A user came up with a creative way to integrate Apple HomeKit setup into their electric car, including automatically unlocking the car, a feature to pre-condition your car according to time of departure, a MagSafe charger, and automation based on battery level.
The setup allows multiple elements of a Jaguar I-Pace electric vehicle to be automated, monitored, and controlled via the Home app.
User integrates MagSafe charger and CarPlay in their Jaguar I-Pace to HomeKit
Blogger Siobhán Ellis came up with a creative way that allows him to integrate his electric car into the Apple HomeKit setup, accessing in-app toggles for door locking, climate control, and more. Ellis explains in his blog post that he used a HomeBridge integration into the Jaguar InControl API using a plugin called Jlr InControl.
InControl enables a certain number of things like remotely seeing if the car is unlocked, enables pre-conditioning, how much it is charged and if it is currently charging.
So, CarPlay! Yay! So happy… except that JLR (Jaguar Land Rover) do not do wireless CarPlay. You have to open the central console and plug your phone in via USB. Now I know that Wireless CarPlay isn’t actually done by that many manufacturers, but still wired is not what I really wanted. Also, I want to charge my phone whilst I’m driving so a Qi charger would also have been nice and the central console does have a superb place to put a Qi charger, which is a flat area just under the environment controls and it is even the perfect size for my iPhone 12 Max Pro.
Pre-condition allows setting the temperature of the car and its batteries based on events shown in the Calendar app. Home app integrations allow automation to be created based on battery level, automatically charging the car from a HomeKit-accessible power outlet. To accompany the Apple-oriented vehicle upgrades, Ellis inserted CPLAY2air.
The reality of using the space under the climate controls in operation was not so good. To be fair to JLR, all down to user problems. Effectively, because my phone was hidden from view so well that Hot Black would have been proud. a Black Phone on a black background. Why was this an issue? I kept forgetting my phone and leaving it in the car. I needed it to be more visible. Thus I moved the MagSafe charger up to a space on the dash board, next to one of the 3 screens that the I-Pace has. It works perfectly, but I wish they had a black one
As for the configuration, one of the plugins required a fair amount of manual configuration and also had to hardcode his username and password. Seems that apart from the operation space, the experience was “flawless”.
What are your thoughts about integrating CarPlay via HomeKit in your car? Would you like to see a native integration involving this in the future? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!
Read More:
