eve room: temperature, humidity and air quality for HomeKit

Eve, formerly called elgato, was one of the first brands in bet heavily on HomeKit by offering accessories for Apple's home automation platform since its inception. After several years of experience in the sector, it is time to update some of its devices and this has happened with eve room 2, a small sensor that comes with many improvements compared to its predecessor.

Sensor of temperature, humidity and air quality, this small accessory will offer us all the information of the room in which we are, and It also does it with a much more careful design and with a smaller size than the original model. We have tried it and we tell you our impressions.

Aluminum and electronic ink

With this new eve room 2 the company wanted us to see the information from the device itself, something that we could not do with the original model. An electronic ink screen offers us all the information at a simple glance, with several display modes that we can change by touching the touch buttons on the frame. Electronic ink makes consumption minimal, something very welcome.

The material with which it is manufactured has also changed, plastic has been replaced by aluminum, which gives it a much more premium touch, and added to its small size make it ideal to place it anywhere in the room, without having to hide it, and thus be able to have the screen with the information always in view. It is important to remember that it is a sensor intended for indoor use, if you want something for the outside you should resort to eve degrees, similar but different.

On the back we find a microUSB connector to recharge it, because this new eve room 2 works with a rechargeable battery, not with batteries like the original model. This battery promises an autonomy of 6 weeks, something that I have not yet been able to verify but that by my calculations I think it can fulfill without problems. When the battery is low, the device enters low consumption mode, and only collects information about temperature and humidity, since the analysis of air quality is what consumes the most energy.

Home and Eve, two compatible applications

Adding this eve room to HomeKit means that we can know the air quality, or the temperature of the room from anywhere, and that we can also do it through Siri, either with our iPhone or with our HomePod. It is very practical to know what the temperature is at home at any time, especially if, as in my case, the heating is central and you do not have a thermostat that allows you to regulate it. OR know the air quality in case it is necessary to open the windows a little for the room to ventilate. Unfortunately with the Home application that comes by default in iOS we can do little else.

Luckily we have the Eve application, which we can download for free from the App Store (link) and that being similar to Casa, it is much more complete. In my opinion, it is one of the best free apps for HomeKit, interesting even if you do not have accessories of its brand. In it we will not only see the accessories of the Eve brand, but all those that we have added to HomeKit, and we can even control bulbs from other brands, or create automations. But if we focus on the eve room 2 sensor, the difference is evident with respect to the very concise data that the Home app offers us.

A graph shows us each of the measurements, being able to consult the history of the measurements. In this sense, this new model also improves on the previous one, since you will be able to download the historical data of the measurements even from away from home, something that did not happen with the previous model, which only does when you are close to it.

In addition to these details, something very important and that I show you in the video is that with the Eve application we can create rules involving this eve room 2, something impossible to do using the iOS House app. You can make another HomeKit accessory do something when it reaches a certain temperature, like activating an air purifier when the quality of the same decreases. Inexplicably Apple does not offer this option from its application, we do not know why.

original eve room vs. eve room 2

Editor's opinion

eve room 2 improves on its original model in each and every one of its aspects. With a more careful design and with materials such as aluminum, they have managed to reduce their size and include an electronic ink screen that offers you all the information without having to resort to Siri or your iPhone. Using the Eve application we will be able to collect a history of data on the temperature, humidity and air quality of the room in which we place the sensor, and we can even create automations using any of these measurements as a "trigger". I do not know of any more complete sensor compatible with the Apple platform and that also works without the need for cables. Its price is € 99,95 on Amazon (link)