HomeKit Man-Machine Interface Guide

HomeKit Man-Machine Interface Guide

Introduction

With HomeKit, users can use home automation apps on their iOS devices to control and configure connected Accessory devices at home, regardless of the manufacturer. Generally, a Home automation app needs to help users complete the following tasks: · setting a Home · managing users · adding and removing accessories · defining scenarios. In addition, a Home automation app should be easy to use, it also gives users a sense of pleasure. Here are some ways to create a superior experience: · integrate Siri · automatically find accessories · use approachable statements to set a HomeHomeKit system centered on three types of locations: Room (room), area (Zones), and residential (Homes ). A room, such as a living room or bedroom, is a basic concept and may contain any number of accessories. An area is a collection of rooms, such as "upstairs ". Users must select at least one home to place their smart accessories. Each home includes a different room and may include a region. Rooms and areas allow users to conveniently find and control accessories. Apps should provide methods for creating, naming, modifying, and deleting residences, rooms, and areas. If a person has multiple residences, they are allowed to select a default preferred home for faster setup and configuration of new accessories. Management of user applications should provide methods that allow users to manage accessories in residential buildings. When an iCloud account is added to a home, the owner of the account can adjust the features of the accessories. When an account owner is specified as an administrator, they can also add new accessories, manage users, set residences, and create scenarios. Adding and removing accessories makes it very important to add new accessories quickly and easily. Automated home apps should be able to automatically find new accessories and highlight them on the user interface. Users need methods to identify the accessories in the adjustment, so ensure that the control can be quickly connected. For example, in the case of a lightbulb, you should allow the user to use the app to open the lightbulb to confirm that it is located in the Home. The configuration should include assigning a name, house, room, and optional area to an accessory. The administrator needs to enter the installation code of the accessory (included in the hardware instruction or packing box) to connect it to the home. Apple's wireless accessory configuration (WAC) is used to add WiFi-enabled accessories to the residential network. You can connect to WAC from Settings or your app. Use the ExternalAccessory framework API to display the UI provided by a system. In this UI, you can use WAC to discover and configure accessories without leaving your app. After using WAC to configure the accessories, you can add them to the home and assign them names and rooms. Note that you should always allow users to initialize accessory discovery and configuration by running the app on the foreground. Find accessories and make sure you can quickly find them in different ways. Every day, every season, and a person's location can affect which accessory is important at that time, so users should be able to find the accessory by type, name or location in the house. Defining a scenario is an important way to adjust the features of multiple accessories at the same time. Each scenario has its own name and can contain any number of actions, which are associated with different accessories and their features. If possible, you can provide some suggested scenarios so that users can configure accessories based on them. For example, in a "exit" scenario, we should turn down the temperature in the house, turn off the light bulb, and lock all the doors. When users create their own scenarios, consider recommending accessories according to the selected room and area. Provide users with the option to make configuration faster and more convenient. Integrating sirissiri simplifies the execution of complex operations by just one command. Siri can recognize the names of houses, rooms, and areas and supports the following expressions: "Siri, lock up my house in Tahoe", "Siri, turn off the upstairs lights and Siri, make it warmer in the media room ". Siri can also identify the accessory name and features, so users can publish the command: "Siri, dim the desk lamp ". To identify the scenario, the command for Siri should contain the word "mode" or "scene", for example, the following command: "Siri, set the Movie Scene, Siri, enable Movie mode, or Siri, set up for Movie ". It is best to let users know which actions can be triggered by Siri When configuring actions. For example, when you confirm that the Movie scenario has been set, display the statement that the recommended user said to Siri, for example, "you can use Siri to activate this scenario. The command is 'siri, set the house to Movie mode '". An improper home automation notification may scare users. Your applications should be approachable, easy-to-use, have the language of conversation, and user friendly. Avoid using acronyms and technical terms that users may not understand. HomeKit is a term about APIs. You should not use it in your app. If you are an MFi License owner, follow the instructions in the MFi portal to regulate the name and notification of accessory packaging.

This article is translated by CocoaChina from the official Apple documentation HomeKit Human Interface Guidelines.

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