Gadgetory

you know Apple TV is a handy device for having pictures of animals you've never seen and places you've never been to scroll past you on your TV set and also watching TV and movies but it's also a neat way of controlling your smart home gear using apple's homekit protocols from outside of your own home here in the CNET smart home we'll show you how what apple homekit really does is to taxonomy is the smart home and give devices a common vocabulary so everything can speak to each other and speak to siri of course if you're going to get started with home kit you're gonna need a home kit compatible gadget like this Schlage cents bluetooth deadbolt now there's a growing list of items that work with home kit you can find them on apple's website but the easy way to check if a product is compatible at home kit is to look for this little label on the packaging that label tells you that the product is engineered to work specifically with apple's homekit standards and with other products that are engineered in the same way it's kind of the whole gist of pumpkin everything just works together under apple's umbrella now installing some home kit devices is as simple as switching out a light bulb or plugging in a smart switch this deadbolt took a little more of a hands-on installation obviously but once we got it in there we synched it up with our home kit setup by entering this code into the products app and we actually didn't even have to enter it home kit has a cool feature that uses your phone's camera to just look at that code and put it in automatically kind of neat once the device is paired up you'll give it a specific Siri name so that she can recognize it when you ask her to unlock the backdoor that's all well and good if you're controlling this lock at home it's a Bluetooth device and your in Bluetooth range your phone can talk to it but what if you go to work and you forget to lock your door and you want to ask Siri to take care of that how is she going to talk to that lock from outside of this bluetooth range all you need to do is go into your settings and log into your iCloud account on Apple TV so for me that's my personal email I login I put my itunes password in there and voila Apple TV is connected and it's automatically synced up with my home kick gear I try and turn off a light or lock a door from outside of the home Apple TV will let that signal in and do the work for me pretty simple as far as how to's go but it's a little confusing knowing exactly what home kit is and how it operates hopefully this helps clear it up for CNET here in the CNET smart home I'm right Chris you