Not to derail this too much, but...I've been trying to use an iPad as my Home Hub, but when I'm away from home, my phone often complains that devices are not responding. If I try again in a few seconds, it usually works, though sometimes I have to try once or twice more. My guess is that the iPad is "sleeping." It seems a little better, but still not perfect, if I leave the iPad plugged in/charging. Is this one of the problems you've noticed that the Apple TV solved? I've been thinking about replacing my Home Hub with ether an Apple TV (I don't really need one, but at least I'd get some use out of it...) or a HomePod Mini (also don't need it, but it's cheap and I guess Siri is part of the reason I'm doing HomeBridge, anyway). Just wondering if people find these to work better.
I suppose it could also be something with my setup. However, I've re-done it so many times (running alone on an Rasberry Pi, running along side various other things in a server I had set up for other purposes, and now as a TrueNAS jail/plug-in; using HubConnect, MakerAPI, and tonesto7 HomeBridge 2.0 now) that I'd find that hard to believe. But still open to anything that might get me closer to 100% response.
I've had my Pi 3b running for over a year with only 2 freezes ever. Both were remedied by a quick reboot. It's been otherwise rock-solid stable as stable as my Hubitat C-5, and pretty hands-off. I'm no developer.
Two things that can drastically help with stability:
Make sure you have the correct power supply with the correct voltage/amps, and a quality one at that. The Pi can get a bit finicky if under/over powered.
If I was starting from scratch, I might check out this one out [RELEASE] Homebridge Hubitat v2.0 from @tonesto7 just to see what the pros and cons are vs the other one above (that @aaiyar also posted) even though I'm really happy with what I've got, so I have no reason to change.
I'm running @tonesto7's implementation and it works well (kudos!!!). Am a little leery about HE websocket communications in general but have no issues to report and it works fast.
This is an extremely common issue with HomeKit users that attempt to use an iPad as the sole HomeKit hub. The solution is you need a HomeKit hub that is 'always on' like the Apple TV or HomePods. You will have a considerably better HomeKit experience by moving to one of those and use the iPad to simply look at the Home app, not participate as a hub.
Thanks for confirming my suspicions! I have a HomePod Mini on the way, so we'll see how it stacks up. (I rarely have a desire to look at a dashboard, so I'll probably sell the iPad on the secondary market where I bought it from in the first place. An Apple TV was the only other "hub" option when I started down this path...I think. Or maybe the original "full" Home Pod price just made me withdraw it from serious consideration, haha.)
The Apple TV, HomePod Mini, and original full size HomePod all act as dedicated always on HomeKit hubs. You will be perfectly happy with the HomePod Mini. I have seven of them in my house (along with four Apple TV 4K) and they all act as hubs with zero issues. Apple automatically maintains one hub as 'connected' while the others are in 'standby'. You will see which one is connected fluctuate from day to day which is perfectly normal.
Yes. I had forgotten how annoying that was. It happened with Homebridge-Hubconnect and Homebridge-MakerAPI as well. I've had the Apple TV as the Home Hub since Christmas and that hasn't happened since. It used to go unresponsive quite a bit when away and that was with the iPad plugged in. I also wanted to avoid any possible WI-FI latency issues (4 kids and 50 devices attached), so I hooked it up to a 5 port switch on the shelf next to the TV. Another plus is that my wife really likes the Apple TV and hasn't wanted to switch back to the Fire TV.
Also, I have AT&T fiber and have the AT&T gateway sending my Velop AX it's WAN IP and have it setup as a cascaded router. I know the two router setup can cause issues, but I've bypassed it as much as is possible.
Yes, I had similar issues with an iPad as home hub while on battery. Leaving it plugged in all the time helped, but wasn’t super practical since we do use the iPad for other things.
I’ve since tried both an Apple TV and a home pod mini, and found both to work very well.
I have installed HomeBridge, linked it to Hubitat by installing tonesto7' Homebridge v2 plugin, got my devices to show up in homekit on my iphone, lights turn on and off and dim from there, no problem. But then it has a hard time with shades, I have a Zemismart Zigbee 3.0 motor, and another shade controlled by an aeotec nano shutter module. Both work very well in HE, but from homebridge or homekit, the do not close or open completely, or close by ignoring the upper limit (you can imagine the damage this could have done). Anyone had similar issues, and anyone has had more luck with other roller shade devices from HE to Homekit ?
Thanks,
Amine.
See the link to the thread in the post above yours.
That integration doesn’t actually use Maker API, it uses a Hubitat app written by a community dev. But it’s a great integration with Homebridge and the one that I use.
The alternative for integrating Hubitat with Homebridge is indeed based on using Maker API. More details in this thread:
Both integrations depend on another always-on PC to run Homebridge.
Just today, I did a lot of video watching at YouTube, and have decided to plunge right in using a Raspberry Pi 4 I have sitting here doing nothing, so, I will have that always-on PC available.
If I don't end up causing explosions and fires, I likely will be back with more questions. My main desire is using HK for dashboards and to get rid of the Alexa issue with "her" responding when I don't want, among other things.
I got rid of Alexa for the same reason. I've been using Homebridge from the beginning and I started with the pre-built image. If you want to stay away from tinkering with the Pi, I would highly recommend it.
First of, Rakeshg, this was very helpful, and I have a RPi 4 running Homebridge fine and dandy. I am using Ethernet and plugged it into one of my switches. I got the screen with the scan code, ran an update it wanted, and then followed the instructions for adding HomeBridge to my HomeKit. I scanned it with my iPhone, it latched onto the code with no issues, identified it as a bridge, and I went from there.
[Screech of tires here.] "Accessory Not Found. [further text here about making sure it is connected with an Ethernet cabled to my router.] So, I moved the Ethernet cable over to my router (an Asus standard router, not mesh), and... same thing.
Any ideas? It comes up fine and dandy in my browser (Safari) using 192.168.50.12, the fixed address to which it is assigned. It is reaching out to the internet just fine as I ran an update for the UI.
Now, one more thing: WHICH Habitat plugins do I want to add?