iOS 18.2 Released, New Aqara Gear Leaks, & Apple Readies Custom Chips for Smart Home Devices
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Welcome everybody to another exciting episode of HomeKit Insider. You've got me as always your host Andrew O'Hara. Joining me once more this week is Apple Insider's own Wesley Hilliard. How you doing this week man? Pretty good. Busy week funny enough for this being December. A lot of little bits of news on the Apple side on the HomeKit side and yeah just trying to keep up.

Right, random stuff happening, you know, and we're getting to the holidays. There were the Game Awards last night, which I didn't watch, but I was pretty excited for the Borderlands 4 trailer that was released, so that was pretty sweet. Harrison had some more stuff going on with his eye, but everything is good, so that's been fun. Also, you know, when it comes to smart home-related stuff...

Oh, fun. And typically this is fine. Like when we're, you know, upstairs and normal and he just walks out, it's actually very adorable when he goes down for a nap and then he opens his door and walks in like rubs his eyes a little and goes, hi, hi. It's really cute.

What's less fun is when you're downstairs in the studio recording and he escapes from his room and you don't realize it. He should have been down for a nap. We always lock the doors if we're downstairs or anything. He couldn't get into the basement or anything like that. But he was just sitting on the couch,

And I'm like, I just wish I would have known. So that's a short or a long way of me saying, I'm going to have to put a contact sensor on Harrison's door. So at least I know...

when he is up so like we're alerted right so if i'm not paying attention or if i'm in our room wherever we're aware because it's just you know just concerning you think that he's down completely sleeping and he's just sitting on the couch playing with the toys and the dogs so what did people do before the internet of things i mean come on

A lot of people just put on the toddler-proof door handles and stuff, which you should probably do at night just so he doesn't come out of the room at night or anything. Barricade the men. I don't know what's the appropriate answer. Put a child gate up, I guess. I don't know. But yeah, that's a good idea, using a door sensor. I feel like it's just an easy thing to add. Yeah, a door sensor, maybe a presence sensor if you want to go crazy. But yeah, that would be something to do.

I mean, we have all the cameras around in like the common spaces too, but I just didn't have it on because I was in the middle of a recording because I usually just have those on, you know, running in the background just to keep an eye on them. But, you know, kids, they're fun.

Okay, well, let's get on the news because there was a lot of it this week. Starting off with some Apple stuff, we actually had the release of iOS 18.2, along with the other accompanying updates that all dropped as well. And as far as smart home users are concerned, the first thing that we didn't see is support for robotic vacuum cleaners. We knew that got punted into 2025, but we did get some enhancements to the Find My Network. We talked about this previously on the show, but Apple has been

basically decided to put this whole plan into place to help you find your lost items even more easier, especially with airlines and such. So Apple has this new way of sharing a item's location temporarily. So you basically put into this lost mode. It generates a URL that you're able then to share with anyone that you want to help find.

find your device. So if you left an Airbnb and you want to try to find your passport that's in the couch or something, you can send that location to your Airbnb host and they can see the location of it and find that item for you. But Apple has also worked with airlines to build this into their flow. So if you are flying on a supported airline, you lose something or leave something or your baggage is missing, you can mark it as lost and then

share this location link with the airline, who will then be able to use that to help find your luggage, which is great. Apple has announced a bunch of different partner airlines to start with, including Aer Lingus, Air Canada, Air New Zealand, Australian Airlines, British Airways, Brussels Airlines, Delta Airlines, Eurowings, KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, some of these I don't even know, Qantas, that's in there, I think United, Virgin Atlantic, CX,

several of these. So in the U S I mean, the big ones that I'm going to care about is like Delta and United. Probably the rest won't have it yet. You know, Southwest American, the bunch of others that fly here in the U S but yeah, they've built into their flow. So if you miss a bag, you can mark it as lost, send them that location tracking link and it'll help you track it down. So more reason to have some sort of find my tracker on your luggage when you travel, whether it is an actual air tag or a third party one, definitely something people should keep in mind.

Yeah, this is really cool. I wonder how much the airlines actually like this, or at least the employees, because now people already annoy them going up to the desk saying, I know exactly where my bag is, which, you know, it's good for them to know, but then, of course...

Now there's an extra step of you can help me because I have this technology and the person at the desk probably has no idea what you're talking about. So, yeah, it'll be entertaining to see how this rolls out and how it's handled. But I think it's a good idea definitely to have these transit systems, not just airplanes, but maybe bus companies and other other kinds of companies kind of take care of this will be. Hopefully Apple's talking to these guys and getting some training out there.

