Arlo's brief HomeKit issue, Meross smart plug, & more on HomeKit Insider

In the new episode of the HomeKit Insider podcast, your hosts talk through the brief HomeKit issue that plagued new Arlo users before jumping into several questions.

Last week, Arlo suffered an outage with its HomeKit setup process, preventing new users from adding Arlo cameras to HomeKit. Fortunately, Arlo pushed an update to its app that fixed all issues.

We also reviewed the new Meross smart plug, which, aside from including HomeKit support, also is incredibly budget-friendly.

Before jumping into our listener questions, we discuss the difference between motion sensors and presence sensors.

Llistener questions

As always, we had quite a bit of listener feedback this week.

Christofer Ericson sent us an audio clip to give us the authentic Swedish way to pronounce Ikea's new HomeKit gear, including the Tradfri hub and the Starkvind air purifier.

Nick Teague wrote in initially with a question on why his location-based Automations were not working after his move, but followed up letting us know that signing out of iCloud then back in fixed the issue.

Derek also wanted to know if HomeKit worked with VPNs as he has had issues while ProtonVPN was running. A different Derrick wanted to see if it was possible to run multiple HomeKit video doorbells.

Sponsored by:

• Hunter Douglas: Get a FREE Style Gets Smarter design guide and learn about their HomeKit window shades at: hunterdouglas.com/homekit

Links from the show

• Arlo services outage preventing devices from being added to HomeKit
• Meross Wi-Fi Smart Plug review: A low-cost way into HomeKit automation
• meross Smart Plug Mini - Amazon
• RoomMe Smart Presence Sensor - Amazon
• ONVIS Smart Motion Sensor - Amazon
• Belkin MagSafe Car Vent Mount - Amazon
• XLUX Soil Moisture Meter, Plant Water Monitor, Soil Hygrometer - Amazon
• GitHub - aaronhktan/homebridge-soil-moisture: A Homebridge plugin for an analog soil moisture sensor.
• Logitech Circle View Apple HomeKit-Enabled Wired Doorbell - Amazon
• Arlo Essential Video Doorbell - Amazon

Those interested in sponsoring the show can reach out to us at: andrew@appleinsider.com

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