Setting up a smart home is a lot of work.
From naming accessories to creating a complex set of automations, it is easy to spend hours on your setup. Controller for HomeKit helps you to keep your setup safe. Create a Backup so you can always recover if something goes wrong.
However, Backups in Controller let you do much more than just recovering from a broken setup.
Use cases
Disaster Recovery
The reliability of HomeKit is far from perfect. Sadly, sometimes HomeKit breaks your setup.
- Sometimes Automations and Scenes disappear.
- Sometimes the setup suddenly resets to the previous state from weeks or months ago.
- Sometimes the Home App becomes stuck on "Loading Accessories and Scenes".
- Often Accessories become unresponsive and need to get reconnected.
Most of these issues are due to iCloud synchronization problems. Sometimes a simple restart of the device is enough. However, some suggest logging out from iCloud and logging in again, which can have unexpected consequences and should not be taken lightly.
With a Backup created with Controller, you are well prepared for such issues.
Seasonal Setups
In winter, many smart homes get equipped with thermostats and complex automations to ensure cozy rooms without wasting energy. However, they are unused during the summer, and their scenes and automations clutter your setup with useless elements for months. On the other side, many gardens get a smart irrigation system to water the plants in summer, which is futile in winter.
Controller allows you to archive these Scenes and Automations. Archives are a special kind of Backup and let you remove parts of your Home temporarily from your setup until you need them again.
Experiments and Accidental Changes
Many HomeKit users love to optimize their setups. They experiment with adjustments or repurpose accessories in different rooms. But, as we all know, the result can be a "not so smart" home.
Can you remember all the things you have changed and their previous state? With a Backup, you can see the changes quickly and revert some or all of them if you want.
Replace Broken Accessories
A typical smart home has many Accessories. It will use most of them in multiple Scenes, Automations, and maybe Service Groups. So when an Accessories breaks, you need to replace it in all those places. If you have a Backup, you can tell Controller to replace the Accessory and fix the setup for you.
Migrating your Home to Another AppleID
If you want to move your Home to another AppleID, that's not an easy task. First, you have to reset your Home and then rebuild it from scratch. With Controller, rebuilding will be much easier because you can restore your Home from a Backup.
Move Accessories to Another WiFi Network
If you want to change your WiFi network's name or password, all of your WiFi Accessories will stop working. You need to remove them from your Home, reconnect them to the network and then add them to the Home again. At this point, HomeKit has forgotten about them, and your setup isn't working as before. With a Backup, you can restore the Accessory and make sure it's working as you expect it.
Scope of a Backup
A Backup in Controller will include the following information:
- Rooms
- Name,
- Icon
- Sort order
- Zones
- Name
- Rooms
- Icon
- Sort order
- Accessories
- Name
- Names of its Services
- Selected Service type (fan / lightbulb / outlet)
- Assigned Room
- HomeKit Code
- Icon
- Service groups
- Name
- Services
- Scenes
- Name
- Most Actions (see Backup Limitations)
- Icon
- Automations
- Name
- Trigger
- Conditions
- Scenes
- Icon
Sadly there are some limitations for 3rd party HomeKit apps that prevent us from creating a perfect backup. Please take a look at Backup Limitations to read more about them.