Yeah, I think the training is going to be the important part because technically anybody can use this, right? Like you can send this link to anyone to help find those items. But it is nice that it's going to be built into that flow for airlines. But if it's all lost on the bus, you could –

you know, theoretically get that link to someone who could get into the bus driver who could then track something down. But that just, it's not ideal, but it's still at least possible. I think it's probably like a win-lose situation for airlines because on one hand, they don't want to be held accountable for really anything. I mean, when I watched the, you know, the executives in Congress this past week or so that were getting grilled, it was pretty terrible. But, you know,

Now they also should be able to help actually find bags, which should lower their compensation costs. The fact that users will build in a tracking system for them that they don't have to build out at all, literally just someone walk around with an iPhone or iPad and they can find the luggage that's missing, that should help them lower their compensation. So I feel like it's a win-lose for airlines. But yeah, we'll see if it rolls out to more of them because that would be good.

Speaking of fine wine, did you ever find your keys after last week? No. No. No. Somehow just gone. Yeah, they're gone forever. You know, I'll find them maybe one day. I'm sure Harrison has them buried in a secret treasure vault somewhere. Probably. They're with our brown sugar. He went through our pantry and he took our Tupperware of brown sugar. It's like a normal size container.

It's gone. We have scoured the house. How do you lose an entire Tupperware of brown sugar? It's been like a year, man, and we have never found where he put the brown sugar. Kids are interesting. They find secret hidey holes and do all kinds of fun stuff. Oh my gosh, man. It's crazy.

Okay, well, Apple apparently is still working on their Bluetooth Wi-Fi combination chip. So this is an in-house chip, and they apparently have this thing more or less ready for use. This is different from their cellular modem version. This is just for Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, but it is...

Apparently, code named Proxima, and it'll first show up here in 2025. We're going to get it in the new iPhones in the fall, but according to Bloomberg, it's also going to be coming to Apple's 2025 smart home devices, or at least two of them. So that includes the new HomePod mini and the updated Apple TV. It'll arrive in Macs and iPads in 2026.

The kind of thought here is that this could allow Apple's smart home devices to more efficiently talk to each other if it's actually designing the wireless chips for its smart home devices where communication is not just important but essential for super fast communications.

This could allow them to work more seamlessly together. So this will be interesting. I don't know how much of an impact it will end up making on users other than these devices performing very well. But it also does confirm the existence of that new HomePod mini and Apple TV that have also been rumored for quite a while now. I wonder how far this is from just getting another router. And I guess the question is what is a router? Because what if you could...

plug an Apple TV directly into a modem and it just become a router, right? Like I think this is one of those weird things Apple could easily disrupt because right now you talk to somebody just plain Jane and say, Hey, replace your router with this fancy kit from Linksys. And they're like, what are you talking about? I get one for my ISP. So if Apple could step in and say, no, no, no, no,

Plug in your Apple TV to the modem and it'll act as a router and you're good to go. And if that's the case, maybe people understand easier. Don't have to think about it so much, but I could see these embedded technologies, these new Wi-Fi chips turning into something else. I mean, if you have an integrated network across all of your Apple devices and then Thread and then Matter, as long as there's an access point for other devices like your smart TVs, your PlayStations and other devices, you're good to go.

So again, what is a router? So maybe Apple's playing some fun games here. Maybe we're just being hopeful. But what do you think about this Apple TV and HomePod rumor? Do you have any expectations or hopes for these devices other than just like a little chipset upgrade?

I mean, I hope so. We've heard a bunch of different things. Before we get into those a little more, here's my thought for the Wi-Fi router. This is what I think would be the slam dunk situation. Apple makes a new airport device, a main airport device, because you're not going to necessarily plug your Apple TV into a router. Those are into a modem. Those are hidden in a closet or a basement. It's not necessarily where your Apple TV is. So Apple develops an actual airport router.

that plugs into the modem. But then all of your home pods, that smart home display, your Apple TV, all of those act as Wi-Fi mesh nodes and extend that network throughout your home. So you don't have to add anything else and you've just added all these mesh nodes throughout your house. I think that would be a killer thing

Because you do have Apple TVs with Ethernet that you could hardwire as hardwired mesh nodes. And then Apple or then HomePods could be your wireless mesh nodes that would expand your network. I think that would be insanely clutch. They've already got, you know, every all the other technology built in there, such as thread, you know, new routers are incorporating thread into them.

