I totally agree that there are other and likely better ways to do this, but from a shear marketing aspect of this, its just to easy to get hung up on going down the big tech solutions hole. At the moment i will be leaving this as is but the closet automation is getting to frustrating so it will be the first to kick off a re-look at options. Cheers!

Why is everyone making excuses for Homekit? If you read any forum they always try to blame the users wifi or something, yet this only seems to be a problem with Homekit. I tried to use it for around 6 months then replaced it with Alexa and it's just more reliable and voice commands actually work in a way you would expect them to. I know privacy etc. but that doesn't really matter if the functionality just isn't there.

Appreciate it! Cheers!

This is something that I am paying attention to, but still on the side lines for a little bit. Cheers!

I will certainly look into this! thanks and cheers!

you could add light senser that turn off outdoor lights when its a time or light level

I agree that the Bluetooth sensor in the closet is trash. As far as a sensor for the outside lights, that makes little sense since the Apple home kit automation is set for "turn on lights at sunset, and turn off lights at 1am". logically, it should work but there seems to be a gap in "signal off" logic at random times...It's weird but my initial thought is that is has something to do with the switching between 2.4GHz and 5GHz wifi connection that I have running in the house. I have not deep dived it but that might be a place to start looking in my case. Cheers!