Gadgetory

hey I'm Rai Chryst here in the scene that smart home kitchen with the review of the home kit enabled Insteon hub pro the Insteon hub pro is a smart home controller now it's got apple homekit built in so what that means is that you'll be able to control it on your iOS device using those controls that are baked right into iOS 8 and iOS 9 like existing versions of the entity on hub you'll plug it into your router and then it'll speak to entity on devices using Insteon s-- proprietary dual-band network from there you'll be able to turn those devices on and off using your phone or turn them on and off using Siri thanks to the assist from home kit so just for a quick demo if I ask Siri turn on the kitchen light the light comes right on you can also group devices into specific rooms or zones so if you wanted all the devices in your living room to turn off or you wanted all the devices downstairs to turn off you can do that all in the app now I think the app is pretty well designed it's simple and it's not too hard to navigate it's got nice icons you can choose for each device that are very specific a lot of options there so you can kind of make it your own I like that they even animate some of them this desk fan one will start spinning whenever I turn my desk fan on so a very nice looking at it was also pretty simple to get the system up and running I plugged the hub into the router and then enter its info into the Insteon app and just in a few minutes I was ready to go adding devices was a little more tedious when I screwed a bulb in or added a lamp switch sometimes it wouldn't register during the adding process it scans and sweeps with this radar animation but I'd often get an error message or a failure notification only to find out that it actually had paired successfully so in the end not a huge deal but a little glitchy so all in all it's a simple start if you want to get into apple's homekit version of the smart home the problem is that it's not quite as expansive as past Insteon products you can't use all of its John's devices with this new hub pro you can really only use entity ons light bulbs and on/off switches and dimmer switches which is great for lighting and appliance control but there's no support for motion sensors leak sensors smoke detectors wireless thermostats cameras a lot of that stuff you could do with Insteon before it's just not here now however you should be able to control other homekit enabled devices as Apple adds more of them under its full so this is a system that could get a lot better as time goes on but right now I'd probably recommend waiting and seeing how much better things get before buying in for more including how the update to iOS 9 might make the system a lot better check out my full review at cnet.com along with the rest of our coverage here in the CNET samarco foreseen at appliances I'm right Chris