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Comment by barkerja | Hacker News Reader

I have to believe that HomeKit has fallen so far to the wayside due to their work on Matter. And we can expect something big in the near future. Right? Please?

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HomeKit's biggest challenge is that so much of the home automation market balks at Apple's requirement to be able to operate without a cloud service. Can't do surveillance capitalism or extort monthly fees or end-of-life product arbitrarily if you've got HomeKit branding, so of course that's first overboard.

The second problem is that Apple themselves are missing a number of functions that are baffling, such as not having history for metrics. I can't understand how it's impossible to have e.g. a history of temperatures in HomeKit.

Yes! This is one of my biggest desires in HomeKit, and the native Home app. Having access to historical data. This is one of the main reasons I have Home Assistant running. I don't use it for any automations, but I do often use it to reference historical data.

I'm not sure how Apple would approach this though. Would it be part of your iCloud data and require a minimum plan (similar to how HKSV operates). I don't ever see them allowing the option to control /where/ that data is stored exactly.

Here's hoping. In the meantime, I've had a ton of fun making small ESP devices that integrate with Homebridge. It's really opened up so many possibilities, even beyond the things that Homebridge is typically praised for.

Switch to Home Assistant. It takes a bit to learn and setup, but I’m much happier with it.

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