HomeKit Weekly: Eve Degree is a handy device for tracking local climate

Weather plays a huge part in the automation of your home. From understanding when to heat and cool your home to running the sprinklers at optimal temperatures, being able to drill down with the actual temperature of your home is going to be is a handy feature. I’ve been using the Eve Degree for the past few weeks, and it’s become one of my favorite HomeKit accessories.

HomeKit Weekly is a series focused on smart home accessories, automation tips, and tricks, and everything to do with Apple’s smart home framework.

If you’ve been reading my HomeKit Weekly columns for the past few months, you’ve noticed the trend of me focusing on automations as the key benefit of HomeKit. While I appreciate every device being in the same app, being able to use automations between various devices is why I recommend picking a single, smart home platform to build around. I prefer HomeKit due to its seamless integration into the rest of the Apple ecosystem.

With the Eve Degree, you are getting a lot of data from a tiny device. You can track temperature, humidity, and air pressure all inside of a device that fits in the palm of your hand. Like all Eve devices, there is not an Eve Cloud service that you need to sign up for. Outside of updating the firmware, you don’t even need to install the Eve app either.

So what are the potential use cases of the Eve Weather Station? Here are just a few:

• Turn on a particular light if the temperature drops below freezing so that you know to keep water dripping to keep the pipes from freezing.
• Automate turning on a switch connected to a dehumidifier if the humidity outside reaches a particular condition.
• Monitor the morning temperature so know you when to automatically trigger your sprinkler system using Eve Aqua through HomeKit Automations.
• Ask Siri the weather in your backyard through HomePod, Apple Watch, etc.

Even outside of the HomeKit features, it’s a nice looking device. I mounted it right outside our back door, so I can easily check on the temperature when going outside. It’s been within a couple of degrees of what Dark Sky reports, so that is even more of a reason I like having it on hand. When it comes to freezing temperatures, 31 degrees at my house is a different situation than 33 degrees in my area.

While I haven’t gotten to use this feature since I’ve only had it a few weeks, Eve Degree tracks the temperature over time so that you can see the coldest, hottest, or historical humidity. I am looking forward to being able to track my micro-climate over time. As you build out your smart home accessories lineup, I think Eve Degree is a great product to add to your home. It’s a great looking device and provides a wealth of data that can be useful over time.

Eve Degree is available to purchase on Amazon, and you can download the Eve app from the App Store. I love how Eve never requires me to use a third-party cloud service. Everything stays right on my device or inside HomeKit.