?
03:40 Third-party hubs and bridges
05:36 Unofficial hubs and bridges
#applehome #smarthome #homeautomation
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This is probably one of the key points where non-tech folks usually struggle on when trying to set up a smart home, they don’t even know where to begin, what to buy and then why the need “2 hubs”.
Thankfully this is changing with Matter over Thread 🔥
I can’t seem to get help from Apple support, but most of the time when I ask one of my homepods to play music, it will return a comment such as "There was a problem with your Apple Music subscription" and other similar responses.
I hope that smoke alarms are added back to smart home integration. Google did all the Nest Smoke Alarm users a great disservice when they killed its integration ability. They also haven’t come out with a new smoke alarm model since acquisition. Guess the lawyers are anxious about anything life safety related.
I suffer from seeing that dreaded apple no response stuff. Unifi wifi is not enough. 10-12 apple home hubs and still. I defaulted to using home assistant to see if things work better. great video
🙃
Very informative video. Thank you sir!
How few or many bridges do you NEED to run Apple home kit – is it enough with Apple TV and Phililps Hue bridge or do you also need an eva bridge for Matter etc with Homey pro ???
Your videos are very helpful.
Having problems connecting home hubs to HomeKit. Can you give me some help. Apple couldn’t fix the problem
Have you seen any problems with the Starling Hub with the new Mac and iOS releases? Do you think that the new inferred emphasis on HomeKit will mean we won’t need to use a hub but things might just work natively in HomeKit now?
homekit and homebridge is pretty good ngl
Hi Eric, I’m glad you brought up this topic, and I’d like to add to this with difference between a hub and a bridge in the Apple Homekit ecosystem. As I understand, A hub is a device that acts as the central point of communication for all your Homekit devices. It also serves as an Open Thread Border Router, which allows your Thread devices to connect to the internet.
In the Apple Homekit ecosystem, the hub is always an Apple TV or a Home Pod. However, some devices from other vendors (such as Philips, Tuya, etc.) use different protocols, such as Wifi, Bluetooth, or Zigbee, to communicate with each other.
These devices require a separate device from the same vendor to act as their hub. This is called vendor-locking, meaning that you can only use devices from the same vendor together. For example, IKEA devices will only work with their own hub.
But if you want to use these devices in the Apple Homekit ecosystem, you need to connect their hub to your Apple hub. This is what we call a bridge.
A bridge is a device that links two different hubs or protocols together, so that you can control all your devices from one app or voice assistant.
And I believe, this is what MATTER is trying to solve, but it has it’s own nuances?. For example, I’m missing the Adaptive lighting on Matter based ligjht-bulbs.
Agree?
Awesome videos sorry I’m sooo late
Thank you for this video. As someone who is pretty tach savvy, I was struggling to get all this working together and this video was definitely necessary to get everything working together properly. This isn’t at all plug and play like most apple products are, so I’m surprised that it’s not failing with the community outright.
Don’t do the smart home thing its useless and pointless
How can I connect my Roborock S8 Pro Ultra to my Apple Home?
You don’t mention if it acts locally, (without Internet)…
I have an incident that one or more of my HomeKit Hub was having problem. It seems work perfectly but It is not. I cannot add/edit automation. I was having problem with my Schlage Encode Plus. I thought there was something wrong with the lock and I ordered a new one and it has exact problem. It took me 3 weeks or so troubleshooting and realized that it is the HomeKit Hub problem. I have 3 HomePod mini and 1 Apple TV. I factory reset them all and re-add them. Once it is done, all problem resolved.
All my Apple TVs are wired directly to the network. None of my Homepod minis, but Apple insists on making my Homepods the main hub, and all my Apple TVs are "Standby"s.
Hoobs is terrible.
2:58 this has changed in iOS 18. Now you can manually choose which device is the hub or leave it on automatic.
Eric, this was great. I have always suspected the role of non-“connected” or non-“boss” Apple hubs was as you described, but never came across confirmation until this video. I presume that the other hubs also transfer wifi data to the boss hub should there be an accessory that uses wifi in the Apple Home?
