Take Control of Apple Home Automation

Explore Homes, Rooms, and Zones

Where things get interesting from here is with the exciting world of scenes, but before I get to that, you need to be familiar with the concepts of homes, room, and zones.

I briefly explained these ideas back in Learn the HomeKit Hierarchy, but to refresh, homes and rooms are exactly what they say they are (assuming you set things up correctly), while a Zone is a collection of rooms within a home, most typically a level such as upstairs or downstairs.

Taking a few minutes to fully understand these concepts is critical to a smooth home automation experience. Just imagine what a mess it’d be if you told Siri to turn off the kitchen lights and the lights in the living room turned off instead! Scenes and automations ...