Helping you Build your Smart Home
A HomeKit air purifier shows up in the Apple Home app next to your lights and thermostat, so you can turn it up with Siri, check the air quality from your phone, or have it switch to sleep mode at bedtime. The catch is that most of the big purifier brands (Levoit, Coway, Blueair, Winix) … Read more
Does eufy work with HomeKit? Yes, but only on a short list of models. Eufy HomeKit support covers the eufyCam S3 Pro, the Indoor Cam E30, a few older cameras and three Matter smart locks, while most of eufy’s current cameras and doorbells don’t work with Apple Home at all. No eufy camera supports Matter, … Read more
A thermostat only knows the temperature where it hangs, which is usually a hallway. If the upstairs bedroom runs four degrees warmer or the home office is always cold, the hallway reading doesn’t help. A thermostat with remote sensor support fixes that: you put a small wireless sensor in the room you care about, and … Read more
The best indoor security camera for your home depends on three things more than on resolution: which smart home platform you already use, whether you’re willing to pay a monthly fee to keep recordings, and how much privacy you want from a camera that sits inside your living room. Get those right and a $45 … Read more
Bird Buddy and Birdfy are the two smart bird feeder brands most people end up choosing between. The Birdfy vs Bird Buddy decision mostly comes down to what you want from the feeder: sharp bird photos in a polished app, or more video, more feeder styles and automatic bird ID without a yearly fee. Both … Read more
You don’t need a new fan to control it from your phone or with your voice. There are four ways to make ceiling fans smart: a smart fan switch on the wall, a switch that runs the fan and the light separately, a small module inside the fan’s canopy, or a bridge that learns the … Read more
The best bird feeder camera isn’t the one with the biggest number on the box. Almost every model now shoots 2K or 4K, so the differences that matter are elsewhere: who identifies the birds for you (and whether that costs a monthly fee), whether the feeder can keep itself charged where you hang it, and … Read more
If you’re working out how to install security cameras at home, the good news is that most of them are a DIY security camera installation that needs nothing more than a drill, a screwdriver and a ladder. The order matters more than the tools. Set the camera up in its app first, check the signal … Read more
Does Ring work with HomeKit? Not officially. Ring has no native Ring HomeKit support for any of its products, and no Ring device supports Matter, so there’s no built-in way to add a Ring doorbell, camera or alarm to the Apple Home app. The only way in is a third-party bridge such as Homebridge or … Read more
Does Nest work with HomeKit? Partly. No Nest product has native HomeKit support, but two Nest thermostats, the Nest Thermostat (2020) and the Nest Learning Thermostat (4th gen), join Apple Home through Matter. That’s the only official Nest HomeKit connection Google offers. Nest cameras, doorbells, Nest Protect and older Nest thermostats have no official path … Read more