Would it be possible to create a HomeBridge (https://github.com/nfarina/homebridge) plugin for Simple Hub for Mac? Thus, allowing Simple Hub for Mac to be able to execute functions from HomeKit.
HomeBridge is an ugly mess. Once you inject that thing into your HomeKit, it’s all downhill from there and you lose a lot of the benefits of HomeKit. We won’t be trying to hack anything like that together.
Also, we’re probably less than 60 days away from a proper solution to that problem with HomeKit for macOS. So the time spent on HomeBridge would have been wasted.
The rumor mill also suggests that not only will HomeKit for macOS arrive, but iOS apps will be given a way to run on macOS. So at that point there is a possibility we’d kill the macOS product because the entire iOS product might run on macOS which would be really awesome.
Anyway, both of them are rumors, but much more credible and stable paths that an ugly hack based on HomeBridge which I would not feel good about encouraging anybody to use.
I’ve been a Roomie user since the beginning, and am currently using v6. It’s hands down the easiest to use and most powerful home automation remote app there is. I have about 50 Insteon on/off and dimmer switches along with 30 or so Zwave devices connected to my Universal Devices ISY-994izw controller, and although Roomie has always discovered the ISY manifest and populated the devices into the app, there are issues. It lists the entire ISY manifest of devices in the same room/menu from the bottom bar without allowing each device to be manually assigned to a room in Roomie. The Zwave devices have never worked, they appear in the ISY manifest in Roomie but are unresponsive, this has always been the case for me.
So I recently built a HomeBridge raspberry pi, installed the ISY plugin on it, and organized all of the devices discovered into their appropriate rooms in the HomeKit “Home” app. After re-syncing HomeKit in Roomie, all of the Insteon switches show up in Roomie as HomeKit devices, and they are filtered correctly by room, as desired. BUT… Roomie thinks all on/off switches are “Switches” (the plug icon in bottom bar) and all dimmer switches are “Lights” (the light bulb icon in the bottom bar), despite my having labeled them all lights in HomeKit.
I understand your position on HomeBridge, but for those of us trying to use Roomie as THE one app to rule them all, HomeBridge a beautiful piece of opensourceware that facilitates consolidated control of both HomeKit and ISY controlled devices in a more desirable way than just discovering the ISY natively in Roomie. (PS - HomeBridge doesn’t support Zwave either, I’m replacing all Zwave with Insteon this week).
Is there a way to consolidate the on/off ‘switches’ and dimmer ‘lights’ all into a single bulb or plug icon/menu in roomie? HomeBridge/HomeKit sync is better than native ISY in Roomie as is, but it would be perfect if all smart home devices for each room would show up in the same bottom bar menu so I don’t have to poke around to find the switch I’m looking for.
Thanks!
Not sure I get it, but I will try to translate and you tell me if it’s correct.
First, I have no issue with Homebridge. I use Homebridge myself. In the 6.2.1 release notes, I specifically recommended Homebridge for Nest users. Right now, trying to maintain any kind of Nest support for any app is basically going to war with Google which is stupid. Users should move away from Nest, but I still have one left and use Homebridge for it so I understand this takes time.
Second, a plugin for Homebridge for us makes no sense. We are not a HomeKit device. We use HomeKit devices. The only thing it seems like you want is the ability to re-classify switches and lights as one or the other. The Home app does exactly that, but then doesn’t bother saving it anywhere that any other app can access. I’m aware of that feature request. FWIW you can probably fiddle with Homebridge enough to do exactly that re-classification, but yes it’s probably simpler to do it in Roomie. However, doing it in Roomie means if you ever do a full forced re-sync from the Homes panel, you’ll need to do it again each time. Better in the ideal case to get it right on the HomeKit side so that nothing in each accessory’s settings is customized.
To your last question of course you can probably use Roomie’s Homebar Scenes to get a similar result today with a little fiddling.
Ah, I see my issue. Homebridge automatically differentiates on/off switches from dimmers (which is considers lights). All of my Insteon devices are populated into the Home app as switches (on/off switches) and lights (dimmer switches) by default. I can change the way they are displayed in Home, but setting the “Display As” for all devices to either light or switch, but that’s just for display in the Home app… HomeKit must still see them as originally detected, and thus populates Roomie that way, regardless of what I have each device set to display as in Home.
I don’t know enough about Homebridge to know how, or if it’s even possible, to force device designation, and to your point, I really don’t want to customize Homebar scenes in Roomie too much, given a HomeKit re-sync would wipe it. So I’ll just deal with it. Getting closer to having Roomie literally controlling everything in my house - I just upgraded our security system and installed sixteen 4K Lorex cameras with NRV. Next up… figuring out how to use ONVIF to bring all of them into Roomie. Thanks for the quick reply, Will!
Hi Rockstar, quick question re homebridge, guess you have to use ISY 5.x firmware, if yes, I am having issues as in every command has. 5-10 seconds lag…I have contacted UD support and pushing them to fix this.