Background: I bought C8 Hub, and am preparing for migrating from SmartThings (ST) to C8 Hub. I have been playing around with C8 settings and virtual devices to get familiar with rules, modes etc. I have both zwave/zigbee disabled on C8 while I play around. I still have my SmartThings hub running and a Raspberry Pi (RPi) Homebridge porting over those 90+ devices into Homekit via the SmartThings homebridge plugin. The SmartApp in ST shows disabled but Homebridge and Homekit is still working somehow so I have not updated anything since Nov2022! Not until I migrate to C8.
Issue/Concern: I was backing up my Homebridge RPi and noticed it shows the devices from C8 hub in the Accessories tab. Granted I only have virtual switches in C8, that are exposed to Homekit via the Homekit app in C8. But I did not expect those devices to appear in RPi-Homebridge where my ST devices should be.
Question 1: Does C8 run a homebridge instance on the hub? And if that is mixing up the RPi-Homebridge on the same network?
Question 2: Does that mean I cannot run RPi-Homebridge alongside C8 hub? Well, currently both are running fine in Homekit so maybe I can despite the glitch I am observing. And I remember seeing documentation on running multiple instances of homebridge simultaneously so it should be possible (hopefully).
(This weekend, I have to migrate ~60 zwave and ~20 zigbee devices over to C8, and I have to keep running RPi-Homebridge for MyQ connection etc. I do plan to add Zooz plugs via unsecure mode to reduce zwave traffic.)
The Hubitat system integration makes the hub act as a Homekit bridge device (not homebridge itself). You expose devices directly to Homekit via this virtual bridge.
A Homebridge server acts as a bridge device and exposes devices TO Homekit through it. I do not think you can see other devices integrated with Homekit via other bridges in Homebridge.
So basically, everything you have said makes no sense.
Yes you can have multiple bridge devices. I am running Homebridge and the Hubitat Homekit integration concurrently. The devices integrated through the Hubitat bridge do not show up in Homebridge anywhere.
Blockquote So basically, everything you have said makes no sense.
Blockquote
Yes! That’s why I am concerned. It doesn’t make sense to see c8-HomeKit devices on RPi-homebridge. I double checked the web IP address as well to be RPi.
Anyway, looks like a glitch.
I will be moving from ST to C8 tomorrow, and updating homebridge as well. I will report if I see this glitch again.
Can I ask how it is you are seeing the devices? I have a Homebridge NodeJS running and I don't exactly see a list of devices. There are times I'd love to check, but I've never seen a list.
I do have an instance of the Hubitat Homekit Integration running, so my Home app does see both sets of devices but they are independently created. In my case, the Hubitat Homekit Integration is running on a hub that does not feed into the Homebridge NodeJS instance. During reboots of that Hubitat hub, for platform updates, I can see those few devices fall from my Home app, and then return after.
Maybe your ST connection to Homebridge is more complex than mine, because my config.json simply contains 4-5 lines defining a platform. Does yours use a per-device strategy?
I have the Homebridge OS installed on a RPi3B with following:
Raspbian GNU/Linux Buster
Node.js [v12.18.1]
Homebridge [v1.4.0]
homebridge-config-ui-x v4.43.0
homebridge-smartthings v2.3.8
Attached screenshots:
RPi-Homebridge showing accessores - 4 switches
C8 Hubitat hub Devices - showing the 4 virtual devices exposed to Homekit via the Homekit(beta) app
Interesting, RPi-Homebridge is not showing my ST devices anymore!
Anyway, I am switching off ST hub tomorrow, and migrating the devices to C8. I will re-install Homebridge OS with latest Raspbian (Bullseye) and add non-ST plugins.
Looks like a feature from Homebridge OS. I see the same on latest OS. In the accessories tab, you can look up all the homebridge devices on LAN. When I click on C8 devices, in detail it does show C8 IP address, so everything is how it should be.
It's possible that the C8 Hub is running its own instance of Homebridge, which is why the virtual devices are showing up in the RPi-Homebridge Accessories tab. This could be due to the fact that Homebridge is a software platform that allows for the integration of various smart home devices and systems, and the C8 Hub may be using it to enable Homekit integration.
