HomeKit Bridge Closed Beta Discussion

Holy Python Code, Batman! It's been a long day of coding this plugin to be sure but Beta 2 is now up.

A couple more devices added, motion sensors and garage doors I wanted to do more but I'm pooped.

Installed beta-2

Added another HK-B and still the same issue of it not being recognised by the Home App until I change the address and then have to go through the process of changing the other two fields and then have to restart the plugin.

Accessory is then visible in the Home App and I have motion detectors added.

This seems to work OK. I say seems because it isn't necessarily reflecting 100% what is shown in Indigo. I am now running round the motion detectors and double checking batteries etc. So don't rush of and do anything based on this initial feedback. I have Fibaros, Popp and Aeotec motion devices.

Also, once the devices were in the Home App they didn't seem to register events until I reloaded the plugin again.

Another test done

I added yet another HK-B (number 4) but this time I changed the MAC address while setting up the new device. This time it allowed me to change this without asking for the other two fields to be saved. I then saved without adding and devices to the HK-B. Status came up as running.
I then re-edited it to add in a couple of switch devices and saved.
Waited for it to come up running and then went to the Home App to add the accessory.
It was present in the list of accessories to add and I added it successfully.

So it seems to me that the issue with the two additional fields might be related to a subsequent edit change of the MAC address?

So it seems to me that the issue with the two additional fields might be related to a subsequent edit change of the MAC address?

Interesting because all three fields are dynamically generated when the device is created and they are all three checked against other servers, HBB servers and open ports to make sure they will work. If you create another one or two or three does what you are calling the Mac address (actually it's the user name) change on each one? I would be interested to know if this is different if the server you are currently configuring is running or not too, does it make a difference?

Thanks for all of your testing Autolog! I think you and I are the only ones testing it .

Added another new HK-B. The HB user is set to the standard CC:22:3D:E3:CE:10 (this doesn't appear to change). There is another HK-B running with this user id.
The HB Port and HB callable are incremented to the next free addresses.

Once running, try to add the accessory in the Home App but it isn't present.

Added another new HK-B. The HB user is set to the standard CC:22:3D:E3:CE:10 (this doesn't appear to change)

Yes, that's the problem. That user name is supposed to change on each server, the last octet should increment between 10 and 99. Thanks for finding that bug, I'll add it to the list.

Started to test Action Groups.

I have two Action Groups: Lights On and Lights Off. Turns on four lights and turns off four lights. So I set up two actions in the HK-B.
They appeared in the Home App OK. The devices initially show as off.

When I click ON, the action is executed OK but then I get a spinning cog wheel in the device in the App which then turns to a circle with an exclamation mark in it. The device says Powered OFF with a status of No Response.

While doing this testing I am getting the occasional error:

HomeKit Bridge Error Exception in plugin.serverSendObjectUpdateToHomebridge line 1760: ('Connection aborted.', BadStatusLine("''",))
CODE: r = requests.get(url, data=payload)

I think it would be useful (in the fullness of time) to emulate what is done in the Alexa-Hue Bridge (which emulates Indigo's Virtual devices). That is to be able to specify On, Off and Dim Actions and store the dim value in a variable. That would allow users using the Alexa-Hue Bridge to use the same actions in your plugin as well.

Just a suggestion

It's supposed to run the action and then return back and toggle itself off. Mine do. I'll look into it.

As far as I know, I did not have homebridge or HBB installed on my Indigo machine. I cleared all that out months ago.

Did a basic install, then create a an HKB Server device. Got this in my logs:

Code: Select all

Feb 11, 2018 at 4:23:24 PM 2/11
   HomeKit Bridge                  Debug logging enabled
   HomeKit Bridge Debug            Checking running state of all servers
   HomeKit Bridge                  Rebuilding configuration for 'HomeKit Bridge'
   HomeKit Bridge Error            Exception in plugin.buildServerConfigurationDict line 1949: 'key protocol not found in dict'
                      CODE: hb["protocol"] = self.pluginPrefs["protocol"]

   HomeKit Bridge Error            Unable to build server configuration for 'HomeKit Bridge'.
   HomeKit Bridge                  Attempting to start 'HomeKit Bridge'

Feb 11, 2018 at 4:23:58 PM 2/11
   HomeKit Bridge Debug            Checking running state of all servers

Feb 11, 2018 at 4:24:28 PM 2/11
   HomeKit Bridge Debug            Checking running state of all servers
   HomeKit Bridge Error            HomeKit server 'HomeKit Bridge' could not be started, please check the service logs for more information, now issuing a forced shutdown of the service to be safe.
   HomeKit Bridge                  Attempting to stop 'HomeKit Bridge'
   HomeKit Bridge                  HomeKit server 'HomeKit Bridge' has been stopped
   HomeKit Bridge Error            send "HomeKit Bridge" on failed
   HomeKit Bridge Debug            Checking running state of all servers


The Info.plist says I have 0.2.0, but Git says it's 0.2.1.

Ahhh! Yea, I took out those prefs and none of the rest of us saw that because we had the settings from the previous beta so we had those values. Thanks, I'll roll a new build out right away so you can test again.

That 0.2.1 was just the readme, no code changes so the build # is correct. This will be 0.2.2 but the build will reflect that.

Beta 3 Released.

FlyingDiver, please make sure you go into plugin prefs and just save it and that'll fix the bug you had.

It got a little confused starting up until I could get the prefs panel open, but once I did that and saved it was fine.

Had to remember how to use the home app to add an accessory manually, but once I did that it was talking to my devices just fine. Tested with Lutron dimmers. Will be testing with Lutron phantom buttons this evening. And probably some Harmony Hub commands as well.

There's probably some HomeKit semantic I'm missing here, but I've never tried to use Siri to control my HA system before.

For normal switch or dimmer devices, HKB is working fine. So far all I've tested are Lutron dimmers and switches, but all good.

My next attempt was my Harmony actions. I created action groups to send various start activity commands and one to send the "all off" command. I can say "Hey Siri, Apple TV on" and that tells the hub to start that activity. But it's not working. I think HoneKit is expecting some sort of status back when the commands run. It thinks they're on when they're not. And now when I try to start up an activity, Siri tells me "Watch TV does not support color commands" or something like that.

Any suggestions on how to do the Harmony Hub integration? Or is that going to need to wait until AV type devices are supported in HKB?

In short, it's because Indigo doesn't have a "Door" type. So I used "Lock" instead. But Siri thinks a door is open when it's on, and locks are locked when on. So my garage doors are closed, Indigo has them as "locked", but HomeKit thinks they're open.

Garage doors aren’t yet working. There are still a lot of devices to incorporate, including doors.