Hub brings HomeKit to older smart devices

December 01, 2022

Over the years, I've accumulated a few smart home devices -- smart lamp bulbs, security cameras, outlets and the like.

But infuriatingly, very few of them work with Apple's HomeKit. Until now, that is.

A new software update for the versatile Hubitat Elevation hub brings hundreds of Z-Wave and Zigbee devices into the HomeKit ecosystem.

The new Hubitat Elevation software lets the hub serve as a bridge for “countless lights, switches, sensors and other devices that are not natively HomeKit compatible," the company said.

I don't have a Hubitat hub, but with this update, the device goes to the top of my Christmas list.

I've been meaning to get serious with home automation for some time, and making all the older devices I already have compatible with HomeKit is just the incentive I need.

-- Leander Kahney, EIC.

With a new software update to the Hubitat Elevation hub, users can bridge hundreds of Z-Wave and Zigbee devices not normally compatible with HomeKit into their Apple Home app, Hubitat said Wednesday. The Hubitat Elevation software version 2.3.4 update brings HomeKit integration. It lets the hub serve as a bridge for “countless lights, switches, sensors and other devices that are not natively HomeKit compatible,” the company said.

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Tweets o' the day

One more thing ...

"Woz and I are different in most ways, but there are some ways in which we're the same, and we're very close in those ways. We're sort of like two planets in their own orbits that every so often intersect. It wasn't just computers, either. Woz and I very much liked Bob Dylan's poetry, and we spent a lot of time thinking about a lot of that stuff. This was California. You could get LSD fresh made from Stanford. You could sleep on the beach at night with your girlfriend. California has a sense of experimentation and a sense of openness--openness to new possibilities. Besides Dylan, I was interested in Eastern mysticism, which hit the shores at about the same time. When I went to college at Reed, in Oregon, there was a constant flow of people stopping by, from Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert to Gary Snyder. There was a constant flow of intellectual questioning about the truth of life. That was a time when every college student in this country read Be Here Now and Diet for a Small Planet." -- Steve Jobs, Playboy interview, 1985.

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