Controlling your devices
How to take full control of your smart home
So far we’ve followed the process of adding devices
S to the Home app, and assigning them to specific rooms within your home.
But, of course, you also need to be able to control how all your devices work. Different types of devices will provide their own specific controls – such as brightness or colour controls for lights, or temperature and timer controls for a thermostat.
The Home app provides controls for all your HomeKit devices and it’s a great time-saver, as it means that you don’t have to use several separate apps from a range of different manufacturers. You can change the brightness – and even the colour – of your office lights, adjust the volume on your HomePod, and turn off the heating all from within the Home app. And, of course, for even greater convenience you can use Siri voice commands to control these devices without having to lift a finger.
IN THE ZONE
But controlling individual devices is just the start of what HomeKit can do, and the real strength is that it also allows lots of different devices to work together all at the same time. The Home app actually provides several options for controlling multiple devices together. We’ve already seen that the Home app lets you assign devices to particular rooms, but it’s also possible to create ‘zones’ that include a number of different rooms. This way you can quickly activate a set of security cameras in the ‘outside’ zone, or turn off all the lights in the ‘downstairs’ zone when you go to bed at night.