Is Eve Bringing The First Bluetooth Extender to HomeKit?

Discovered earlier on the FCC io website, a listing has appeared showing a ‘new’ product under test called the Eve Extend. Eve has had a device like this in development in the past, but the latest filings show that the latest relevant documents were submitted 0n June 23rd of this year, with the instruction booklet showing a date of June 13th, so it’s possible that this is a new device. As one can already deduct from the name alone, this is an Eve product, from the company based in Munich. As for the ‘Extend’ part, well apart from the obvious stab in the dark that this extends a signal of some sort, and add to this that most of Eve products are Bluetooth-based, it’s not a stretch to conclude that this could be a Bluetooth range extender, something that has so far eluded other companies, including ConnectSense, who have had such a device in the pipeline for a while.

If this is indeed true, which from the descriptions in the manual clearly seem to indicate, this would (hopefully) solve the issue of HomeKit based Bluetooth devices being out of range from the Home Hub, be that an Apple TV, HomePod or iPad. As an example, this would include door locks, that may typically be slightly too far away from a home’s Apple TV. Apple has tried to address this if you’re an owner of more than one Home Hub, but while this works in theory, many people have reported that when you get more than one Home Hub into the mix, things start to slowly unravel with your HomeKit home. I can personally attest to this, so this would be an ideal solution.

The device itself seems to resemble the colour and form factor of their older devices, namely the Eve Room (1st gen) and the Eve Motion, but with a micro-USB port. This could simply be that these are older photos of the previous product in development.

There is one potential fly in the ointment with this device, however, as in the manual, it does state that this device works with Eve products, with no mention of any other brand of device that uses Bluetooth. Nevertheless, this is a bit of a breakthrough when it comes to Bluetooth reachability, which has been a bit of a ‘Holy Grail’ to some.

Thanks to Dale Wright for the tipoff.