This is Technology Bytes, episode 75 for August 11th, 2024.
Technology Bytes is a microcast where I share brief bytes on interesting technology.
Enjoy, and here we go.
This week I want to talk about HomeKit, and I know I’ve talked about HomeKit before, but this week I want to cover a different part of HomeKit, and that is what happens when you need to shut it down.
And what does that look like?
What are the steps that we have to go through to re-deconstruct, is the right way to say it, a home?
And so just a little refresher on HomeKit.
So this is Apple’s entry into the smart world of home technology.
And as you know from listening to my microcast, I’ve got a number of items.
It starts with HomePods and lights and door locks and all kinds of things that you can put in your home that rely on smart technology, and all controlled with the Home app on the Apple environment, and that’s where I live.
So I’ve covered before how you set it up, how you add accessories.
I’ve talked about adding light bulbs.
I’ve talked about smart switches.
I’ve talked about smart outlets.
I’ve talked about garage door openers.
I’ve talked about automatic door locks or smart door locks.
So all of those things I have talked about and how to add them and how the steps go to do that.
But what about the opposite?
What happens if you’re moving?
And does the shutdown of a smart home matter when it comes to the order in which we make the necessary steps?
And I’m here to tell you that it does, and the main reason is because when you move, you’re most likely going to add the smart stuff to whatever location you’re moving to, whatever home you’re moving to.
Maybe you’ve purchased a new home, and if you did not remove it properly from the existing, preexisting home, then it can cause trouble for you when you set up the new home.
So I think the first thing that you would want to do when you’re talking about deconstructing a smart home and disconnecting your smart home items from the home itself, from the hub center, and then how do you go about doing that?
Well, the first thing that you need to do is to make sure that you remove the accessories.
And accessories could be light bulbs, door locks, could be all of the things that you’ve added that you run through your home app on your Apple device.
So you need to make sure that you remove those from your home.
You don’t necessarily have to remove them from the app that installed them because sometimes you’ll have to use an app that is made by the manufacturer of the device to get the initial setup.
But you do want to remove it from your home in the HomeKit app.
So the first thing is to go into the accessories and remove them.
Now, this last time I was doing this, just in the last week, I was having some trouble with my Hue lights.
And what I ended up having to do in that environment was I actually had to remove them from the Hue app.
I don’t remember having to do that before.
But then what it did is it automatically disconnected them from the Apple home that I had set up.
I think maybe the better way to do that would be to remove the Hue hub that controls all those lights.
And if you remove that from your home first, then you’ll get a notice that says, removing this removes all the accessories connected to this home, to this hub from your existing home.
And so if you have trouble removing a light that’s a Hue light or other Hue accessory from the Home app, then you can go into the Home app, go to the home settings for the home that you’re dealing with, go into the hubs, find the Hue hub, and you can remove the Hue hub from your home.
And that will remove all the things that are connected to it.
So I think that’s probably just a simple, but I like doing the lights individually first just because then I know what I’ve taken out and where it was and be able to disconnect it from the physical environment that it’s in and not leave any of my smart stuff behind.
So the other thing that I talked about is removing hubs.
And in the Apple environment, there are a number of hubs that can exist.
One is going to be from a third party like a Hue hub in my example, but you also have your other devices that can act as hubs for your smart home.
And it could be an Apple TV, it could be an iPad, it could be a HomePod or anything like that.
So what I found is it’s best to go just like you did with your accessories and individually remove your hubs from your home as well.
Eventually you’ll get to the hub that the Home app has chosen as the main one and you’ll be able to remove that as well.
And then that will really disconnect all of the devices that you have from your smart home.
And so then when you are in the Home app and you’re looking at the smart home that you’re trying to deconstruct, you will see an entry for it, but there won’t be anything to control internal to that home.
And so at that point, you can scroll to the bottom of the home screen in the settings and say Remove Home, and it will come up and say, Do you want to remove this entirely?
And it will no longer be able to talk to the world, all those kinds of things.
Not necessarily scary warnings, but just warnings so you know exactly what you’re trying to accomplish.
And it is what’s happening when you remove the home from the Home app.
And then once that’s removed, then nothing else exists.
So you have no way to control that home if you left any smart things there.
But you’ve also removed all the accessories so you don’t forget any smart things and leave them behind because those are often more expensive than the counterparts.
And that allows you to safely, fairly easily, fairly quickly to dismantle a smart home, not leave anything behind, and then be able to take it with you when you go to a new home.
This was happening to my daughter as she’s moving.
And so I may come back to this when I reset up her new home that she will purchase in the not too distant future and can cover again how we went through the steps the other direction.
Although I think I’ve covered that to some extent.
But this will be from the ground up and we’ll see how that goes.
That is all I have for today.
If you have comments, suggestions, or questions, you can send them to technologybytes at merrickfamily.com Thank you for listening to the Technology Bytes microcast.
And I look forward to the next time we are together taking another bite of technology.
Microsoft Mechanics www.microsoft.com www.microsoft.com
