HomeKit makes Ikea’s cheap buttons and motion sensors more powerful

IKEA’s new $ 9.99 / € 7.99 / £ 6 Trådfri shortcut button and the current $ 14.99 / € 12.95 / £ 12 Trådfri motion sensor recently received HomeKit support, much to the delight of many Apple device owners. Importantly, moreover, it is cumulative for the most part, allowing IKEA devices to work with the best features of the IKEA Home Smart while layering on Apple’s best.

I have been testing both IKEA home smart devices for the past few days and while the setup is predictably buggy when they are up and it is awesome, especially for the price.

Motion sensors designed to work with HomeKit are not cheap. They range in price from $ 21 to $ 57. From this roundup I more. The popular motion sensor from Philips Hue, for example, is more capable but costs $ 40, or nearly three times that of IKEA’s sensors, and both require a hub device to communicate with HomeKit. The Hue Bridge costs $ 59.99 while the Ikea Gateway costs $ 29.99, although they are often discounted in bundles with compatible lights and switches. An Apple Home Hub is also required, which can be a HomePod, Apple TV, or iPad.

There is not another product in the world of HomeKit like Ikea’s shortcut button, so the pricing is hard to compare. Some people will reuse the four buttons on the $ 24.99 Hue Dimmer Switch to do HomeKit automation, but it’s not really the same, and the Akara button is hard to find. IKEA designed its shortcut button to operate the same view and that’s it.

IKEA shortcut button

IKEA shortcut buttons are scattered around the house as dedicated controllers for individual or groups of devices. Place all lights next to the bed to turn off, for example, without yelling at a smart assistant or launching an app. Put another one in the kitchen to play your favorite Spotify playlist on Sonos speakers.

Magnetic buttons include a metal mounting bracket that can corrode into a wall or attach to the double-sided tape found in the box for a less permanent option. They also ship with six stickers: three printed with icons representing night, lights, and dawn, and three spaces for you to photograph yourself.

Photo by Thomas Riker / The Reporter Door

Shortcut buttons can be assigned operations with cumulative results in both Ikea Home Smart and Apple Home Apps. This is a bit misleading (and potentially contradictory), but mixing the worlds of IKEA and Apple makes the shortcut button more powerful.

I defined a “Good Night” shortcut button in the Apple Home app that I placed on a shelf above my bed. A regular press turns off seven smart lights (a mix of Ikea and Hue) and four Sonos speakers. A decorative filament night light in the bedroom has a long press current at 10 percent brightness. To achieve these results, I had to assign a “View” to the shortcut button in the IKEA Home Smart App and also assign an “Action” to the Apple Home App.

When using shortcut buttons only with Ikea’s Home Smart App, you are limited to a single view assigned to a single button press. But IKEA’s deep Sonos integration exposes shortcut buttons to all of my Sonos speakers, not the new AirPlay 2 speakers recognized by HomeKit. HomeKit improves on Ikea Home Smart by detecting both short press and long press of short button. Apple gives you the option to write whether / then / otherwise shortcuts (confusing, I know) that can be assigned to short and long press gives you four possible control options from a single shortcut button. (Here is one Useful thread explaining the steps initiated by u / armadower

On homekit subreddit.)

So far, I have kept things simple. I have a view in the home smart app called “Top Music Off” that I assigned to the “Good Night” shortcut button. This allows me to turn off any Sonos speakers that will be playing in or around my bedroom. In Apple’s Home app, I also assigned a mixture of seven Philips Hue and Ikea lights to close with a press of the “Good Night” shortcut button. I then assigned a long press to turn the IKEA filament bulb on.

I have a second shortcut button in my living room that is currently installed in the Apple Home app to control my TV and mood lighting. A small press replaces my 2020 LG OLED TV and two lights at predefined color and brightness. A long press stops everything back. And just because I can, I have assigned the button to a scene in the IKEA Home Smart app that starts playing Christmas playlists on the Sonos of the kitchen anytime it is pressed. It’s dumb, and my family hates it, but it makes me very happy.

IKEA Motion Sensor

I must have driven myself crazy. Ikia Trendfriend Motion Sensor was installed in HomeKit which I had not read before. This tip on reddit.

Despite having upgraded my Tridentery Gateway to firmware 1.13.21 and seeing both of my existing motion sensors in the Apple Home app And Sensors were not detecting motion according to tripping IKEA Lights, nor HomeKit, when motion was detected. To solve this, first I had to remove the motion sensor from the gateway (four clicks on the motion button), remove the old rooms hosting the sensor from the IKEA Home smart app, and then add the sensor (two clicks while holding it) Next to the gateway) where it was assigned a new default room. That’s when I saw the motion activity found in Apple’s Home app, which allowed me to control the HomeKit device with a sensor.

With the shortcut button, both IKEA and Apple Home apps have cumulative automation associated with the Ikea motion sensor. In my walk-in pantry, I connected an Ikea lightbulb directly to an Ikea motion sensor (press the link button on the motion sensor while holding it next to the Ikea bulb for 10 seconds) and then install an automation in Apple Home. App to turn on a strip of Hue lights above my kitchen cabinet, but only at night. The IKEA pantry light turns off automatically after three minutes.

A three-minute reset built into the IKEA motion sensor can cause conflicts with HomeKit automation. The Apple Home app lets you assign automation for both speed and lack of speed. It can also take a secondary action after a set period of time. For example, in the Apple Home app, I can tell the Ikea motion sensor to light a Hue bulb in the pantry, and then turn it off after a minute. However, due to the three-minute sleep time, it cannot be added again for two minutes, which caused me to panic around the pantry in the dark.

Other motion sensors have a much shorter reset duration, even less than 20 seconds, which makes them better suited for controlling light. Others also include temperature sensors, opening the door to even more creative automation. The IKEA motion sensor is basic by comparison with the price to match.

IKEA’s motion sensors and shortcut buttons are so cheap and useful that they are easy to recommend, especially for homes with a mix of IKEA and Apple products. While motion sensors are simply available everywhere, the new shortcut button has only begun to roll out and still cannot be found in the US. Both HomeKit devices make Smart Home accessible to everyone without apps or voice commands, limited only by the smart devices you operate, your ability to write HomeKit shortcuts, and patience with your smart home technology.