Hi Hubitat Community,
I've been running a SmartThings Hub for a few years, with a separate device running HomeBridge to expose all my z-wave devices to HomeKit (I like the Siri controls). I'm looking at moving to Hubitat now, and confused about something-
Would I be able to run HomeBridge on my Hubitat hub directly, or do I still need an external device?
And if not...why not? It sure seems like a killer feature if Hubitat were to expose that functionality natively to HomeKit users.
As far as I know, there is no native homebridge integration for HE. That said, I run homebridge on a rpi4 and it runs flawlessly. There are many other devices you can run it on. There is a huge thread here dedicated to homebridge.
I think it could potentially make sense for Hubitat as a company to pursue official HomeKit certification for the hub.
But Homebridge is a hack. Don’t get me wrong, it’s an amazing one, and I use it.
But IMHO for them to somehow officially incorporate it into the hub when it could theoretically disappear tomorrow based on Apple’s whims, it isn’t even worth considering.
At that point though seems like you'd be better off with "Threads" compatibility before going the pure Apple route. Like @jvwilson101 I run homebridge on an RPi4.
Works great but agree with you it is a useful / well designed "hack" that Apple seems to tolerate for now.
Of course once @spot gets into things RPi (or external server) there are plenty of other fun things to do as well.. MQTT, Node-RED etc.
I'd also love native homekit, but when I think about whether its worth it right now, the answer for me is a "no." I've found that the homebridge plugins work well, are quite comprehensive, and reasonably easy to install. If I think about the resources that Hubitat has as a small company, I'd rather see them stick with their current path - i.e., completing their more "foundational" features - like adding support for more recent Z-wave class versions and, perhaps, adding Zigbee 3.0. I'd also like to see them complete their Google Home support (e.g., Fans shouldn't appear as dimmers, etc.). Hopefully, one day, they have enough resources to hire people to do everything that's wanted, but I think that's bit in the future right now.
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on the wireguard - very fast!!!! May I recommend this script? You can use it for OpenVPN or Wireguard.
