🍪 #4 - Automating my house via Homebridge in Apple Homekit
And adding prompts to my iOS ChatGPT conversations, browser usage & Masters of the air
Hi,
and welcome again to Little Bites, my weekly bite on productivity, apps, tech, …
This week how I’m adding all home appliances to Apple Homekit, a shortcut to add prompts to ChatGPT conversations, results from a browser survey and the new Masters of the Air trailer.
Happy reading,
Steven
Reading time: 3 minutes to chew through.
🤖 Automating my house via Homebridge in Apple Homekit
🏷️ Automation
When we built our house, we installed a home automation tool called Niko Home Control to automate the lights. Afterwards, we added fire protection via Nest (Google), Solar screens from another supplier, …
You get where I’m going to.
A lot of different tools from different suppliers, all with different apps to work with.
I’m a bit obsessed with organization, optimization and automation so I wanted to have a unified approach to operate them.
In searching, I stumbled on Homebridge, a platform that “allows you to integrate with smart home devices that do not natively support HomeKit”.
Integrations are community-built, meaning the list is ever-expanding.
Nest camera? Ring doorbell? Hue lights? Sure, an integration is available.
More than 2000 already are.
Homebridge needs to run on a device (preferably 24/7) and luckily a lot of options are available. You can run it via Linux, Mac, Windows, Docker and Raspberry Pi.
I didn’t want to have a computer running all day or have a Synology that supported Docker, so I went for a Raspberry Pi.
The installation was straightforward, following the below tutorial.
After the installation, I added the integration of each tool I wanted to add, configured them with the correct credentials, and that’s it.
I’m now able to operate them all via my Apple devices running Homekit.
And even easier, I can now create automation with multiple steps and devices.
For example, one I did create immediately was to enable all lights when our Nest protection triggers a warning.
🗪 Adding prompts to my iOS ChatGPT messages
Two weeks ago, I spoke about an iOS shortcut that allows you to get a webpage summary directly from the iOS sharesheet.
I’m using quite a few AI chatbots on a regular basis, but go back to ChatGPT the most as it’s easy to use, free and has the desired output.
OpenAI recently launched GPTs, allowing you to create custom chatbots with predefined instructions and knowledge. Although these GPTs can invoke other tools, in a way, they are the same as the custom chatbots of Poe or collections of Perplexity, where you add a custom prompt to your conversation.
ChatGPT allows you to set one prompt for all your messages, or if desired, you can type your prompt at the start of each conversation. You could copy/paste this prompt from somewhere, but this will require some effort.
I’ve therefore created an iOS shortcut that provides me with a menu to select the prompt and use that alongside my question in a conversation with ChatGPT, getting a reply immediately with the possibility to open the conversions in the ChatGPT app to continue chatting.
Again, you can use it from the share sheet so you can ask your question and get a reply without leaving the app or article.
You can get the shortcut here: https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/d48670c73df245b082fc1e4c46d25cbc
You can extend the shortcut with your prompts.
Just add a new menu item and make sure it has the Text and Variable (Set variable Prompt to Text) command.
🖥️ Browser usage poll on Artifact
In my previous Bite, I wrote about my search for the best browser, awaiting the release of Arc on Windows.
This made me curious about which browser other people were using, so I asked around via Artifact, and the results are in (74 votes).
🛩️ Masters of the air
I’m a big fan of World War movies and documentaries and possibly have watched the Band of Brothers series on repeat for 4 to 5 times.
I’m therefore thrilled to see that a new mini-series is launching Jan 26th on Apple TV, created by Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg, covering the crew of a “flying fortress”.
Here is the first teaser they released.
If you like what you’re reading, hit the subscribe button and get my next update directly in your inbox or read later app of your choice.
And if you want to support me, you can Buy me a 🍵 Tea. I don’t drink coffee.
Interesting insights in browser usage from your poll.
What is you explanation of the high number for Arc, bias in audience?