Apple has the pieces there. I think it would be insanely cool to do that. And then you wouldn't have to have any more mesh nodes around your house that are separate devices, like standalone devices. You'd have that already built into the tech that you've got. The only thing I would have a concern with for that – like it's an interesting idea for sure, and I think Apple could maybe overcome it. But –

having to have all these devices act as relays as well would require more radios, which means probably replacing all of them with newer tech that are specifically built to be these nodes, right? You don't want to use the one antenna on your Mac mini to process a request from your home pod, right? Like I, I can see how this would work. I wonder if the technology stack would be too crowded, right? Like,

combining these things. Why would they put it into the Mac Mini necessarily? I'm thinking smart home devices. HomePod, Apple TVs. And I think they could have some growth in there. And Apple could have two versions of the Apple TV like it does now. One regular one and then with the Ethernet thread and also Wi-Fi mesh capabilities. Sure. Like it might be a little bit bulkier, might require a little bit better cooling. But like I could definitely see like that being a direction to go. And I agree like Apple

If you're going to have an Apple TV, for us, there's one upstairs, there's one downstairs, and in the living room, they could very easily be Wi-Fi nodes.

because it would be redundant at that point as long as you know we're not sacrificing network speeds because while we're watching a 4k hdr movie on our apple tv uh the network can't communicate with everything in that room right like there needs to be enough bandwidth for everything to work and i think that's the only reason that's the reason why like there would be an argument for separate nodes but again

Apple could just do this. It's so funny that they left this space right when it was getting so important. And Apple HomeKit routers still irks me to this day that those just kind of disappeared off the face of the earth. But yeah, I'm excited for new Apple TVs and new HomePods.

I think there's a big case for it right now. We're getting into the, we have Wi-Fi 7, we have Matter that just added support for routers that makes all sense for Apple. Apple is literally making its wireless chips and Apple is looking to build out its services. And I think they could offer a lot of services that would tie in directly to a router. I mean, an easy whole home VPN, iCloud, you know, privacy situation. Like there's a lot of stuff that it would be able to do that could just tie into that

iCloud certification. But like you said, HomePod Apple TV, we've had Gurman's app. I think Gurman was talking about the HomePod or the Apple TV being imminent, like literally earlier this year, and that never happened. So I don't know if it actually got punted, if this is a different device, if we're going to see this in fall. I'm not sure. Of course, we're going to get chipset upgrades with this new Wi-Fi Bluetooth chip. We're going to have an updated CPU in there. I think

My guess is that Apple is going to be building this one out for the next three years or so. So I think it's going to have a big focus on matter capabilities. I think it's going to have Apple intelligence capabilities built in. And we're seeing the stuff that I think we're going to see at CES around TVs and AI is going to be huge. I think Apple is going to want to do that with technology.

Their new Apple TV. I mean, I don't even know if this works on Apple TV yet. Maybe you know off the top of your head. But like Apple added new natural language search, which I think is kind of powered by Apple intelligence over on iOS 18.2. So you can search in the TV app and the music app for things just using natural words. And as far as I know, that does not work on Apple TV, but it should. Like that's an even more logical place for it to work. So I think we're going to have a much more powerful chip.

Focus on gaming, Matter, Smart Home, all of that stuff with Apple Intelligence. Yeah, the 18.2 update for HomePods specifically called out natural language processing for music searches. And since it's built on tvOS, I wouldn't doubt that that's also an Apple TV. So,

Should be fine. I do wonder about the Snoopy screensavers because I was updating all of our Apple TV 4Ks in the home, and it turns out requires Gen 2, and it's just, oh, come on. Of all the things to require a different chipset. It's silly, but, I mean, it makes sense a little bit because if they do all that, like, local knowledge thing,

to build into the screensavers similar to how they do it on Apple Watch because it's like aware of all of these things. It's not showing the same thing over and over and all that, yeah. Well, yeah, like it's raining and now the Snoopy screensaver starts raining. You know, it's snowing and now the Snoopy wallpaper is snowing. The other day, so we watched TV until it was pretty late. Like we were both working, Faith and I. We went to bed at like

midnight or something. And I came back out to the living room to get something. And I oftentimes will just leave the Apple TV on and, and then it just shuts off after a few, it's kind of like a little bit of extra light while we're getting ready for bed. Cause all the other lights in the house are off. It's a little bit just like ambient light. And then it turns off after 20 minutes or something like that. And the TV shuts off as well. So we usually do that.

And I came back out to grab something and the wallpaper or the screensaver had switched to Snoopy in the middle of the night going to the fridge and getting like a midnight snack. And I'm like –

That's cute.

And I could see a next generation Apple TV set having more awareness than that even. And not even it being Snoopy, but Apple's AI companion. We keep hearing about this kind of companion bot thing. Imagine walking into a room and having these new HomePod screens sense that you're there. Come on.

