AppleInsider Staff
Without a nearby Apple TV or iPad configured as a "Home Hub," Bluetooth Low Energy HomeKit accessories cannot be controlled remotely. But a new HomeKit-certified Bluetooth-to-Wi-Fi bridge from ConnectSense coming in 2017 aims to address that shortcoming.
The ConnectSense Bluetooth Extender provides Bluetooth Low Energy devices access to a user's local Wi-Fi network. The HomeKit-enabled accessory allows users to access their Bluetooth Low Energy devices remotely.
Some HomeKit devices — including Elgato products like the Eve Energy and Eve Light Switch, or the Schlage Sense deadbolt lock — Â connect to HomeKit through Bluetooth and do not include Wi-Fi support. Without a nearby HomeKit Bluetooth hub, those devices cannot be controlled remotely.
Initially, the only way to allow remote control of Bluetooth-only HomeKit accessories was to have an Apple TV within range. Apple improved on that last year with the release of iOS 10, giving users the ability to set up an iPad as a Home Hub, allowing the touchscreen tablet to serve as a Bluetooth-to-Wi-Fi bridge when the user is not home with their iPhone.
But the new ConnectSense Bluetooth Extender marks the first time that a non-Apple HomeKit-certified Bluetooth bridge will be available. Its 2017 launch should also make it easier for users to address potential "dead zones" in their home, where a Bluetooth accessory might reside too far from an Apple TV.
The extender connects to the ConnectSense Cloud, where sensor data is saved and notifications are relayed to a smartphone or email address.
Beyond the Bluetooth extender, ConnectSense has also announced a Smart Temperature & Humidity Bluetooth Sensor and Smart Water Bluetooth Sensor, both of which are also HomeKit-compatible. All of the products are scheduled to arrive sometime in 2017, though pricing and specific availability on the other smart home products was not announced.
ConnectSense does already offer a Smart Outlet, which sells for $59.95.
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8 Comments
One day, people will buy houses with all this wireless junk radiating crap into peoples brains while they brush their teeth, and have to get rid of it, just like you buy a70s house today and have to get rid of the asbetos and other carcinogenic materials leftover from the past.
What I really hope for is that Apple's moving of it's Airport engineers into the Apple TV group means that they are developing a mesh wifi network with each node supporting both wifi and bluetooth for full coverage of smart devices, and wifi, throughout your house.
Older smart home protocols like Zigbee and z-wave create their own mesh networks and each smart device (switches, lights, etc) also repeat the network so that devices further away from the hub can still communicate. But as I understand it, Apple does not allow hubs that support those competing protocols to integrate with HomeKit, so unless that has changed repeaters like this will be necessary to reach all corners of your house because I believe all wifi and bluetooth based smart devices are purely hub-and-spoke and cannot create mesh networks on their own.