With access to all your compatible smart devices, it’s good
to know the Home app isn’t just a bunch of on/off switches- you can use it to fine-tune your smart lights’ colours too.
48 | MACFORMAT | APRIL 2020 macformat.com @macformatRemote access to smart kit
Turn your iPad or Apple TV into a remote controlled home hub
IT WILL TAKE
10 minutesYOU WILL LEARN
How to remotely
control your smart
home techYOU’LL NEED
You’ll need an iPad
or Apple TV and
your iPhoneThe Home app may be even
more clever than you first
thought... If you’ve got one,
several or many HomeKit-
enabled devices and an Apple TV or iPad
that’s running the latest version of its
operating system, you can control your
home from your iPhone or even your Apple
Watch – and you don’t need to be in your
home to make it happen. The trick is to turn
your Apple TV or iPad into a home hub.It works brilliantly but there are a couple
of caveats. First, your home hub device must
be on your home Wi-Fi network and it needs
to be powered on: a hub can’t make things
happen if it’s unreachable. And if your
HomeKit devices connect via Bluetooth
instead of Wi-Fi, you might need to move
them or your hub: Bluetooth is a relatively
short-range technology and some devices
need to be fairly close to the hub in order
to communicate with it.Home hub
In this tutorial, we’ll show you the steps for
setting up your iPad as a HomeKit home hub
and creating some automation. Setting up
your Apple TV as a home hub is even simpler- go into its Settings > User Accounts, make
sure you’re signed into iCloud with the same
Apple ID as your iOS device, and your Apple
TV will do the rest. We’d also recommend
disabling sleep mode on your Apple TV;
officially it shouldn’t make any difference, but
we’ve found that Apple TV doesn’t respond to
our remote requests when it’s having a nap.
Carrie Marshall
Genius tip!
You can combine
multiple smart devices
into Rooms or Zones in
the Home app. You can
then create automation
for that Room or Zone.APPLE SKILLS iOS software