I'm going to have this character. I, I, I wonder what it would be though. I, Apple's not going to have a mascot, so maybe it'll just continue to be Snoopy at this point. But, um, because like even companies with mascots have kind of died off. I think, uh, Sony's slowly shifting to Astro bot that used to be sack boy. Right. And so we're seeing these companies kind of embrace these ideas and all of the assistants, lawyers,

lost their mascot-iness. They were just glowing orbs for a while, and now we're getting to these intelligent things that we can talk to, but they're still faceless. And I wonder if there's going to be a company out there that tries to give it a face. Siri's still a waveform. I'm curious, because again, wouldn't it be cool to walk into a room and have this little animated thing going on based on what's going on? And that kind of comes to mind with this Snoopy thing. Maybe again, it just would be Snoopy, but...

Um, I would love for Apple TV screensavers to be more aware, even if it isn't that like, let, if it's raining outside, show me a rainforest, right? Like get, get that integration, get that close and maybe start showing more things like the weather on Apple TV. Maybe this is where we're getting into with these smart displays and, uh, Apple TV is going to be part of it. So, yeah.

Well, there are a few other HomePod rumors. According to Seoul Economic Daily, they say the new HomePod, this is the full-size HomePod, not the mini, will have a 6.7-inch display and be made directly in China. Usually, Apple splits its production between a few different places, often in South Korea. This is one of the few times it's beat out completely all the South Korea firms to be built only in China.

Apparently, it's going to be a low-temperature polycrystalline silicon version of OLED LTPS. And the biggest thing is cost. I guess Apple is worried on volume. HomePod Mini isn't a massive success. I see more people with the Echos and the Google Homes than I do HomePod Minis, even as Apple users. So apparently, China...

companies are able to get this thing down $10, $15 less for this display versus those in South Korea. So Apple made that decision. We'll see. I don't even, it's still vague. Like, you know, what even counts as a HomePod anymore? Is this going to be the smart home display? Cause that display is right in that size, that six to seven inch window. We've also heard that the new like full size HomePod will have a larger display on it and everything. So,

We'll see. But yeah, just more general information as we get closer to the updated versions of all Apple smart home devices. And I shared it on Apple Insider and I want to share it here. I think Min-Chi Kuo is either wrong or seeing like just a piece of the picture. He's a supply chain guy and he's seeing a device that is a smart home related display coming out in late 25.

That is still lining up with what German was saying about the robotic arm attachment for this display. So perhaps close seeing this later device or later accessory in the lineup is

And we're still getting the main guy in March, April, which would be really nice. I'm hopeful for that because especially since lately Ming-Chi Kuo has become a little less reliable as he's kind of fallen into his own kind of blogosphere rather than being this, what was it, TF securities analyst. So I don't know, just something to keep in mind because you were kind of disappointed in that last week and I wanted to point it out like,

He's a good resource, but he is not this perfect predictor. So I'm still hopeful for a spring release for this device. Fingers crossed. And there's a lot that kind of hinges on it, but we'll see how things go. Well, outside of the Apple news, we have some more new devices or at least upcoming devices. So the flick duo is being teased. So if anyone has not seen the flick buttons before, tiny little round buttons about the size of a quarter, but maybe like six quarters stacked on top of each other, little buttons, they go to a hub.

control a bunch of different devices and they are, you know, matter certified and all that. Well, they are teasing the flick duo. It says the button is ready to evolve. I'm not sure necessarily how just adding two is going to evolve, but I'm expecting that we're going to learn more about this at CES and they will show us how the button will evolve. So if you like flick at all, be ready for some CES news there at the beginning of January.

Yeah, that's cool. I still haven't bought a flick. I want to, though. Those buttons are cool. They're the ones you can get the stickers for, right? And put the little music notes and stuff like that. I would love to have a button at my nightstand that just activated the sleep scene that started music and turned off the lights. That's the kind of stuff I want to do. And a little two-button flick would be useful in certain areas, too.

So there's also a new TAPO smart plug out there. It's actually an in-wall set of outlets. It's the P210M.

So P210M, that's the model number. Basically, it does allow you to monitor your energy. I'm not certain if that shows up in the Home app or if that's just through the TAPO app, but this is Matter certified, so it does work with Matter, including Apple Home and all that stuff, but it does monitor your energy as well as allow you to control those outlets independently. Again, we've seen a lot more stuff from the TAPO line recently after they waffled so much on Apple Home. They have committed to

to matter, which is always great to see. Yeah, this is cool. I am still kind of waiting on energy stuff until we get confirmation that it shows up in Apple Home because that's something I definitely want to do in the future is start keeping track of that from Apple Home. And I don't want to buy an integration that I'm going to have to change later anyway.

