Advanced notifications in HomeKit

[spreaker type=player resource=»episode_id=52187479″ width=»100%» height=»200px» theme=»light» playlist=»false» playlist-continuous=»false» chapters-image=»true» episode-image-position=»right» hide-logo=»false» hide-likes=»false» hide-comments=»false» hide-sharing=»false» hide-download=»true»] Over the past few weeks I’ve been going back and forth on whether to migrate the devices I have at home to the new thread technology and the Matter standard. More and more manufacturers keep announcing new versions of thread-compatible devices, and others are announcing new firmware versions because the device had been ready for a while and just needed compatibility switched on with an update, as is the case with the Philips Hue bridge, which in the beta version of the software is already compatible with Matter. Even so, it’ll still be a while before the standard reaches a reasonable level of maturity and all the usual manufacturers start releasing 100% compatible devices onto the market. Personally, I don’t want the Philips Hue bridge to be compatible with Matter, I want the Philips Hue bulbs to be compatible with Matter and not need the bridge at all. Aqara has done the same thing, announcing that the bridge will be compatible, although rumors are already starting about Matter-compatible devices that won’t need a bridge.

HomeKit apps

Anyway, while I was mulling all this over, I thought I’d do a review of the most common apps, both Home+ V6 (yes, they’re already on version 6), which you know I’ve defended to the death, Controller for HomeKit, which some folks from the Telegram group have also defended to the death, and other apps like Eve’s native app, which as you know shows all devices even if they’re not from their brand. I’m not going to do an in-depth review of each one right now, mainly because I already did that a few months ago, and although Home+ has changed a bit going from version 5 to 6, the improvements they’ve added aren’t much to write home about. I do like that now when you open a smart plug you can see real-time consumption, but you can’t even tell if it’s connected via Bluetooth, Zigbee, or Thread, which is the case with this particular plug. I don’t know, I think Home+ is falling behind a bit, even though a few years ago it was my favorite… maybe it’s because the developer is an idiot and responds terribly when you ask him something or make a suggestion. Yeah, yeah, I know we shouldn’t care what technology it’s connected through. In fact that’s the whole point of Matter, that the manufacturer and technology shouldn’t matter but everything should be able to interact with everything else, no dedicated apps or any of that nonsense… but I don’t know, I like seeing it, both the Eve app and Controller for HomeKit do tell you the devices you have on your Thread network and what each one does: But what I found most interesting is the new feature in Controller for HomeKit that lets you have ‘Advanced Notifications for HomeKit’, which is what I wanted to tell you about today. Thanks to JASF from our Domótica Compatible Telegram group, who let me know about this update since he’s one of the die-hard defenders of Controller for HomeKit… although he did make me ‘study’ for a few days to figure out exactly how this whole thing works.

The new feature is really a kind of combination between HomeKit notifications, Apple’s Shortcuts app, and the Controller folks’ notification server. Watch out for this one though, since we’ll necessarily need to be connected to the Internet if we use this server, so it’s no longer all local, which is one of HomeKit’s key differentiating features. But the basic use of this notification server is for scheduled notifications like ‘On the 1st of every month remind me to do the backup’, something we can also do from Reminders, Calendar, or whatever app we use for that. Of course you can then complicate things a lot more and use counters or the CALL URL service to grab that URL from the notification server and integrate it with other apps like Zapier… but for now, that’s more than we need for this trip. This service reminds me a lot of notifications in Home Assistant, where you can, for example, make it so they only reach one of your devices, treating each one separately, no longer by user like HomeKit does but by a specific device belonging to that user… if my son has an iPhone, an Apple Watch, and an iPad, I can tell it that the location I care about is the Apple Watch’s, even if the iPhone (which is normally what determines location) is at home. Of course you can also create a counter that only notifies you every certain number of repetitions, as with the Controller Notification Server. But the coolest thing about this service is that you can make the notification ‘expandable’ and run actions on it.

With Controller for HomeKit we can now do the exact same thing, which opens up a ton of possibilities we didn’t have before. It’s a way to ‘automate notifications’, meaning I don’t just want to find out about something, I want to do something about it without having to open the Home app, or Controller, or the camera app, or whatever.

Pointless notifications

But the worst thing about this new feature… is that… you won’t believe it… but it comes WITH EXAMPLES!!! Which awaken utterly ridiculous needs!!! Hahaha. Some of the examples might actually be useful, you could set up a reminder like I mentioned before to remind you to back up your automations, a backup you can do from both Controller and Home+ but not from the Home app. That way, if you ever mess up an automation or run into some major problem and lose them, you can restore them. Fine, that can be useful, but in Home Assistant I have the backup scheduled and I only get notified if it fails. I don’t know if you’ve seen that Simpsons episode where a super loud alarm is blaring and Homer shouts ‘THIS ALARM GOES OFF EVERY 3 SECONDS UNLESS SOMETHING IS WRONG!!!!’ Well, same thing here.

The one about making the bed is just wild! How would that even work? Do we stick a vibration sensor in the bed and a counter that resets to zero? Simply based on the nights you spend at home without going out? I’d do it with the bed’s vibration sensor, which sounds more fun, but what if you take a nap? What if you get frisky in the middle of the afternoon? Look, this is one I’m actually going to try out lol Then there are the typical notifications we’ve all set up manually that remind you you’ve left a door open for more than X amount of time, or that you have lights on at home but nobody’s actually home, or that the heating is on but it’s already a gazillion degrees in the living room, which is also unnecessary because you can just automate it to turn off once it hits a certain temperature. If we add to this the new sound-recognition notifications we’ve been talking about these past few days in the Telegram group, basically you can get your device to recognize certain beeps (for example, the washing machine’s) and send you a notification when it ‘hears’ them (Applesfera explains it brilliantly), and you could even set it up so that notification lets you, say, cut the power to the plug straight from the notification itself. Just as I’m one of those people who believes you shouldn’t have to shout across the house or pull out your phone to turn on a light, but that the house should be able to carry out actions based on context, I feel pretty much the same way about notifications: I only want to receive useful ones. Still, this type of notification opens up a whole new world of possibilities since you can now interact with them and trigger actions. I’m making a mental note to write a follow-up post later covering all the real needs I could solve with this kind of action. Could this be the first step toward my definitive return to HomeKit?