
The Home app uses the iPhone camera with Home's built-in OCR tool to quickly recognise codes and enrol hardware.

You're not limited to QR codes, as some devices like our Netatmo thermostat generate HomeKit codes and display them as numbers, with Netatmo's e-ink display working very well. Most of the main consumer IoT vendors already support the HomeKit APIs, and Apple's simple QR code-based enrolment scheme makes it easy to add devices to Home. It didn't take a lot of work to set up much of my home automation hardware with Apple's Home. Using Apple's Home app to manage my office lighting. What's more, most of my existing home automation hardware was supported and could be controlled using Siri with device management from the Home app on my iOS devices. Acting as a £99 hub for Apple's HomeKit automation tools and using Apple's own silicon to handle voice recognition locally, it promised to be the privacy-oriented home assistant that I'd be happy using. Luckily Apple's HomePod Mini came along to save the day. Would I have to rethink my privacy stance and switch to Alexa? But then Microsoft refocused Cortana on its commercial customers and announced that its Invoke Cortana integrations were due to be turned off early in 2021. Still, I could happily control my Hue lights from Cortana, though support for my Netatmo thermostats and Ikea Tradfri lights had to be through maker tools like IFTTT and workflow automation with webhook APIs like Power Automate or Zapier. SEE: Hiring Kit: Python developer (TechRepublic Premium) Sure, I had a couple of Amazon Echoes and a Google Nest Mini to try out those ecosystems, but their over-reliance on in-cloud voice recognition was that bit too much on the creepy side. I had good enough reason: I trusted Microsoft's privacy commitments a lot more than either Amazon's or Google's, and Apple's Home relied on the too-expensive HomePod smart speakers.
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