Setting up Activity Zones in the Home app (HomeKit Secure Video camera)

In Homekit you have the possibility to create activity zones. With the help of this function it is possible to detect movement within a specific part of the camera image.

For example, if you have a HomeKit Secure Video camera hanging in the garden, you can keep an eye on the garden path and the gate. But you can also use a camera indoors to detect movement in a room. You can set up multiple zones per camera stream, but you must meet a number of conditions.

What do you need?

In order to use the activity zones, you must meet the following conditions. Only then can you use the activity zones.

1. iOS 14, iPadOS 14 or later, if you want to create the Activity Zone in the macOS Home app you will need macOS 11 Big Sur.
2. HomeKit camera with HomeKit Secure Video.
3. Home hub (Apple TV, HomePod or iPad)
4. iCloud storage plan of at least 200GB when using 1 camera. For 2 to a maximum of 5 cameras you need a storage plan of 2TB.

Set up activity zones via the Home app

Follow the steps below to set up your Activity Zones. You can do these steps in the iPhone, iPad, and macOS versions of the Home app.

1. Open the Home app and tap the HomeKit camera you want to set up activity zones for. You can recognize a HomeKit Secure Video camera by the red dot in the upper right of the preview.
2. Tap the gear icon at the top left of the screen.
3. Tap ‘Select activity zones…’.

1. The camera stream will now appear on the screen. Tap the image to indicate the starting point of a new zone.
2. Repeat this to completely demarcate the activity zone. Each time you tap the screen, the line will be extended.
3. The ‘Invert Zone’ button at the bottom right of the screen inverts the entire selection. Instead of within the zone, everything outside this zone is now checked for activity.
4. You can delete an added activity zone by tapping on it and then selecting ‘Delete’.

1. Tap ‘Done’ to save the set zone.
2. Now that the zones have been set up for the camera, you can also link notifications to them and activate recordings.
3. Tap on the ‘Notifications’ menu option.
4. Enable the option ‘Notifications on this iPhone/iPad/Mac’.

You can activate various options for the notifications. This is possible. Based on time (for example only at night) and presence of people in the home. You can also indicate here that a fragment should be recorded when activity is detected.

Notifications must be set up per device, so if you want to receive notifications on all your Apple devices, you must set this up one by one.

HomeKit Secure Video compatible camera

To use HomeKit Secure Video, you need a camera that supports it. Unlike cameras with HomeKit support, the range of cameras with HomeKit Secure Video is not yet very large and limited to a few manufacturers including Logitech, Eufy, Netatmo and Xiaomi.