Local weather is one of the most underrated variables in Homekit automation. Over the past few years, I’ve used sensors for everything from knowing when to drip faucets in freezing weather to adjusting the sprinkler schedule with the Eve Aqua on hot days. The Eve Weather has been part of my setup for a while now, and with its 2024 Matter upgrade from last summer, it’s now even more useful across more platforms.
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HomeKit Weekly is a series focused on smart home accessories, automation tips and tricks, and everything to do with Apple’s smart home framework.
If you’ve read HomeKit Weekly for any amount of time, you know I love automations. Smart home accessories are only useful if they can do something automatically. That’s why I’ve always recommended building around a single ecosystem for their smart home vs mixing and matching. For me, that’s HomeKit. I lean on Eve devices because they’ve always prioritized privacy and skipped the cloud account requirement if you simply stick to HomeKit. Eve has also been leaning into Matter support as well.
The Eve Weather gives you three data points from one small device: temperature, humidity, and air pressure. It’s IPX4 water resistant, and the aluminum body makes it look like it belongs right outside my house. That’s exactly where mine is. It gives me hyperlocal readings that are often a couple of degrees off from what the Apple Weather app reports, and honestly, that can matter depending on whether it’s super hot or very cold. When your pipes freeze at 31 degrees and your app says 34, you’ll wish you had the local data.
One of the underrated features of Eve Weather is its built-in 12-hour weather trend display. It uses changes in air pressure to predict what the weather will do. You’ll get a visual icon showing if it’s likely to be sunny, cloudy, rainy, or stormy. That little detail adds a lot of value, and it’s something you can see at a glance without opening an app.
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Here are a few of the automations you could build using the Eve Weather:
Turn on a colored light when the temperature dips below freezing to remind us to drip the faucets
Trigger a dehumidifier when the outdoor humidity is especially high
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