14 DAY TRIAL // Elgato is not the first company that is basing their business on Apple's innovation, but they surely came out ready to win this battle. The maker of the original TV Tuner for your Mac just announced a new line of Home appliances - six devices controlled via an iPhone or iPad app.
The Elgato Eve line is specially designed to allow users to monitor their home conditions and stay safe inside their houses. The eve room will take care of the air in your house, the eve weather is connected to your AC and heater unit and eve water will check to see how much water goes through your pipes.
The eve door and window device will keep a close eye on your house entrance so nobody uninvited will pass. Eve smoke is similar to Google's Nest - the intelligent smoke detector and eve energy is a smart plug that you can use with any regular home appliance.
All of the above will be integrated into the iOS app Elgato will release and will be controlled via Bluetooth 4.0. The pricing for their new devices has not been announced just yet, but the iOS app will be free.
Elgato also introduced a new product - Avea, a smart LED LED bulb which can be controlled directly using iPhone or iPad via Bluetooth. The main difference between this one and Phillips' light bulbs is you do not need a home server to control it. An app from the AppStore is more than enough. Elgato Avea costs $52 (€40) and it looks just like a regular LED light bulb.
Apple will include HomeKit with the launch of iOS 8. The developers can already play with this framework and can create apps to communicate and control connected accessories. The apps based on HomeKit enable users to discover HomeKit accessories in their homes, configure them or create actions to control those devices. In the near future you will be able to control your lights, change temperature and turn off a home appliance using SIRI or a services like IFTTT.
Connecting to your non-smart home appliances using this kind of apps and tools is the latest trend and will become valuable in the near future as Apple and other companies make it easier for everyone to develop them. In order for you to get started with making your own HomeKit apps you need to get the beta version of iOS 8 and Xcode 6. Apple also has a lot of documentation (text and video) on their developer's page.
