The popular Controller for HomeKit app has had a big update this morning to version 7, and it’s an app I’ve been using for a long time. I’m delighted to see this new feature, and it’s called Floor Plan. You might see that widget there on my home screen. This is a 3D scan of my home, and if I tap onto it, I can actually control all of the HomeKit accessories – the lights, cameras, sensors, everything – from this 3D map simply by touching the icons. That means I can use two fingers to rotate and zoom in and out of the map. Just by tapping on some of these icons, I can turn the lights on, and I can even view the live camera feed simply by tapping the camera in the window. I can use the button at the bottom right-hand corner to jump to the first storey of my house, where I can zoom into the office and see the temperature, humidity, and control the fans and lights just by tapping those icons.

Now, this is all really clever, but you’re probably thinking, “Well, how do we get started with this?” So, what I’m going to do is delete this floor plan that I’ve made, and I’m going to show you how I can set up one room, which you can then expand to include your whole home.

At the very top of our scene, we’re going to tap onto Discover under the Floor Plan section. From here, we can then simply start a brand new scan of our house. By tapping on here, it’s going to take me into the LiDAR scanner mode of my iPhone. When I start the scan, you’ll see the camera feed of me in my office. As I follow the instructions and slowly pan around the room, you’ll see these white lines go along the walls and the edges on the floor. They’ll even find the desk and my chair as the room picture gets developed. At the very bottom of the screen, you’ll see it building up in rectangular form, but it will look a little bit neater than that later on. I’m going to carry on doing my office, and you can see on my desk I’ve got a couple of HomeKit accessories, a fan and a lamp, as well. We’ll connect those in a second. In fact, I think the scan is done, so I’m going to save this at this stage.

Now, ideally, you’d probably want to scan your whole house, but for the sake of this video, I’m just going to do one room. It’s very easy to carry on – simply press Start Scan again, and then film yourself walking through the doorway into the next room and do that same process again. After every room, walk through the doorway, and it will automatically connect and position where the rooms live. It’s really very clever.

When you’ve scanned your whole home and made that floor plan, it’s time to choose a thumbnail. This is a really simple exercise that will basically show on the widget on the home screen and on the launch page of the app, just as a preview of your house. I’m just going to quickly zoom and scale to this room, and then I’ll save that thumbnail. Now it’s time to add some interactive elements to the map. The Controller for HomeKit imports all of my HomeKit accessories, rooms, and automations for me when I first open the app, so it knows the rooms in my house already. By selecting Office and then tapping into this room, it will teach it that this part of my house is the office. Then I can simply tap onto the Accessories button and begin adding the accessories one by one into the room.

I can find the accessory for my desktop fan and then simply select the fan and pop it on the desk where it lives in the real world. I can do the same for the lights – the overhead lamp in the office is just called Office Light, and when I select that, I’m going to tap in the middle of the room where it’s located, and it adds it to the map. The same goes for my desk lamp as well – I’ll put the other desk next to the fan. I’ve also got a temperature and a humidity sensor in my office, so I can add those two as separate icons, and they’ll show up with the actual live data on the map, which is awesome. When this is all done, I’ll press Done in the top corner, and that’s it. I’ve set up my room – or in your case, your whole house – with all of your accessories visible. Anytime you tap on that floor plan, whether it’s by the widget on the home screen or in the app itself, you can navigate to the part of the house you want to control and simply control your accessories by tapping on their physical locations. I can tap onto a camera feed and view that, tap on the temperature sensor and get more data, and control the lights and the fans just like you’d expect.

The really cool thing about this is that it makes your accessories much more visible. You don’t have to navigate into different rooms – it’s all just there for you. One last neat little trick while we’re here is the fact that you can view your floor plan in augmented reality in your actual house. I can simply press the AR button, move around to find a blank space, and tap on the desk, and now I’ve got my little office in my actual big office, which is kind of weird. I do wish I could control the lights from the AR model, but perhaps that will come in a future update. For now, it’s cool to be able to scan your whole house and see a 3D model of it on your desk that you can then move your phone or device through.

So, that’s the new update for the Controller app for HomeKit, and I hope you found it interesting. If you have liked this video, please do consider subscribing to our channel down below. I make hundreds of tips to help you make the most of your iPhone and the apps on it. I’ll see you next time!