Terncy Home Center and HomeKit: a Uniquely Affordable hub

As the popularity of the smart home balloons, more and more companies want a piece of the pie and understandably so. In HomeKit, we’ve been witnessing a surge in vendors bring their products to the platform with many offering unique perspectives and accessories with a growing number coming out of China. One such manufacturer is Terncy, otherwise known as Xiaoyan. This Zigbee-based home automation solution provides some affordable smart home standards as well as some one-of-a-kind devices that really make this system stand out. This article will serve as an introduction to the HomeKit-enabled Terncy Home Center and its lineup of accessories with more in-depth analyses of some individual devices to come.

Terncy Home Center Features

Zigbee 3.0
Connected accessories act as Zigbee signal repeaters for extended range
Connect up to 60 smart accessories
Compatible with HomeKit, Google Assistant, Amazon Alexa, and other platforms

Need to Knows

Home Center requires an ethernet port and power
micro-USB power port
Requires Terncy app to add accessories

Terncy Home Center Accessories

The Terncy Home Center is a HomeKit-compatible Zigbee gateway that allows you to connect compatible Zigbee accessories. As such, the accessories themselves are not HomeKit-compatible, but are exposed to HomeKit once the Terncy Home Center is added to HomeKit. Terncy produces a wide range of accessories to fit a number of uses in a connected home from the standards to some very unique accessories. Available in the North American market are the Terncy Home Center, Door Sensor, Smart Light Socket, and Awareness Switch. You can get these separately or together as part of the Smart Life Starter Kit.

Door Sensor

A staple of any home security system and smart home, Terncy’s Door Sensor is a contact sensor that can send you notifications based on the open and closing of the sensor as well as integrate other smart accessories to act upon those actions. As an added benefit, a temperature sensor is exposed in HomeKit which is an added benefit if you are using this on an actual door or window.

Smart Light Socket

The Smart Light Socket adapter allows users to continue using an existing bulb adding smart on/off functionality. Simple, yet practical. It is worth noting that I was not able to get a larger LED filament-style bulb to work with this device. I tested various LED and CFL bulbs of various sizes and they worked as expected.

Awareness Switch

One of Terncy’s more unique accessories, the Awareness Switch sports not one, but two motion sensors opposite one another, an ambient light sensor, a temperature sensor, and a button with single and double presses exposed to HomeKit. This is obviously a niche device and in order to get the most out of it, placement is crucial in order to isolate detected motion and avoid erroneous triggering from the other sensor. This device lends itself to some pretty unique and complex automation potential based on motion being detected by one sensor and not the other. A true aficionado’s smart home accessory.

Smart Dial

The Smart Dial is perhaps the shining star of Terncy’s lineup. This rotary controller allows continuous incremental adjustment of whatever device it Is connected to in either clockwise or counter-clockwise direction just like a physical radio tuner.

It can be used in conjunction with their curtain and roller blind motors to open and close window coverings. It can also be used with Terncy lighting products to adjust brightness, color temperature, and or hue. The Smart Dial can also be paired with Sonos to control audio playback. It can also be pressed for use as a button with single and double presses. As HomeKit does not currently support rotary control, the Smart Dial is only exposed as a button for single and double presses.

Unlike the other accessories mentioned above, as of the writing of this article, the Smart Dial isn’t officially available through North American retailers. Terncy did mention to us that this is in the works. Alternatively, the Smart Dial and a rather extensive lineup of smart home accessories are available through international outlets like Aliexpress.

The App

The Terncy app isn’t flashy and could benefit from some adjustments in terms of aesthetics and interface in my opinion . It does, however, offer some unique interactions that would be a welcomed addition to HomeKit. It has your standards like scenes and accessory setup, control, and configuration, but it starts to get interesting when you tap the “Automations” tab.

We have the option for a timer automation which will set a countdown timer before an action happens. This action can be an accessory, scene, or a delay and then an accessory or scene action. Unfortunately, this only applies to Terncy accessories and doesn’t integrate other HomeKit devices. We also have options for automations based on time / day and your standard “If…then” automation for buttons, switches, and sensors.

Oddly, there is a “HomeKit mode” in the Terncy app. Once you’ve logged in, you can use Sign In with Apple by the. way, tapping on the “My” tab at the bottom and then “HomeKit” and then selecting our home, we can enter this mode, but we can’t really do much. We can see information about our HomeKit accessories, but we can’t control them. We can create scenes with our HomeKit accessories, but I only had the option of adding one of my Hue light strips and the Terncy Light Bulb Socket. This mode also doesn’t allow for any type of automation creation. This is obviously still a work in progress and, for me, not useable.

In HomeKit apps, we have access to all of the same services included in the Terncy app with the exception of the rotary dial as mentioned above.

Final Thoughts

The Terncy Home Center and its accessories are a reliable and responsive way to bring a little intelligence into your home. The devices do what they say they’ll do and do it well thanks to Zigbee connectivity. I appreciate the clever thought put into devices like the Awareness Switch even if I do think it is a very niche product that may be overkill in the vast majority of cases. The Smart Dial on the other hand is a simple, practical, and intuitive way to interact with your smart home accessories and I’m surprised that more manufacturers aren’t producing rotary dial controllers. I would definitely like to see this have more integration into HomeKit, but this isn’t an issue on Terncy’s side. This type of action just isn’t supported in HomeKit…yet.

The Terncy app experience leaves a lot to be desired, but I’m honestly OK with this. Most of what I would want to do can be carried out once it’s connected to HomeKit. What I’m not able to do within HomeKit is easily accomplished in the Terncy app. I’m not the biggest fan of having to create accounts to use products, but the Sign In with Apple integration is a nice touch and puts me more at ease.

Terncy has managed to build an ecosystem of products that are dependable, thoughtful, and very reasonably priced. While I really enjoy the innovative thought put into devices like the Awareness Switch, I do think the ecosystem would benefit from stripping down a little and offering consumers a more simplified sensor and button combination. Terncy is definitely a vendor that you should be on the look out for in the future and the Home Center and its selection of devices certainly deserve consideration if you’re looking for a HomeKit-compatible solution for a fast and reliable variety of accessories.