Yeah, here's here. So this is my guess on how it works is so matter technically supports energy monitoring now, right? That's a newer thing for matter, which was something that was already an offering Apple home. But what's even crazier is Apple home doesn't even do this.

If you want something that monitors your energy, you have to look at the third-party app. So the biggest example of that is the Eve devices. Eve devices will monitor your energy consumption through the Eve Energy, the Eve PowerStrip, all of those. But you have to view that consumption in the Eve app. You can't do it in Apple Home for whatever reason. Maybe they don't think people are going to care about it. I don't know. I think eventually Apple is going to expose that data. It's going to be tied into your grid,

Any other metrics that Apple is starting to provide there, like your clean energy grid, but it's not in there yet. So my guess is eventually right now, it's probably just in the Tapo app. It's probably going to work with matter. And then we need to wait for Apple to add it.

into Apple Home. So it's nice that it's there and capable of it. I think we'll get there, but it's not going to be available right here at launch. That's at least my gut feeling on it. Yeah, I'm still really curious what Apple's going to do with this whole energy thing. I mean, if smart batteries are getting into Apple Home, does that include smart plugs? And how is it going to deal with redundant data, right? If you have a smart switchboard system

And then smart outlets, is it going to be able to communicate between the two and tell you, okay, this switchboard sees total or is it going to somehow mess with us? I, again, I don't want to touch any of this until we get to see exactly how this works. But for me personally, if you own a home, I think the best route would be, and hopefully this is the route Apple takes is,

Instead of replacing every outlet in your house with an energy monitoring outlet, just have the breaker box do it. You just replace you hire an electrician to replace the breaker box with a smart one. And then you'd be able to see per switch per basically region of your home how much energy you're using. And I don't think you need to refine it any further than that. And if you do, that's what these outlets are for.

So it gets really complicated. So right now in my electrical box, I have something called the Sense System, and it actually uses AI. I've had it in there for like a year now. It uses AI to detect what things are.

Right. It actually looks at the power draw patterns and then it uses those to match up with what it knows from other users as well as its data set. And it's able to identify like essentially the waveforms and go, oh, that's your PS5. It's drawing this much power. And once it's able to identify that specific device plugged into an outlet or a surge protector somewhere in your house, it can literally tell you a bunch of different data on it, including how much power it uses per year, all that stuff. Right.

It can even tell you when devices turn on or off, all just by being plugged into your breaker box. So when I turn on my microwave, I get an alert. You do not have to get all these alerts, I promise. But I get an alert that says my microwave turned on, and then it says your microwave turned off. I set these up because I was curious at how accurate it would be, and literally every time I do it, that's one device plugged into an outlet, and it's able to detect that alert.

that just surge in power and identify what device it is. So it's possible to do some of these things from the breaker box on a per device basis without having to do anything crazy. And that's not even without replacing my breaker box. That's literally just plugging something in to the breaker box to do it without needing anything.

Right.

But I think at least in the beginning, we're going to have rules, right? You're going to be able to name that outlet washer, and then you're going to have your actual washer. And then you're going to be like, hey, when washer turns on, which one of these, or turn your washer on at this specific time.

I think you're right where the outlets will be unnecessary. And I think it makes more sense to put it into the devices themselves, at least the bigger ones, uh, like appliances, which we're already getting. Yeah. We've mentioned it before. Uh, but I, if I had to guess a little bit about where this is going, um,

It's not somewhere you're going to live. You're not going to stare at this grid of information, but it's going to be good to have, especially for power searches. You kick a breaker, what caused it or alerts, like you said. But more specifically, I would treat it almost like the vitals app where it's gathering data every night and it's getting a consistent, this is your average. And then when you do something that is different from your average, it will alert you. So it's,

You're shifting to heating in the winter and you're using more electricity. Maybe it can give you better gauges of when to run that based on the green electricity versus dirty electricity grid and pricing. It can get really smart really fast with very little information.

And I think that's what's going to be very powerful if you're integrating this with a smart home that is storing its own electricity. On top of that, I could see a lot of really cool automation and opportunities and a lot of energy saving and financial savings involved as well.

Yeah.

this much or less instead of easy rules like that. So your car would basically always be topped off, but it would only charge in those certain times unless you manually overrode that. So I think there's some really cool things that'll shake out. It's going to take some time to get there. Well, next up in the list, we have just like a few, all these leaks from Aqara. I don't know if these are going to be CES leaks or other time, but apparently CyberMod Studio, who we've now been talking about quite a bit on the show, he's over on Twitter and has had a lot of

like random leaks on things. And I think most of these things are new because I don't remember them. So let's talk about them. I'll save the one I like most for last. So first one, the new presence sensor is coming out. It is the FP300. That's all we know, but apparently they're working on a new presence sensor with model number FP300.

