HomeKit Weekly: Tis the season to automate all your Christmas decorations with HomeKit

It feels like the year has already flown by – just yesterday we were looking forward to 2024, and now, we’re gearing up for the holidays. For many of us, Christmas brings an opportunity to add a little extra magic to our homes. My first foray into HomeKit was automating my Christmas decorations, so welcoming the season with my updated guide to creating smarter, more festive Christmas displays feels like the right thing to do.

HomeKit Weekly is a series highlighting smart home accessories, automation tips and tricks, and everything related to Apple’s smart home framework.

Required equipment

Before buying a HomeKit accessory to automate your Christmas decorations, I recommend purchasing a HomeKit “Home Center”. Supported equipment is Apple TVHomePod or HomePod mini. As long as those devices are logged into iCloud, you can manage them and perform automation while on the go. it is not required For HomeKit but highly recommended.

Christmas tree

The Eve socket is the most expensive, but it does add Thread support to your network. In short, Thread is a mesh networking protocol built for HomeKit and other types of smart home devices that establishes direct peer-to-peer communication. It’s self-maintaining, self-healing, and self-routing, allowing all your devices to communicate easily.

Once the device is installed, you can turn the tree on and off via Siri or the Home app. You can also set up a HomeKit automation to do this automatically at sunset or at a specific time (I’ll explain how to configure these automations at the end of the article).

Now, I’m not allowed to touch the Christmas lights on my Christmas tree, but if you can, check it out Twinkle, twinkle. With Twinkly, you can re-string your tree with smart home lights. Twinkly added native HomeKit support to its products (Gen II and Plus models) a few years ago. Shiny also sells it Pre-lit Christmas tree and outdoor lights.

outdoor lighting

I’ve already mentioned Twinkly in this article, but what if you already have some outdoor lights that you want to use with HomeKit? Here are some products I recommend.

When using outdoor lights, you should stick to outdoor-rated plugs, as plugs suitable for indoor use cannot withstand extreme cold, moisture, or rain.

The concept of these plugs is the same. You plug the light into the adapter, and the adapter plugs into the wall.

Create automation

Once all your devices are in the Home app, you can interact with them in a variety of ways. Of course, the easiest way is to use the Home app to close and reopen them at any time.

If you have a HomePod, you can use Siri to turn it off based on the device name: “Hey Siri, turn on my Christmas tree lights”.

If you want a more hands-off approach, letting HomeKit manage your time is ideal. Go to the Automations tab in the Home app, tap the + button, select Add Automation, select the time of day it will occur, and select your time. For example, a simple way to deal with Christmas is to open them at sunset. Then you need to set up a second automation to turn it off when the sun comes up or when you go to bed.

wrap up

There are many fun ways to automate your Christmas decorations using HomeKit and low-cost devices. It’s easy to start with small things HomeKit plug Make your home tree and interact with it in the Home app.