[RELEASE] Homebridge Hubitat v2.0

@tonesto7 , what does this new native homekit integration mean for your app? Does it do anything more, less or different ? I assume the flow is still one to homekit.

See this thread for a bunch of info New homekit integration info?

Biggest difference is the Hubitat integration is in the works of being Apple certified, with that comes some restrictions, such as "border" devices like locks and garage doors can only be integrated directly to Homekit and not through a bridge device like Hubitat. Same goes with LAN/Wifi devices.

I'm sticking with Homebridge for as long as possible. My system works. Don't fancy setting it all up again.

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Well that is a non-starter for me. I need my Locks and Garage integrated...

There are ways around this limitation via virtual switches and HE rules if you aren’t using Homebridge. The benefit of this is that there is one less point of failure, one less piece of hardware (and software) to maintain.

Not being able to move all of it isn't a barrier to moving some of it. For me, the best approach was moving all switches and dimmers (98% of my devices) to be direct from the Hubitat, and leave the barrier devices via Homebridge. The allowed me to dramatically reduce the requirements on Homebridge and get slightly quicker response time for the 98%.

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This is my plan as well once I get around to updating my hub firmware and installing the new built-in HomeKit integration.

I love this integration and still plan to run it side by side with the native for specific devices (e.g. Locks/ Garage, etc.)

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I think this is also my plan. It's clear that in seeking official certification (which I absolutely think they should do) the lack of support for LAN devices and custom virtual drivers means a proudly unofficial method is still very much required!

I'll only be moving the basics, and only to reduce the potential points of failure and questions like "why's the light not working" at the exact moment I needed to reboot the computer running Homebridge. :wink:

The funkier stuff, such as my "Virtual Switchable Presence" thing, will solidly remain Homebridge. Interestingly, I see that no devices through the official integration support presence, which on HomeKit is solidly a "people thing", whereas on Hubitat it's used to denote the presence of a device or a person (depending on the purpose of that device). I guess "presence" may be another protected term in HomeKit.

From the docs:

Most Z-Wave and Zigbee devices are supported. Devices that are not supported (per Apple restrictions for HomeKit bridges) include:

  • locks and garage door openers
  • LAN, Wi-Fi, or cloud devices
  • User (custom) virtual drivers

I'd be interested to know why the custom virtual drivers are off the table, while the built-in virtual devices appear to be okay. I'd also be interested to know how they're differentiating devices on the hub, because looking at what appears and doesn't in my list, they nailed it. :laughing:

Huh, also - is HSM supported in the official HomeKit thing?

EDIT: Nope, no HSM in the official integration. Well, there's the clincher!

EDIT2: Ah, devices brought into HE through things like CoCoHue can also not be passed on to HomeKit through the official integration. I use some non-Hue lamps with my Hue hub, which (for reasons of corporate greed) don't get passed to HomeKit through the official Hue<>HomeKit integration either. Using Homebridge and CoCoHue they work just fine.

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I think the Hubitat Crew is crazy for seeking certification but I'm sure they have good reasons, I guess. They might want to talk to Honeywell and other companies alike and see how they feel about getting products so called Apple certified. If anything Apple should be talking Hubitat into getting things certified. Your product can work flawlessly and follow all the guidelines and still sit in the queue for a very long time.

Yeah, they'll have hoops to jump through and a dumb queue to sit in. But they're a company who want to sell a product to people. I've already seen "oh, this is uncertified, is everything okay" messages on here, which is exactly what Apple wants. Consumer confidence, yada, yada.

But other than the hoops and the queues, it affects the product in no way whatsoever (except in the way they need to compromise the official implementation, which is why we have the likes of Homebridge and this plugin). It's not like the App Store Gatekeepers where your product can actually be broken until someone approves your minor revision. Believe me, been there.

Now, if Apple turned around and said "okay, certification, but no user drivers and no plugins on your platform", I think everyone and their cat would be quite happy with the "uncertified" solution.

Also, I'd forgotten how broken the Home app is in iOS 16. What a pile of arse.

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I hear ya, I use Homebridge for mainly a gui and presence detection through Apple. HomeKit is so half baked and apple makes it seem like a High school lab project at best. They have every resource available to make HomeKit awesome but yet you can't even get Siri to say something through a HomePod without first making a recording lol.If you have problems with your HomeKit the only thing you can really do is reboot things and hope they pick up on the error. Why would Hubitat want to work with apple or get certified with a product and company that's not very serious about home automation. Nothing on what Apple says but how they actually do things. Hubitat doesn't need apple integration. If Hubitat put more effort into dashboards and presence detections basically Hubitat track me better, I'd rather Hubitat track me more so then apple. I wouldn't even have a need for HomeKit. Being fair I haven't used either in a long time so maybe those things are good now.

Dunno what app you are using, but it works great for me!

The changing room issue has a very easy work around, just select the room and tap the X, boom done!

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Also not having customer/virtual drivers that are not switches appear is a deal breaker for me. I have a lot of pairs of lights I've grouped as one like that I expose to Homebridge/Homekit today. Via the official integration I'd have to expose each individually.

Hubitat groups do show up in the official integration.

Huh. I missed that given that group's name. Thank you for pointing that out! Awesome.

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Nope, doesn't work here. Dismissing with close just resets the room in the background, rather than in the foreground. It appears to be some sort of iCloud sync effect, as I can "chase" a working Home app - if the phone app isn't working, the Mac one will, or perhaps the iPad. Or maybe the other iPad.

Yes, presence detection is spot on using HomeKit with no discernable difference to battery usage. And the UI is just "there" and convenient. I'm usually pretty positive on it, it's just the stupid faults that wind me up. :slight_smile:

Anyway, I'm going to ditch talking about that here as it's pulling this thread off topic.

So... what I have found today is that even after carefully removing many Homebridge devices from the plugin, it started to hugely impact hub performance. I've deleted it now and I'm going to rebuild, as there's clearly something amiss.

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How easy is it to migrate homebridge from one Mac mini to another? Wanting to try this out now but planning to upgrade the Mac mini when the new one comes out in a few months…

Very easy, Backup your config and save to disk, the on the new system, install homebridge and the restore the config.

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Agreed, very easy. I just migrated Homebridge from a VM on one of my Windows PCs to a VM on another PC. Shouldn’t be any different on your Macs.