iPad or apple TV for hub

Hello. I'm trying to learn more about Simple Control. Am I correct that you can use an iPad or apple TV as the hub? If so, which is preferred and why?

Thanks

I recommend a modern iPad in Guided Access, dedicated, in usually a Living Room, and if you're so inclined you might want to add a USB Lighting Adapter with a USB Ethernet adapter. You can also do that as a wallmount with say a SurfaceMount device. I prefer that path because it uses the latest A series CPU and thus provides the best video decoding. If you don't use cameras or don't use Remote Access or simply need to sync configs between two devices, you may need significantly less horsepower. An iPod Touch 6 might be suitable.

An Apple TV is the cheapest and very comparable option. It also has Ethernet built-in so it's very simple to get great network performance, and medium video decoding performance (great with an Apple TV 4K).

This is discussed in the announcement as well:

https://www.simplecontrol.com/sc5release/

Ok I see. I think I will get an apple TV 4k as it has the same processor as the iPad pro but is cheaper.

So this apple TV 4k will only be used as a hub and cannot be used as an apple TV 4k. Is this correct?

Thanks

The Apple TV 4K is certainly an ideal hub.

So this apple TV 4k will only be used as a hub and cannot be used as an apple TV 4k. Is this correct?

Really good question, this is something I’ve been wondering as well

I went out and bought one specifically to ba a hub, but have been having a few issues staying connected. I think you have to dedicate as a hub if I’m not mistaken? Does that mean you need to keep the app open constantly?

Absolutely. See the Setup Guide which goes into detail on all this:

https://www.simplecontrol.com/knowledgebase/setup-guides/

The ideal scenario would be that the AppleTV is not only a dedicated device, but it's also providing a constant view on your cameras or TV. But regardless, it's still cheap even if you put it in a closet.

The one downside of the apple tv as a hub is that with no default or startup app, if the apple tv loses power, it will need to be touched to launch the simple tv app. Of course you could throw it on your ups but in case of a long outage it will still fail.

Can you use the app launch to launch the hub app on a trigger? If I remember correctly you can do that on the Mac hub version.

I opted to use an older iPad I got three years ago as a hub for now. I don’t have video cameras currently so horsepower really isn’t an issue for me. Once I upgrade to an Atv 4K I may move one of my ATV4s over to hub duty and get a ups for power backup.

I tried many option and fail to get the simple app to auto execute on startup.

It is a big issue for us so i got to get ups .