There's a few lights and switches or yeah, lights and light bulbs and switches that are coming to various markets. They all look like they're going to be, I believe Zigbee. So they're going to work with their hubs, just another, you know, additional additions to the Akara lineup.

Then there is the Panel Hub S1+. This is very cool. And I'm a little jelly that it's not coming here to the U.S. because it's EU only. It's going to be Matter Over Wi-Fi. It'll have a built-in Zigbee hub. It'll have a proximity-based screen. Everyone's acting like Apple is brilliant for doing this proximity-based screen. The Nest was doing this recently.

12 years ago or something where it showed you a big number when you were far away and you got close and the number got smaller and showed you more information. So that's nothing crazy new.

But a car is doing the same thing here with this proximity based display that will show you a different dashboard or different information as you get closer. So they'll do that. My eco B does that as well right now. And then it'll be a 6.9 inch wall mounted display. It'll have video streaming hub functionality, all this kind of stuff. It just looks super cool. And if you're in the Akara ecosystem, like you have like the locks, you have the doorbell, those types of things, they're gonna be able to video stream directly to this hub.

which is super cool. So again, I like this wish it was coming here to the States, but apparently to that European market. Okay. Let me know what you think about those West before we talk about that last one on the list. Cause that's the one I think is most cool. Yeah. I wonder if they'll bring that to the U S or some version of it. And that, that kind of brings to mind if Apple's making this little monitor device, this display, uh,

What are competitors going to do and how is that going to integrate? And this is, again, where matter becomes so important because like upgrading your Acara lock, we keep not Acara, the level lock is so important because in the future, if you see Apple's display, it's not going to do what I want. Then you see Acara, then you see these other companies. You

You'll want to be able to choose between them, and Matter is what's going to allow your entire smart home to migrate between these devices. Or you could have multiple different kinds of monitors throughout your home. Maybe you want a permanent powered monitor, and it's from Aqara, but you still want all of your smart home devices on it that are Matter equipped.

equivalent if it's home kit only probably won't show up there right so that's something to keep in mind and that's why matter is so important going forward this interoperability uh is going to be interesting and i hope this uh kind of panel more companies can make stuff like that to compete i agree we've seen this type of tech with brilliant and they struggled their devices were still fairly expensive and i know they have more affordable ones coming but they were like

too techie for the time. They needed more affordable versions that also had the, the abilities of matter because you couldn't use them. They had to have individual integrations with all these brands because otherwise you couldn't control them from a display.

Apple Home is great, but you can only set things up as buttons. So the Brilliant panels would work in HomeKit, but only for the lights that were connected to that switch. I can't see a HomeKit video feed. I can't control a HomeKit device in another room or HomeKit lock. Nothing like that because Apple didn't expose control to anything outside of just apps on the iPhone.

Obviously, a big part of that is security, but Matter is going to enable that. If it's a Matter-enabled device, you'll be able to have a Matter controller that can do all of those things. This is probably one of our first ones of those, and I think Brilliant will get there after they were saved and are back-selling devices. They have that new Gen 2 device coming out that's much lower cost with, I assume, is going to be Matter integrations to be able to control all these devices.

Brilliant may be that company that we're looking for if it's not a car or someone else, but I think it's interesting. Right. It's weird. Go ahead. Go ahead.

I was going to say, it's weird because right now I'm starting to see it more of in my router. I can expose all of my Matter equipment. I can go to Nanoleaf and see all the Matter equipment. I can go to Aqara and see all of it, right? And in Apple Home, there are all these things and you just hit a switch in the settings and any of their options to re-enable.

reset to turn back on their radios and attach them to different matter things and it all just works they're all communicating on the same channels and exposed in different apps I think this universal compatibility is it's very nice it's good for the smart home and it's going to help us definitely moving forward

It's one of the areas with Matter that end users are going to start to see the benefits. It's been a slow rollout so far, but when we have Matter controllers, when we have these new accessory types, those are going to be the tangible benefits that we're going to get out of Matter. Okay, the last one from a car that is apparently coming out. This looks very cool. It is the Camera Hub G5 Pro.

This is a really slick looking outdoor or indoor camera. It'll have both POE and Wi-Fi versions. I know people have been asking me. I have gotten questions on POE home kit cameras. Here you go right here. POE or Wi-Fi outdoor water resistant includes.

