HomeKit Weekly: Halloween decorations are automated with intelligent plugs and scenes – 9to5mac

Around my city Halloween almost brings as many “all people” as Christmas when it comes to decorations. In fact, one house nearby starts to prepare me in August and then keeps it through Christmas, just dresses the Halloween skeleton in Santa Hats to transfer them to another holiday. If you still turn on all your Halloween decorations manually, it is time of automatic use of HomeKit.

Homekit a weekly It is a series focused on intelligent home accessories, automation tips and tricks, and everything related to the intelligent home framework of Apple.

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The required equipment of the HomeKit

You want to start, you will need the HomeKit center (Apple TV or HomePod). Even if you can control the device without one at home, HomeKit Hub allows you to operate automation and control everhyhing remotalia. Standard intelligent HomeKit plugs are an easst way to go to interior equipment such as shiny pumpkins or windows. After connecting, you can turn on or off decorations with Siri, home application, gold automation. I like to set up to run right as it darkens. In your HomeKit auto auto, you can choose the sunset like they come to a well. HomeKit uses the location of your home to determine the local sunset times and sunrise.

Outdoor Halloween decorations you want outdoor intelligent plugs. They are designed to handle rain, mold and brain time, so they are safe for use with strate -lights, fog machines or the giant spirit that you throw up in the front yard to create position That your house is the best. The setting is identical to the inner: plug the decoration into the intelligent plug, then plug in the intelligent plug to the output and add it to the HomeKit.

If you have a lot of outdoor Halloween accessories that you have to go out and turn on/turn on each night, just get anything adapters wonder its weight in gold. Set once, create automation, and then you can use them for Halloween and Christmas.

Creating automation and scenes

Here is a simple step by step to turn on everything at sunset and then at 23:00 using a home application.

Create a scene for all decorations

1. Open the home app on your iPhone or iPad.
2. Click the plus button and select Add the scene.
3. Click Custom to name it “Halloween Night”, then click Add Accessories.
4. Choose your intelligent plugs and all the lights you want.
5. Set each accessory to ON, then tap to save the scene. You will then have 1-TAP access.

Automation 1: Turn on sunset

1. Go to the Automations section and click the plus button.
2. Select the time of the day that occurs.
3. Select sunset, select every day, and click Next.
4. Select scenes and accessories, select “Halloween Night”, then tap and complete.

Automation 2: Turn off at 23:00

1. In the automation, click the plus button and selects the time of day.
2. Set time to 23:00, select every day, and then click Next.
3. Click to select the scenes and accessories. Select the same plugs and lights you used before, and set each of them. Click Next.
4. Check the summary and then tap the design.

Your decoration HomeKit allowed Halloween will come at sunset and turn off at 23:00 without a face. If you want a quick manual trigger, you can also run the “Halloween Night” scene from the Control Center, home application or Siri.

Wrap

If you go through the steps to automate everything once, avoid turning everything on and off every night. With several cheap intelligent HomeKit plugs and several simple separate sets, you can light your house, inflate your giant spirit and automatically turn on the inner pumpkin. It’s a simple way to bring a little smart home magic of one of the funniest nights of the year. Bonus tip: You can keep the same equipment for Christmas and just rename the scene!