You can set up ecobee geofencing through the ecobee app directly, or through HomeKit automations – and the HomeKit route is the better one if you have multiple people in the house. Here’s how both work, and why you’d choose one over the other. Two Ways to Geofence an Ecobee Ecobee has its own built-in … Read more
Zuli is dead. The company shut down its cloud services around 2018-2019, the app stopped working, and every Zuli Smartplug out there became a fancy plastic paperweight. If you found this page because your Zuli stopped responding, that’s why – there’s no fix, no workaround, and no one at Zuli to call. The good news: … Read more
Z-Wave and HomeKit are not really competing options – they operate at completely different layers. Z-Wave is a radio protocol (a wireless communication standard), while HomeKit is Apple’s software platform for controlling smart home devices. You can run both at the same time, and plenty of serious home automation setups do exactly that. The confusion … Read more
HomeKit is one of the most secure smart home platforms available – and that’s not marketing. End-to-end encryption, local processing for native devices, and no mandatory cloud dependency set it apart from the budget alternatives that have had embarrassing breaches. That said, the security is only as good as the Apple ID protecting your setup. … Read more
A HomeKit bridge is a translator – it takes devices that speak Zigbee, Z-Wave, or a proprietary protocol and converts them into accessories the Apple Home app can see and control. Without one, any device that isn’t natively HomeKit-certified is invisible to Siri and the Home app. There are two kinds: hardware bridges (a dedicated … Read more
No, you cannot use an iPhone as a HomeKit hub. Never could. The iPhone has always been the remote control, not the hub – and Apple never changed that. If you’ve been searching for a workaround, there isn’t one. You need dedicated hardware. Here’s what actually qualifies and what to buy. What Does a HomeKit … Read more
Smart plugs do one thing – switch power on and off – but that deceptively simple capability maps onto a surprising number of genuinely useful scenarios. Here are 11 uses that go beyond “I can turn my lamp on with my phone” (though that’s fine too). If you haven’t picked a plug yet, our best … Read more
Wink Hub 1 vs. Hub 2 used to be a reasonable question. In 2026, it is not. Wink is a zombie service – barely alive, no active development since 2019, subscription required just to turn your lights on, and a track record of multi-week outages that would make a network engineer cry. If you came … Read more