Apple HomeKit secure video support out of the box HSV over PoE is going to be super cool on top of that true color night vision. They promise support for matter when the video secure camera stuff is integrated in matter. This will get that update.

I always say don't buy now for a promise of the future, but Acara has been good with their Matter updates. They've been a big supporter of it in all of their recent products, so I would fully expect this to include Matter support. They were some of the first ones to adopt it on their other products.

It makes sense we'll see it here. But it also extends your smart home outside more because it is a Zigbee hub as well. So you can put this outside, run it over PoE or whatever, or USB power, and then you can also extend it with any outdoor Zigbee devices, but you're going to have an outdoor antenna like that. This looks very cool to me. This essentially to me is like the first MatterPromised camera, but it also has those firsts, kind of firsts for Apple Home as well. So this looks pretty cool.

Yeah, I'm always welcoming more different kinds of cameras. Really, honestly, can't have enough because every space that you want to monitor has different needs, right? But the PoE is really cool too. I mean, if I ever build a home, that would be the first thing I would do is run these things everywhere anyway. So it's nice to have a camera option for that. And can't go wrong with more Zigbee hubs, more radios. I'm interested in the TrueColor Night Vision because...

The night vision on a lot of these cameras are okay, but not great. I still need to invest in getting the spikes that you can put around the home outside to extend IR blaster radius so you get better night vision. But it's always good to see the cameras themselves getting a little bit better at night vision. But HSV, so HomeKit Secure Video over Matter...

Well, by default, it'll be HomeKit secure video, right? Like right now, you buy this, it'll have HomeKit secure video. And then we're going to have MatterSport. When we had, you know, the CSA CEO on and I was trying to ask him about, you know, where is Matter – what's Matter going to do with cameras?

He just comes in. It's a member organization. They have to decide. He can't decide for them. So we don't know exactly what HomeKit Secure or what the Matter group is going to do with Matter or with that video. We don't know the resolution, 1080, 2K, 4K. I'm hoping – I think it's going to be 4K would be my guess. But we don't know that. We don't know if it's going to be just streaming or recording. My guess is we're going to have –

streaming up to 4K, and then it's going to let the member organizations offer storage for any Matter-enabled cameras. That way they're still able to make money online

They're able to do their own analysis on video, whether it's like, you know, on your local home hub or in their clouds, whatever it's going to be. But they'll be able to do their own AI analysis on these things. But I think you're going to have streaming for cameras. It'll stream to, you know, different devices, like maybe like that, a car wall display, an Apple smart home hub, all that stuff. And then each member organization, Samsung, Google, Apple will all offer their own

recording and storage options for those cameras. Well, how does HomeKit Secure Video play into this? Because I've noticed originally HomeKit Secure Video, was it not meant to say this is a completely separate system that...

When you install it in HomeKit, it's encrypted video feed, 1080, and it's going to iCloud. Like, it gets all those benefits. But one of the benefits was it not kind of an additional privacy thing where you know that the parent company isn't getting any information either. How does that change when, right now, in Aqara or Tapo, I can go to their apps and see the same camera feed, but it's separate from Apple HomeKit, and

Is it now – like how do those two sit beside each other anyway, these different types of video? I think my guess is that Matter will be essentially still based off of Apple's stuff. So Apple Home was kind of the basis for Matter in many ways. The pairing process, the security, all of that was Apple. And then the same thing I think is what's going to happen here with the Matter VFX.

I think it's going to be largely based off of Apple's HomeKit secure video, but better. So Matter, one of the big things that they've always supported has been local control and everything. So I think that's one of the things we're going to see. It's going to be the same as Apple secure video. Like when you're in your home, it'll all stream locally.

End-to-end encrypted, private secure, no one else has access to it. And that's what Matter's going to do. I think it's going to be all local. No one else will have access to it. It's not going to be on any cloud servers at all. It'll just be going through your devices. So if you are at home, it'll go directly between your devices. If you're outside of the home, it'll go through your MatterHub to...

your phone or whatever to stream it that way. And then if you want to do anything else, if you want to do like record this video, I think every provider is going to have their own options for that. So you would be sharing it with those companies, whether you're sharing it with a Cara, like a car could offer, you know, storage for that. And, and you could go that way and they would have access to it, or you can go directly through matter and record it into Apple home.

which would be tied to your iCloud plan and those storage options. So I think it'll still be just as secure as HomeKit Secure Video, but it's going to go...

Peer-to-peer and then encrypted, and then every platform will have their own recording and storage options, plus their own analysis on it. Because you're going to have the way Apple's HomeKit Secure Video works is it's processed locally on your home hub to determine if there's a person or anything like that. They're already doing that AI analysis on your Apple TV. It's not great. Maybe that future Apple TV with Apple intelligence will be better at it, but...

