HomeKit

How to control your old garage door with Siri and HomeKit

HomeKit garage door

You don't need to spend big money on a brand new garage door opener in order to be able to control it with HomeKit and/or Siri. Indeed, you can simply use an add-on accessory that will bring HomeKit support to virtually any garage door opener, letting you control it using Siri or the Home app on your iPad, iPhone, or Apple Watch.

I personally upgraded my garage door opener with such an accessory a few weeks ago, and in about 30 minutes, I was all set. Now this is not a hack. This is not a workaround. This is real HomeKit support, and all it requires is the meross Smart Garage Door Opener Remote, a $49 accessory you can find on Amazon.

Review: The Logitech Circle View Doorbell features great hardware only limited by HomeKit

Logitech Circle View Doorbell

When I started looking at smart video doorbells for my new home, one specific feature I was looking for was HomeKit support, but as it turned out at the time (merely 3 months ago), there was none. So like everybody else, I settled for a Ring doorbell, which has worked reliably for me. Installation was simple. Set up was a breeze, and daily use was just as frictionless as you would expect from a doorbell.

But then Logitech introduced the Circle View Doorbell in December of 2020, the first device of its kind to support HomeKit, thus playing nice with all the Apple devices in my house and pocket.

So I reached out to the folks at Logitech who sent me a Circle View Doorbell after giving me a short briefing on the product. In this review, I’ll share my impressions of this smart video doorbell. But a bit of warning: this review will be heavily tinted by my experience with Ring, which I see as the standard in the category, or the device to beat, if you will.