There are many fans of Apple devices, I myself prefer to use an Apple tablet than other manufacturers, and of course there are a lot of reasons for this, they are all different, everyone has their own, but if you still have such devices at home, then you need to do something with them and use them somehow.

Of course, Apple's voice assistants are not very convenient, they practically don't buy such speakers from us, and in principle the problem is that initially, of course, Siri understood much worse than the same Yandex assistant, and of course now, even in principle, I don't like how Siri works, for example, so I still want to build the system so that the voice assistant understood well and didn't need to come up with any specific phrases for this.

Voice assistants from Apple are not so popular with us, of course they buy more speakers from Yandex, and I basically have several stations from Yandex, and of course Siri initially understood the Russian language much worse, and now the answers are not even always adequate, and in principle control via Siri is also some kind of it's not very convenient, and of course in this regard, Yandex is much better configured, focused on the Russian language, and you can speak more freely and understand the speakers much better.

But still, of course, Siri is more focused on the English language initially, but since they are still sold around the world in more numbers than Yandex speakers, so you probably shouldn't expect the quality of Russian language support from them.

Many manufacturers, of course, strive to support the Apple ecosystem, but in principle it is quite expensive to certify devices, and for example, Xiaomi devices themselves are mostly not supported, their work through Apple is not supported, and Tuya basically does not work through Apple, but Xiaomi has a separate Aqara sub-brand, which of course is primarily focused on on the foreign market, and just integration is provided in it, and gateways from Aqara are mainly integrated with HomeKit, of course, and can transfer all devices there and control them via Siri, or simply using an iPhone or iPad.

I use two iPads, they basically work as smart home dashboards now, because they are no longer very new, and in principle they probably won't be able to do anything related to the smart home system anymore, but I tried to make it so that I could connect the use of Siri, for this I had to forward it to Homekit on these iPads all devices are from the smart home system, then Siri can give commands and control devices from these iPads, but the iPad itself does not hear very well, that is, you need to be close enough to it and speak loudly so that it works accordingly and for example from some distance, there are about two meters.

Already it doesn't recognize the command and you need to get close to it, this is inconvenient, so I tried it and the answers in principle are not very clear to Siri, it somehow doesn't always respond correctly to commands and performs actions incorrectly, and therefore I didn't actually use this function, because after all, I have a problem with Siri.

The main usage is focused on Yandex.

Of course, the Apple ecosystem is advertised in such a way that in order to be able to use these devices connected respectively there to a specific phone or iPad, or Apple TV for example, and then you can just manage it locally without using any clouds and this in principle works, but in fact there is no big point in this, and if in principle, everything works and the Internet works, then of course such functions are not particularly needed, they certainly affect the speed, for example, if you use zigbee, then of course it will work locally in principle, let's say the Aqara gateway already executes commands locally, without using clouds, and if you need some more complex scenarios run, then only in this case accesses the cloud and, accordingly, there may be some delay.

The Apple Home Kit interface itself is not very convenient, of course they say that it is so userfriendly, but in fact it is quite monotonous there, now for example in the Yandex Smart Home application, it is very similar there.

Of course, apparently they still make it a little different, but the general logic is the division of devices into rooms, by device types, by groups, of course this can be done in HomeKit and, accordingly, in other ecosystems, in principle, is also supported now, so to say that this is some kind of direct advantage for Apple you can't.

From the point of view of writing scripts, they are also gradually developing this topic, that is, there are different options for writing these scripts, but I don't think that any direct serious use in a real smart home will be useful, anyway, for example, Yandex is developing much more dynamically now and there are also quite a lot of ways to write there, and if all the same if you use different devices, different manufacturers, and not just those that support homekit, then it will be much more convenient to write a script in a different ecosystem, for example, than to do it directly on Apple.

Well, in order to throw some devices in HomeKit that are not supported by default, you can use, for example, integration into Home Assistant, it basically works well, it can throw sensors, devices, and cameras, and in principle it will all work quite reliably, and even works quite quickly, but it itself setting it up is certainly not very simple, that is, you need to install a special integration module separately, and then it has two options for connecting to HomeKit, this is to use Home Assistant as a bridge, that is, it will actually appear as some gateway in HomeKit, and then all devices will be forwarded through it, but it turns out that a lot of devices are being sent, in fact, all of them from Home Assistant, and if they are there like I have, let's say 30 pieces, and these are still different sensors, and for example a push-button switch is presented as three different switches, and then you will need to sit for a very long time, the last time I did 50 devices there, separate them there, already configure them in HomeKit for different rooms, because somehow the rooms were not transferred to HomeKit, indicate that I'm going to use this device, how to actually activate it manually, which of course takes a very long time, and any reconfiguration of the device will also need to be repeated, and if, for example, the device is no longer supported in Home Assistant, for example, I turned it off, switched it, reconnected it or somehow changed it, then in HomeKit, it will not appear or change, and you will need to manually delete of course all these inactive devices, which is not easy at all and really takes a lot of time to set up.

There is a second mode, it is of course a little more comfortable in this regard, that is, you can choose separately not as a bridge, but manually select each device and say that this device should appear in the Apple ecosystem, but then they also work well in principle, all the parameters of these devices also appear, but then you will need to- first and in Home Assistant, specify manually that this device needs to be transferred and then connect each device separately to HomeKit, enter the code of this device.

In general, this is a very long and tedious operation, and I still haven't been able to transfer everything there even 10 devices, because I reinstalled Home Assistant several times.

I was reconfiguring it, and this integration had to be completely reconnected again, which is very time-consuming, so now they are just hanging waiting for me to pair with HomeKit, but I probably will never get to this setting, because there is no point in it at all.

And of course, there are enthusiasts who are completely trying to build on the Apple ecosystem, probably somewhere abroad this is a completely conscious choice and you can really focus on this solution, but we still have it quite difficult and still there are other solutions for a smart home that are more convenient.

Automation in a smart home should be useful and create additional comfort, but sometimes everything goes wrong… The reasons for this, and how to configure everything, see on my channel.