Thanks the Snapshot was useful. Just what I was looking for.
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Hi dan.t,
Thank you for your effort, I am new to HE so I would like to confirm an issue: using your plugin, I could control a device which is labeled "Apple Homekit", without another bridge device like homekit bridge on Pi. Pairing from HE, input device 's homekit code and start to control. Am I right?
Welcome to the community!
@dan.t's Homebridge Plug-in via MakerAPI for Hubitat requires an always on computer running Homebridge, like a Raspberry Pi, in order to function. If using a RPi, you can achieve this easily using HOOBS. HOOBS offers a free download of their image for a RPi, or you can buy a ready to run kit from them. It is relatively straightforward to then add @dan.t's Homebridge Plug-in via MakerAPI by following his directions.
Also, what this integration with Hubitat does is expose Hubitat devices to the HomeKit system on your iOS phone or tablet. It allows HomeKit to control Hubitat devices. It does not really allow true HomeKit devices to be controlled by Hubitat.
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HomeKit from Apple works best with an Always On Apple Device such as an AppleTV, iPad or HomePod. This brings two major benefits: 1) access via the Apple Home App to your Homekit system from afar. 2) Automations can be created that tie individual devices together.
Homebridge functions as a HomeKit Accessory. Apple believes they are the center of the universe, as does every other 'ecosystem' vendor. As such, they don't 'export' devices to Accessories. Accessories add to Apple, not the other way around.
The workaround requires you create a virtual device on Hubitat, expose it to Apple via Homebridge and then using Apple Automations, transfer device's states to the Hubitat virtual.
One of the most common is Presence. Your iPhone acts as a presence sensor to HomeKit. You can mirror that Presence into Hubitat via an automation transfer.
Homebridge requires it's own always on computer, configured to run NodeJS. It may be tiny like a Raspberry Pi or via an always on Mac. NAS devices can often be used as well.
Always On Homebridge connects to Always On HomeKit, exposing to Apple the devices it knows about. The Homebridge MakerAPI App on Hubitat is the mechanism for selecting Hubitat devices to Homebridge, as well as a pipeline for the Events that then are able to travel from Hubitat through Homebridge into the Apple system. Changes made to those devices in the Apple Home App are reflected back to Hubitat as Events.
I hope I didn't make it More Confusing.
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Hi @dan.t thanks for the plugin. Iāve been using it for a month or two with great success.
I recently added some RGBW lights to my home, previously I had some Dimmable whites in their place.
The behavior in the home app is strange, but I canāt tell if itās just a bug in the home app or something thatās out of alignment with the api implementations along the way. When I try to use the color shortcuts... they just glitch. Selecting one, and then trying to select another... the favorite just overwrites the preview color. But the color of the bulb is as correct as the previous favorite was. Hereās a screen recording:
Edit: I am noticing a similar unpredictability with the Home+ app, so Iām leaning toward the problem being in the api usage or timing between phone->ļ£ætv->homebridge->hubitat->Zigbee->Bulbs.
This 
If you have that base, you can use HomeKit devices with HE. If youāre new to home automation, building up your device list can get quite expensive. But now that the Xiaomi Aqara hub and the latest Xiaomi Mijia Multimode Gateway support HomeKit for many of their excellent, tiny and very well designed devices, you can take advantage of building the low cost and build a very stable smart home setup.
Joining Xiaomi devices directly to HE is a hit and miss scenario and can be very disappointing, but joining them to a Xiaomi gateway and then bridging that through HomeKit is incredibly reliable.
Thank you All,
So, I could understand Homekitbridge Plug-in via MakerAPI make HE as a Homekit accessory and to control whole the system HE+other Apple homekit, I still need an iOS device.
Yes.
You will need:
- Hubitat Hub running Homekitbridge Plug-in via MakerAPI
- Homebridge running on an Always-On computer
- Homekit on an Always-On Apple device.
- Home app running on iOS device.
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Might be me but it seems that āHomeā devices take a long time to load on the āHomeā app since 2.2.0 (122).
I havenāt noticed a difference.
You have no idea how much time I have spend trying to figure out what is causing that..... I am more than confident that the issue is on Apple's end and would try to reboot you Apple hub once.
I went down to tracing the communications between Apple and Homebridge and can assure you that Homebridge (and the plugin) respond very quickly but I still see these delays in the Home app. And then one day, it will be all snappy again and the next it might be slow again.
I highly doubt that the Hubitat release has anything to do with it. The plugin does not query Hubitat when the Home app is opened, the individual states are cached in the plugin.
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I know it slows down my iPad enough that I have been thinking about getting an Apple TV. Like you, it is not consistently slow for me either. It is usually very speedy.
Does anyone know if the Sage Doorbell Sensor might work as a HomeKit doorbell through Homebridge?
I am running Homekit on a gen 6 iPad and the only time it gets rebooted is when there's an iPadOS update. Not sure if it makes a difference or not, but I am running Homebridge Beta.
I have a sage sensor and just tried adding it to Homebridge and it just shows up as a switch. Seems to work though if you want to use it for homekit automations. It acts like a momentary button, turns on then quickly turns off again. Maybe the plugin needs to add the doorbell capability for it to show up properly as a doorbell???
I experience slow loading sometimes as well. I have noticed that limiting how many āfavoritesā I have seems to help a little. I recently rebuilt my raspberry pi using the recent Homebridge Pi image and it seems to have helped too. GitHub - homebridge/homebridge-raspbian-image: Official Homebridge Raspberry Pi Image based on Raspbian Lite.
When I was using HOOBS I noticed more slowdowns.
I don't use HOOBS either, but I am using Homebridge Config UI X along with 7 other plugins. I have 215 devices spread across three instances of homebridge with 18 favorites.
I could probably pair that switch with the doorbell plugin that should work. Thanks for trying it out for me.
Seems more responsive
I installed the beta of Homebridge and am using the Hubitat-HubConnect plugin. I havenāt had any issues and it seems to load much faster.
So to exclude a specific device COMPLETE, I use the device ID... and leave the rest blank like this?
"excluded_capabilities": {
"09": [ "" ]
Does that work or do I have to find all the capabilities and exclude them manually?
Also, is the device ID the DNI? I have some which are simple numbers and some are long strings.
I'm going to need to exclude all the Wemo and TONS of Lutron devices (already native to Homekit). Looking for a streamlined way.
