That is a very cool feature thanks for the heads up!!!! I guess now we can have multiple different instances various plugins like HE, Ring etc... Also looks like for the Hue folks some nice non-blocking goodness.
Overview
This preview feature allows any Homebridge platform or accessory to optionally run as its own independent accessory, separate from the main bridge, and in an isolated process. There are several reasons / benefits from doing this:
- Isolate plugin code from the main bridge - in this mode the plugin will run in its own child process, preventing it from ever crashing the main bridge if a fatal exception occurs.
- If the plugin process does crash, Homebridge will automatically restart it, without impacting the main bridge or other plugins.
- The plugin is protected from dependency polution caused by other plugins (rarely happens).
- Isolate slow plugins, preventing them from slowing down the main bridge or other plugins - HomeKit requests the status of all the accessories on a single bridge when the Home app is opened, as a result the response time is only as fast as your slowest plugin. Loading your accessory / platform as a separate bridge will allow HomeKit to make concurrent requests.
- Easily work around the 149 accessory limitation of a bridge without having to run multiple instances.
- Run multiple instances of platform-based plugins (for example, connecting two different Ring accounts using the
homebridge-ringplugin). - Prevent static platform plugins from blocking the main bridge or other plugins while it initialises (for example,
homebridge-huewhile it is trying to discover the Hue/Deconz bridge) - Gain all the benefits of running multiple instances of Homebridge without the management overhead.
This will work with all existing plugins without requiring any code changes.
