Cygnett Launch Smart Bulbs and Plug For Australian Consumers

Australian electronic accessory maker Cygnett have finally launched their smart home range of products in Australia, with a whole collection of devices, some of which are HomeKit compatible.

The products that are ready for HomeKit out of the box are their Smart Bulb Colour, Smart Bulb Ambient, and their simply named Smart Plug. Both the Ambient and Colour bulbs are available with E27 or B22 bases, priced at AU$49.95 and AU$69.95, respectively.

The Cygnett Smart Plug, priced at AU$49.95, features the usual set of skills you’d expect of many smart plugs, in addition to energy monitoring. The plug itself is fairly slim, however, and features an offset set of pins, along with a physical control button at the top with a built-in LED.

The company also make a series of devices, that all work with the company’s own smart hub, which incidentally also has a built-in IR transceiver. The hub and the child devices, which includes a motion sensor, door sensor, temperature & Humidity sensor, and a smart button, would currently appear to be only compatible with Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant, although, in the manual for the smart hub, it also seems to suggest that it is, in fact, compatible, with one section stating;

“Your Cygnett Smart Home device is compatible with Apple HomeKit and it allows you to control your smart devices remotely. Add your device by taking an image of the QR code affixed with the Home app.”

Additionally, in one of the company’s tutorial videos, the ‘Works with Apple HomeKit’ logo is clearly visible on the front of the packaging, although we’re unsure as to whether the current packaging is the same.

There’s also not a lot of information on how the hub communicates with its child devices, although it does seem to suggest they simply use wifi, with only a ‘Wifi Certified’ logo appearing in the aforementioned manual, along with the manual for the smart button stating;

“Cygnett Smart Home devices only support 2.4GHz Wi-Fi networks. The Smart Control Button requires a Cygnett Smart Hub + IR Remote Control to function.”

It does seem strange that a wifi device would need a hub in order to function, but it could be that the hub itself provides the necessary functionality for these devices to talk to both Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa.

More information can be found on Cygnett’s website.