Thinka Unveil World’s First Z-Wave HomeKit Hub
This could finally solve my smart lighting requirements. I have admittedly self imposed criteria that have meant I have not been satisfied so far with any existing product but this might now solve this.
Smart bulbs are ruled out because either some scenarios cannot be done by smart bulbs or the more common issue of not being able to use wired switches. (Death to batteries 🙂 )
LightwaveRF is close but only does dimmers and not switches and is ‘fugly’.
Lutron Caseta would be perfect but they stubbornly refuse to do a version for Europe.
Legrand now have a Zigbee based solution using Netatmo HomeKit technology but their dimmer modules are double the width of their switch modules, also their gateway either has to have its own wall box or a DIN rail unit. I also get the impression that whilst it does HomeKit and I believe Alexa and Google Assistant it might be harder/impossible to link to other platforms.
Insteon micro-modules with their own hub might do the job but they have promised and failed to deliver a new HomeKit compatible hub.
A plethora of different makes of Zigbee and Z-Wave micro modules including Aeotec and Fibaro would again do the job but they are not officially linkable to HomeKit.
However with this new Thinka hub it might be possible to use either Fibaro or Aeotec micro modules and achieve all I want. I just need to see if the Thinka hub can be linked to other smart home platforms e.g. Smartthings, Home Assistant etc. It would be great if Thinka also have plans to add Matter support.
