Need help with HomeBridge (HOOBS) + HE + Motorised Blinds

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I have some Rollease motorized blinds connected to their Automate Pulse 2 Hub. These use a customer frequency, so have to be controlled via the Automate Pulse Hub. The supports Apple Home Kit and SmartThings (which doesn't work at the moment, confirmed issue with Rollease).

So I'm wanting to see if I can control the blinds from HE via Home Bridge, but not too sure what the flow would look like?

I created a HOOBS server on my Pi (recommended as a quick way to get Homebridge up). I added my HOOBS server to HomeKit, but now not sure where to go to from here to make the blinds controllable from HE.

Can anyone help with high level steps?

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The one way I can imagine this working is to create a virtual switch (or contact sensor) in Hubitat, which is then shared with HomeKit via HOOBS. Then, within HomeKit, create an Automation that is triggered via the virtual Hubitat device. When the virtual device goes Active, open the blinds. When it goes Inactive, close the blinds.

I am sure some others who are more experienced with HomeKit can provide a more detailed suggestion.

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Is there any way to "import" homekit devices into HE via Homebridge?
Similar to how Hue integration works?

That's how I assumed the homebridge integration would work... :slight_smile:

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Nope, it only goes the other way. Homebridge brings your hubitat devices into the Apple Home app.

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Got it!

I tried creating the virtual device like you mentioned a while back with Alexa, it worked sometimes but other times was unreliable (maybe because Alexa is not local..) I used a contact sensor virtual device for Alexa and a routine.

That's different to HE and ST integration right? Or does this work the same as Homebridge?

Cause in that case I may wait until Rollease sorts out their ST integration with their motors / automate hub.

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@SmartHomePrimer you seem to be very well versed in using Homebridge, any advice to @mikeb147?

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@ogiewon ‘s explanation is spot on.

Should work reliably. Are you using @dan.t ‘s MakerAPI plug-in for Homebridge? It should be extremely responsive.

To give you an idea of how responsive, I have a 6 button controller that at the moment cannot be joined directly to HE, but is available in HomeKit. However, HomeKit doesn’t support toggle, so I cannot just share a light through Homebridge and be able to toggle it on/off with a button press of that controller. So what I do is create a virtual switch for each light I want to toggle, set the Virtual Switches to turn off after 500ms and expose them to HomeKit. When I press the controller button, HomeKit turns on the Virtual switch and that triggers a Rule Machine rule to then toggle the light in HE. This all happens with only a second of delay. Works 100% of the time.

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Awesome thanks for the fast response!

Its encouraging to hear Homebridge works and is responsive. It looks like this may be a reliable option for me, going to play around and see how it works.

Will let you know if I have any questions.

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