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This might sound like a dumb question, but is there anything that a group can achieve that a scene can't? (sorry, my first foray into all things smart home.)
EDIT: Oh and as a side note, Rooms?
Essentially, what do rooms do that groups don't for example? Couldn't I just name a Group, Scene and Room "Kitchen" or "All Lights" or "Kitchen lights" and achieve all the same outcome?
iPad Pro (1st generation)
Rooms determine where an accessory is located. Rooms can be placed into Zones. It would best to stick to using room names with the room the accessories are in and best to call a zone where you might have added more than one room and name it upstairs, downstairs or whatever suits. Otherwise Siri might get confused.
For example you may want all the lights to go off at a set time and you can ask Siri to turn off the downstairs lights.
This is covered here: Add a smart home accessory to the Home app - Apple Support . With a room you may want to just say turn off the kitchen lights. If you had used kitchen as a zone name, everything will go off in that zone - which might contain other rooms you didn’t want turned off.
With scenes, you can control multiple accessories at the same time. Create a scene called "Good Night" that turns off all of the lights and locks the front door — all at once. Or set a "Morning" scene that plays your favorite playlist on your HomePod, Apple TV,1 or AirPlay-enabled speaker.
Create scenes and automations with the Home app - Apple Support
Automations require no action and will do it automatically. Once you’ve set up a zone you could Automate the downstairs lights to all go off at the time you set it to.
To get the hang of how each works and if you like it, it’s best to test out different ways. I don’t use zones containing more than one room, I just do each room individually. This is just me because I have dodgy wifi and if it fails to activate/trigger., everything included in it did.
You can of course name a zone “All lights” if that suits just don’t call zones room names. Unless of course it makes sense for you to do all kitchen lights at once and call the zone kitchen and kitchen lights are all that’s in it.
Homekit Scenes vs Groups vs Rooms
