Besides the lights we have now a D-Link Omna 180 HomeKit compatible camera connected to the system. This gives us the possibility to keep an eye on our living room. We can also use the sensors to turn on the lights.
Our home just got smarter
The Apple Home-app in iOS 10 lets you control any “Works with Apple HomeKit” accessory. You can organize your accessories by room, manage multiple accessories at the same time, control your home with Siri, and more.
Our domotica adventure has started with a Philips Hue color ambiance starter kit, including a Philips Hue-Bridge and 3 lamps. The Hue-Bridge is connected to our Apple AirPort Express in the livingroom, using a network cable and therefore visible in our WiFi-network. The Hue-app is connected with the Hue-Bridge. Than we’ve put the 3 lamps in existing armatures and these became visible in the Hue-app. By connecting the Hue-app with the Home-app, the lamps are also visible overthere.
Meanwhile, the number of lamps has been expanded. In the kitchen are three lamps (containing white ambiance lamps) on the cabinets and hangs a color lightstrip under the kitchen cabinets, above the sink. In the office is a lamp between our desks containing a white ambiance lamp.
The house is divided into 4 rooms; lounge, dining area, kitchen and office. The respective lights are part of such a room. There are also a number of scenes. Using scenes you can switch on/off all included lamps at once and set the style depending on the type of scene in terms of color and intensity.
One of our iPads is configured as a hub, so when outside our WiFi network we still can operate the lights, via iCloud.
MobileMe vs iCloud email alias
I was a satisfied MobileMe user and had configured so called email aliases. These were some external POP email accounts ( 5 in my case ) read by the MobileMe service and pushed to my iPhone, iPhone and MacBook.
Now I have migrated to iCloud for a while, but there the concept of email aliasses has a totally different meaning. They are now just alternate addresses ( max 3 ) for your Apple ID ( your @me.com email address ) that you can use to make online purchases for example. However, the old settings also seem to just work; the POP addresses are still just read, without the ability to configure them in the iCloud email preferences.
Don’t ask, just enjoy.
But sometimes it’s not quite right. The emails are properly read and forwarded to my iPad2 and MacBook Pro, but not ( always ) to my iPhone4. While the settings are just the same.
Settings -> Mail, Contacts, Calendars -> Fetch New Data -> Push
Turn this setting on the iPhone4 temporarily into Fetch and after a short time into Push again. It might be a solution … fingers crossed.
iPhone4 iOS v5.0.1
iPad2 iOS v5.0.1
MacBook Pro OS X Lion v10.7.2
upgrade MacBook, iPhone & iPad
I’ve upgraded my MacBook Pro to Mac OS X 10.7.2 Lion and my iPhone4 & iPad2 to iOS5.
My email, agenda, contacts etc. cloud service MobileMe is moved into iCloud.