Return to Indigo. Need to Catch-up.

Hi,

After a little more than a year, I'm happy to be ready to return to Indigo with a new, smaller system. (Old system with 100+ devices (lots of Insteon and Z-Wave) and a ton of plugins was destroyed by Hurricane Ian's surge along with everything else.)

Have been growing a new system from scratch, slowly. So, while I started using Indigo around 2009, this feels like a Noob question b/c so much has changed. Looking at the plugin store several of the plugins I used are now depreciated; new ones have arrived; and I'm out of the loop and would really appreciate some advice.

Goal is to have two-way communication and visibility between Indigo and Apple's Home App. I tend to use the Indigo App for control and advanced programming, but kids and wife just control a few things like locks and room lights through the Apple Home App. How would I achieve this goal , given my hodgepodge list of devices, below?

Here are the devices I have purchased since the inundation:

Nanoleaf Essential lights (Thread),
Zigbee Lights (formerly Hue lights),
Yale locks (wifi and bluetooth),
Zigbee water leak sensors,
Z-Wave water valve shutoff,
LG tV ,
Sonos amps,
Apple TV,
Meross garage door openers,
Unifi Protect cameras and UNVR,
Envisalink4 connected to Honeywell alarm system, and
an RPi 4B (running pretty basic setup of Home assistant),

I've used the RPi to patch things together, one by one. It does OK, but as the system grows, I'd really like to return to Indigo b/c HA lacks many of the features and convenience I loved about Indigo.

Just had an M2 Mac Mini delivered, yesterday, so I'd like to return to Indigo, but lost track of plugins, updates, features and could really use some advice on how to setup the current devices in Indigo (or in Apple Home first, if need) and link to Apple Home (or back to Indigo, if that's the way....)

Thanks!

[jay (support)]

Welcome back.

First - HomeKit Bridge has been replaced by the better HomeKitLink Siri plugin, which is by all reports superior in every way. I don't use it personally, so I can't tell you exactly how it would work with all the rest of the stuff you have listed, but I expect you can find answers on it's forum.

There is a Zigbee2mqtt Bridge plugin that can be used with the other MQTT plugins to integrate those devices. The Sonos plugin is being actively worked on as we speak. There's a new AppleTV plugin. I don't know if the UniFi stuff is supported in the uniFiAP plugin. I believe the AD2USB Alarm Interface plugin connects to Honeywell alarm systems but I don't know if/how that relates to the Envisalink4. And there are 2 different plugins to talk to Home Assistant: HassBridge and Home Assistant Agent.

I don't know of any integration for those Yale locks, the LG tv, Meross garage door openers.

Thank you, Jay. Looking into those, now.

Yes welcome Back!!

Indigo is the Best! The forum is fantastic and filled with amazing helpful people, love this corner of the internet!

So glad to be a part of it.

Good to see you back! Sorry to hear about the hurricane destroying everything. I hope you didn’t lose anything irreplaceable, at least z-wave modules are easily replaced!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

Welcome back, and thank you for asking that question!

Hi all,

What are the odds! I was about to write a similar post, because I am also considering to return to Indigo. I am currently using Homey Pro, which has great integration but awful controls. So aside from a fair amount of z-wave and shelby devices, I would need to integrate the following devices to keep the rest of the family happy. For some, I have a plan (more or less), but for others I am just not sure. Would really appreciate any feedback on the following:

TV: LG WebOS, all it needs to do is turn on/off when I tell it to, and preferably switch input when I tell it to. Two-way would be nice, and I think I could do what I would like using HASSBridge and Home Assistant Agent.
Media: PLEX. It is not updated for 2023.1 yet -- I hope that this will happen in the next few weeks.
Amplifier: NAD M33, it uses BluOS which could work with GhostXML, I think.
Heating: This is done in part with Daikin airco units, for which there is a plugin. The other part is done with Tado, and that looks a bit more challenging. Will I have sufficient two-way access through Homekit perhaps?
Philips Hue stuff including an Ikea ceiling light: I'm hoping that Hue integration will take care of that.
Dyson air purifier: no idea!
Presence: I would like to use my Unify Dream Machine Pro for that, I think the plugin has me covered.
Security: Foscam (plugin) and Unify, there should be plugins for that.
Solar panels: SolarEdge; would be nice to get some info, but not really a deal-breaker.

Finally, I am considering an Apple TV 4k, and was happy to see that there is a great plugin for that!

Cheers,
Mark

As for Nanoleaf Essentials Thread bulbs, here's my godawful workaround:

Bulbs are paired to my HomeKit setup.

I've created shortcuts to turn them on and off, and to set a few different color/brightness values.

I've used command line scripts like the following to trigger the shortcuts, which trigger the HomeKit actions

Code: Select all

#!/bin/sh

shortcuts run Hall\ Lights\ On


I trigger these shortcuts via Indigo's "run shell script" action in an action group. (I emphasize this because it's way easier to manage this way.)

The above works, most of the time. Shortcuts must be up and running on the Indigo Mac, as must the Home app. Not a big deal, but a gotcha.

All that said, I'm definitely considering moving my Essentials bulbs out of HomeKit and in to HomeKit Bridge inside of Home Assistant, which has a way of communicating more robustly and bi-directionally with Indigo. Unfortunately, HASS has no way to make HomePod Thread Border Routers into Thread devices that HASS can interact with, and there doesn't seem to be much hope that something like that will happen unless everyone doing it has paid developer access to Apple's ecosystem.

I think the Home Assistant Plugin for Indigo offers a LOT of functionality for devices that Indigo doesn't support. I've already re-used a bunch of Zigbee bulbs and a contact sensor I had mothballed years ago because Indigo doesn't support them. With the HASS plugin, they appear as regular Indigo devices.

As for Nanoleaf Essentials Thread bulbs, here's my godawful workaround:

....

That's great. thank you. trying it now

As for Nanoleaf Essentials Thread bulbs, here's my godawful workaround:

....

Posted another workaround to add Nanoleaf essentials, here.