Dear mopac01, Weatheraardvark, and WeatherCat expansionist types,
Does anyone know if there are any plans to do any integration with Apple's HomeKit, particularly with the latest improvement and dedicated Home app in iOS 10?
I haven't heard anything from Stu about supporting HomeKit. I suppose the reason is the usual one - is there enough interest to justify such a change?
I have an Ecobee 3 thermostat with HomeKit integration. Slowly Apple's starting to develop an ecosystem here that should make home automation easier. It would be great if it was easier to take actions on other HomeKit enabled devices based on weather events monitored by WeatherCat.....
If you want to get your hands dirty, there are some tools that can be accessed via AppleScript which WeatherCat supports. Here is a article that describes some of the available tools:
https://bendodson.com/weblog/2016/05/24/homekit-and-airplay/However, I'm not sure what you would be trying to automate based on the outside weather conditions. I have AppleScripts and an AppleScript synthetic channel that tells me when to open and close windows. However, our house is 69 years old, so not surprisingly, it doesn't have automated windows.
I'm a bit puzzled by the idea of using outside temperature data to change your thermostat. After all the whole idea of an enclosed space to be free of the extremes of the outdoors. You should set your thermostat to make you comfortable - no matter what the outside conditions are.
The one area where I had hoped to employ WeatherCat in a home automation realm is controlling the sprinklers. There is an open-source standard called open sprinkler:
https://opensprinkler.com/faq/There is a Mac interface to Open Sprinkler:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/opensprinkler/id903464532?mt=12However, I haven't been able to determine if you can communicate to the app via AppleScript. If you could then you could adjust your watering times based on the Evapotranspiration data that WeatherCat makes available.
Alas, I'm way behind on my sprinkler automation project so this isn't going to happen anytime soon. Still, that seems to me to be a much more promising attempt to use WeatherCat to adjust something based on data WeatherCat collects about the outside environment.
Cheers, Edouard