When you have home automation devices, you find you’ll need to have a mobile device handy to be able to control your devices. It’s not always convenient to carry a tablet or phone with you, and there may be people in the home – guests or children – who won’t have a mobile device with the controller app. If you use Apple’s HomeKit as your home automation controller, you can add an Eve Button from Elgato to activate three different scenes (already defined in your HomeKit system) with a button push.
The Eve Button has a contoured aluminum housing, and looks attractive in your home environment. It measures 2.1″ x 2.1″ x 0.5″ and uses replaceable CR2032 batteries. It connects via BLE to your HomeKit hub, so it won’t need a bridge to connect to your home system. Once it’s connected via Bluetooth to the Apple TV or iOS device you use as your HomeKit hub, you can set one scene with a single button push, a second scene with a double push, or a third scene with a long push. For example, you could get ready for movie night with a long push of the Eve Button to turn off the kitchen lights (after you’ve popped the corn), turn on the projector, and turn on the background lighting you use when watching movies.
The Eve Button is available now for $49.95 from Elgato, or it will soon be available from Amazon.
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Since this is a preview you won’t be able to answer this question but I wonder how responsive the button is? I know my Home application commands to my HomeKit devices are executed instantaneously. Some of these stand alone buttons can be pretty laggy.
They’ve offered us one to review, so maybe we’ll be able to answer your question at some point if someone on the team wants to review it.
I’m not on the team – maybe a guest review would be a nice change of pace? 😎 I do have a bit of a HomeKit setup with 3 vendor devices interacting and some automation.
If no one on the team bites, I’ll consider it.