Okay. And while we wrap up the show, I had one question for you. I wondered if you could answer for me. So springing this on you, it's not in the show notes. We are thinking about getting air purifiers for our main spaces. And I've been looking into a couple. I have an Air Versa for my bedroom right now. And the SmartMe E1 that we discussed before that you hang on the wall with the art in it.

It seemed like good options. But yeah, we're looking at HomeKit compatible and we have four cats. So just want to try and clean up the air a little bit as we dust and clean around the house as well. You have any options that would be good to look at?

Um, yeah, I mean, none of them are really bad options. The two that I probably like the most for different reasons. So one is the Molecule Mini. I mean, this one's like sold through Apple. It looks bespoke. I think it's like battery powered too, so you can move it around. There's only like one other one that I recall that is battery powered that actually looks very similar to the Molecule. That's a little pricey though. The other option that I really like has been the Miele.

they recently added Apple Home Support and they specifically have multiple filters that are all designed based on your home. So if you have a lot of pets, they

They actually have one that's designed like for cats. It'll help reduce the smell of the ammonia in their litter box and things like that. So you can actually choose the filter based on your environment. So I think that's really cool as well. Those would be my – probably my two big ones for different reasons. Otherwise, I feel like they're all very similar in terms of like –

performance and features just slightly different designs. Yeah. It's a, it's a HEPA filter. I mean, when you pass air through a HEPA filter, it's there, it's all going to operate identically. So just how they're designed might be a little bit different, but yeah, I, it goes along with, uh, you know, there you go. We have a cat stretching in front of me one. That's got the, the cat one stretching. That's perfect for October. Hmm.

Or just cat. We have a black cat that looks just like that. No, it goes along with a kind of a greater home plan. Lately, we've been kind of...

Moving to different things to try to have a cleaner, healthier home along with being a smart home. Rather than it just being technology, we've been looking into non-toxic cleaning supplies, stuff like that. So just kind of looking to other ways to make our home feel cleaner and fresher. And I figured an air purifier. So one last question for you.

So you use air purifiers in your home. What's your feel for size versus the space that it's in? Do you need a gigantic, like industrial size air purifier for a living room space? That's a good question. Very good question. Um, it,

It's tough. I will say we have a lot of animals. We are not your average house in terms of animals. Chickens. So I over air purify because I feel like we need to. I overcompensate because I'm perpetually worried. I am nose blind and don't realize that our house smells. So I specifically have – like in our living room, I typically have two air purifiers going.

We have a larger, you know, open floor plan type house. So we have like our large living room, which goes into our kitchen, which goes into the dining room. That's all basically one massive ish room. So I have one air purifier by the bunny cage. And then I have a, a fairly large blue air. I really like them a lot, even though they're not Apple home, they do an app and everything, but it's probably the largest one that I have in the house. And it's like right in the middle between the kitchen and the living room. And that runs four,

the most air through it. I feel like that one makes the biggest difference. So for that open area, that's what I use because it helps in the kitchen when it gets like smoky or anything. It helps with any animal smells that are in the main room.

It is the biggest one that we have. Other than that, like all the bedrooms are the normal smaller sizes. Sure. But I do have a larger one in the biggest living space. I got you. Yeah, and it always helps, of course, listeners to use proper filters and change them at your main induction system. So keep that in mind. The ones I like –

that they don't really have in Apple Home much are the ones that have swappable, washable pre-filters. So I actually have two blue air ones, one in our bedroom and then one in the living room. And they have like mesh exterior that you pull off, wash, and then put back on.

And it blocks a lot of your typical stuff from even getting to the filter, which I do think helps the filters last longer. So they call them like pre-filters, but essentially it's like a legging for your air purifier. You can change the colors and stuff. But you would be shocked by the amount of like dust, dander, and hair that collects on these things. And with your other air purifiers, those are going into your air purifier. And you can't really –

Stop it from doing so. So I think that has been also kind of important to help extend that lifespan. Also not the greatest at swapping them all the time. So life gets busy, like just washing those. At least change your air tag batteries more often and you'll be okay. Okay. This has turned into the judgment hour. Wes. Uh-huh.

Well, I hope that helps everybody else. Let me know if you guys have your own questions right in. We'll answer them on the pod. We're getting to the end of the year here. It's been great. So thank you, everybody. Do what you guys do best. Give this podcast 5, 10, 100 star review on your podcast player of choice. Check out the lovely video version of this over at youtube.com slash home kit insider. Otherwise, we'll catch you guys in the next episode.