Is it possible to use AppleTV as the Primary Device for Roomie v6? I was using it as my Simple Hub in v5, since I don’t have a Mac or an always powered iOS device.
Yes, the Apple TV product was released yesterday! It’s free bundled with iOS! Download Now!
Which device would be recommended for the primary controller; Apple TV latest gen or standard gen 7 iPad? I see main benefit of Apple TV being hard wired network, is there more processing power in the TV product over the iPad?
You can use a USB Ethernet adapter to give an iPad/iPhone Ethernet, so that’s not really a unique factor (certainly I do that all the time).
The AppleTV 4K is a A10X CPU, same as the Fall 2017 iPad Pro models. It has not been updated in many years. For many configurations, you will be wanting to use more modern CPUs at this point especially if you have large numbers of devices, or chatty devices like Sonos and ISY.
In the future, we may offer features that use machine learning to analyze video camera streams. In that scenario, an AppleTV would be completely out of the picture, you would need at least a 2018 iPad Pro level model (A12).
Anyway, for your average configuration today an AppleTV is perfectly fine as a primary controller. But there are certainly configurations today that are unsuited for it and require a more modern CPU.
My top-level advice for primary selection: get the very best device you can get at that moment so that you don’t have to upgrade it as often. That is definitely not the AppleTV 4K today, but might well be an upgraded Apple TV in 1-6 months.
There is no iPad available today with an A13 CPU yet, but such a device should it exist in the near future would be the best of all worlds for future functionality.
Good topic to come up right now. I just obtained a Mac Mini (2018) base model (4 core i3, 8GB, Intel UHD 630) for doing some Xamarin development. Obviously I am not going to be compiling stuff all day and I am not a Mac person, so this will sit largely idle in my rack. Along with the announcement of the return of AppleTV support for Roomie primary controller, it had me wondering what device to use for my primary controller.
- 2018 6th Gen iPad 9.7" A10 (Current primary controller for Roomie)
- 2017 AppleTV 4K A10X (Previous hub for Simple Control 5.5)
- 2018 Mac Mini 4 core i3
Thoughts?
No significant difference. All of those are “old” CPUs or underpowered CPUs and pretty sure not one of them has even the first-gen neural processor. See my previous message for the recommendations.
If I had to buy something today, to reiterate, I would go with the latest model iPad Pro (A12X), or the latest model iPhone (A13). By end of year, I assume that will change to iPad Pro (A13X), AppleTV 4Kv2 (A13) and iPhone (A14).
1 Like
Follow-up question to primary device. I downloaded the Mac app and would prefer to use that as my primary but it appears that I have to have 2 subscriptions? I currently have a subscription for my iOS apps and a subscription for my Mac app. Is it possible for a single subscription to cover both iOS and Mac?
You only ever need 1 subscription. We wanted to release the Mac app without the ability to subscribe, but Apple would not allow it. So it is possible to get into that situation that only Apple can resolve. Subs are shared between all of our apps even across platforms.
Okay thanks! Was going to set my Mac as primary but that actually doesn’t work as reliably as just Default. So I think I’ll “cancel” the Mac subscription for now and just use iOS.