Apple has quietly introduced a discussion thread for Home/Homekit

[mpainesyd (Michael Paine)]

Not sure when it happened but there seems to be a new thread in Apple Discussions for Home.app and Homekit:

Home - Apple Community

[jimthing]

Like many others, I just don’t recommend using Apple Community much anymore. Mainly because the forums there are so tightly controlled now, that comments get randomly deleted by any staffer who thinks you said something bad about the company or some other random rationale.

But another reason that annoys people to death, is all the rank-scorers on there these days that answer serious questions with whatever random answer adds ‘points’ to their rank. You invariable get one of them with a gazillion points immediately answering with some completely irrelevant inane response along the equivalent lines of ‘have you tried turning it off and on again’ – aarggh?!

MacRumors has better forums for all things Apple, including this specific one:
HomePod, HomeKit, CarPlay, Home & Auto Technology

I’m not up on separate sites that have good home automation forums. Are there any?

[Halfsmoke]

@jimthing

all the rank-scorers on there these days that answer serious questions with whatever random answer adds ‘points’ to their rank. You invariable get one of them with a gazillion points immediately answering with some completely irrelevant inane response along the equivalent lines of ‘have you tried turning it off and on again’

I think that’s been a problem for years and years there, not a recent development. Rank-striving is poison for online communities, in my opinion.
:-(

[mpainesyd (Michael Paine)]

You’ve hurt my feelings - I rank number 5 for all-time Homepod posts!
Actually that group has “solved” a range of Homepod problems over the last several years. I have summarised some comments/solutions here:

Mac OS X - running Windows and DOS apps

But like others I rarely look at Apple Discussions these days.

That URL has some fairly old links to Homekit-related pages but it seems to be a neglected topic. My main reason for sticking with Homekit is concern about security and privacy with the alternatives.

Of course Take Control books have some excellent advice for Homekit:

Take Control of Apple Home Automation – Take Control Books

[jimthing]

One useful thing I noticed at the Apple Community, is the “Tips” document pages at URL’s:
/docs/DOC-#

Here’s one that bookmarks loads (most? all?) of these docs:

User Tip Library

And another that explains how to find said ‘docs’:

How to find User tips by subject, by author, or by community

The only problem with them generally, is they don’t seem easy to find AFAICT.
So one might want to bookmark the first link for future reference. ;-)