If you love using smart home products from Google and Apple, you need to use the Starling Home Hub. In my original review, I noted that it was a simplified, ready-made way to add all of your Nest and Google Home products to HomeKit. For the past two and a half years, the team behind the product has been the same continued To release updates to make the product better. Today, version 12.0 of the firmware adds support for the new Nest doorbell that includes continuous recording.
Once you open the Starling Home Hub case, you connect it to power and the router/switch port is open (no Wi-Fi), and you go to setup.starlinghome.io on whatever browser is on the namesake network to begin with. The Starling Home Hub works with Nest accounts and Google accounts that manage Nest products. It even works with two-factor authentication for Google accounts, too. During the two years I’ve used the product, I’ve never had a connection problem. If you already have the device, you will update the firmware from this section.
The Starling Home Hub 12.0 firmware update adds full support for the new Nest doorbell, including HomeKit Secure Video, which means that with the Nest doorbell, you can get the full event history in the Apple Home app, along with rich notifications and activity areas HomeKit. This upgrade doesn’t change what you can do with the Google Home app either. They work great together.
The team at the Starling Home Hub have been quite impressed with the Nest doorbell and the HoneKit so far. They included this note in their customers’ email.
We’ve been testing the new doorbell since we first got our hands on it, and we think it’s one of the best video doorbells we’ve ever seen for responsiveness and image quality, day and night, thanks to Google’s built-in image processing — despite the fact that the camera sensor itself is only HD.
Starling Home Hub is available for a one-time fee of $99 with no subscription cost. Works with all Google Home products. With the Starling Home Hub, you can connect all of your Nest Cam, Doorbell, Thermostat, Protect, Secure, and Nest x Yale Lock products to HomeKit and Siri. It also allows you to stream audio from any Apple device via AirPlay to a Nest Audio, Mini, or Google Nest Hub. If you’re looking for an option for the new Nest Doorbell and HomeKit, the Starling Home Hub is all about the most streamlined option available.
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