Hi all, got a question of what I’m intending to do.
In my apartment I have roughly 12 lights total across all rooms. And I want to be able to do something like “Hey Siri turn off all my lights” to turn them all off, or “Turn on all lights”, etc.
So I’m assuming I have to use Home kit with iot light switches, but where do I even start?
If you have light fittings with removable light bulbs, I’d suggest buy one or two smart bulbs to ‘test the waters’, and see if it’s what you want. You can stick to white light only bulbs for simplicity or try RGB bulbs.
You’ve got two main options in the long run: smart bulbs, and smart switches. The main connection/communication protocols are wifi, zigbee, z-wave, and bluetooth. Here’s a very brief list of pros and cons for each:
Smart bulb pros:
Cons:
Smart switches pros:
Cons:
You can use a smart switch and smart bulb together, if you find the right switch. If you combine a Zigbee based switch and light bulb, you can decouple the wall switch from the relay and bind it to the light bulb. Doing this allows you to turn off the wall switch, send a turn off command to the bulb, all while leaving the bulb powered on.