There is also a way to keep a specific Apple hub as the boss, it’s just not simple. I have all of my Apple hubs connected to Eve Power devices. Each night, I power cycle my intended boss hub and let it back onto the network for 30 minutes before I begin to power cycle, one at a time, every other Apple hub. This gives me over 99% of the time that my boss hub is my centrally located ATV 4K 2023 connected via Ethernet.
I just wish I could set a primary hub in case of power outages, sometimes it goes to an AppleTV and Matter accessories stop working until it switches to a HomePod. Additionally HomePod’s randomly will stop working as HomeHub’s, how do you fix that?
Heads up, if you hardwire ethernet to your Apple TV, it will always default to that as the main hub. HomeKit has an algorithm that picks the best hub based on things like speed of connection, reliability of connection, and placement with accessories. That being said, if you hardwire your Apple TV, it will always be the fastest and most reliable connection and default to that. Hope this helps!
That…….was extremely helpful. Thank you!
Had to put all my HonePods on smart plugs so I can turn them off whenever one of them takes over as the hub rather than my TV4k. For some reason every time a HomePod takes over my automations decrease in operation speed by a factor of 2. Most infuriating thing ever that Apple can’t give us the ability to pick which hub we want in control. A simple toggle switch that says “Make this device the primary hub” on every Apple TV and HomePod would be ideal. And if they can’t do it (hard to believe) then they should at least write the logic so that the AppleTV 4K takes priority, then AppleTV HD is next AND THEN a HomPod/Mini as a “break glass in case of emergency” option.
I am in need of a thread border router…I currently have 2 older Apple TVs but they cannot act as that. I was thinking about the Apple HomePod Mini . This will work…but is wireless. I am wondering which one will work best solely as a thread border router ? The TV/music functions are not important to me.
Good info. I have four Apple TV’s (three are the current gen) and the latest HomePod. I have yet to set up Apple Home and any smart function, but have been curious how the home devices would control/manage the Smarthome with so many in the house.
I would love to plug my Apple TV into my nest wifi pro, but when I do I lose the ability to airplay to that Apple TV. It drives me nuts. So I just keep said Apple TV on wifi. Unless I’m missing something.
Why would anyone do this.
I’m using my old Mac Mini as a file sharing & TimeMachine server after getting an M4 Mini. It’d sure be convenient to use the old Mini as a HomeKit hub. Am I missing the point of something??
They took hub capability away from iPads so it’s easy to see them doing the same for Apple TV.
Should make anyone hesitant about building a smart home around an Apple product for the hub unless it’s their dedicated hub product…
I’ve been at it with HomeKit for a while. Just moved and started with a clean HomeKit slate. THIS video (and a couple of your others) got me over the hump. Thanks Eric!
Very well explained. Thank Eric!
Great video, offhand does the Aqara hub link up to the HomeKit hub, like the Lutron hub does? Is there any info as what links up to the Apple HomeKit hub? Thanks
I’ve recently bought a tahoma somfy switch for my screens, do I also need to have a hub for using the screens with Siri etc?
That is like Siri. It never works right.. 👎😤
So you still have to buy an apple hub even though you’ve already got Aqara’s new hub
Homebridge is a save
Another great video. Thank you for these explaners.
On the lastest Apple TV I’ve noticed there a ton of issues with HomeKit. I’m not sure if the device is overheating since the new one doesn’t have a fan or is it because the OS corrupted. When I check the cameras on the Apple TV the camera view does not go away I have to unplug the Apple TV to close the camera view.
Such a helpful video.
The fact you can’t select which Apple device is the main hub is stupid AF
You can pick your hub. Unplug all but the one you want to be boss. Wait a sec and plug all other hubs back in. I do this all the time when I want to change the boss hub to a different one…
I know this has been out for a bit but today I use an AppleTV connected by either net. However I have an old MacBook that I can’t upgrade so looking again at Mac mini since so powerful now. Would you recommend that setup?
Thank you so much for this video. I love Apple’s Home Kit but have been so limited by the support by 3rd parties.
Your spiel on the difference between a hub and a bridge I think is the best I’ve heard yet. Oh how Internet loves to jump on people for semantics.
I updated my ATV and restarted it and I cannot get it to work for the home hub….I’d prefer to use apples homekit but I am having to use the Tapo app….. not sure why its not working.
My wish. For Ring to add Matter to all their bridges.