HomeKit Bridge Closed Beta Discussion

[Colorado4Wheeler]

It is required to use 'modeStandard':'White' as it will then take the Kelvin value to set the colour temperature.

Can't be simple can it ? I'll have to do a bit of trial and error seeing what HomeKit sends back to the plugin when white is called so I can try to trap that since I'll have to call two different routines based on if there is hue or not. It'll be experimental in 15 but we should probably have it mostly dialed in by the next beta after you test it and give some feedback.

[autolog]

It is required to use 'modeStandard':'White' as it will then take the Kelvin value to set the colour temperature.

Can't be simple can it ? I'll have to do a bit of trial and error seeing what HomeKit sends back to the plugin when white is called so I can try to trap that since I'll have to call two different routines based on if there is hue or not. It'll be experimental in 15 but we should probably have it mostly dialed in by the next beta after you test it and give some feedback.

Does HomeKit have the concept of Colour Temperature i.e. Kelvin?

I could quite easily define a new HomeKit Action if you told me what you wanted to send to the plugin? It would take some of the load of you.

[Colorado4Wheeler]

Does HomeKit have the concept of Colour Temperature i.e. Kelvin?

Yes it does. Hue, Saturation and Color Temperature. See, it's all the differences of how things deal with color and color depth that makes working with that stuff crazy.

I could quite easily define a new HomeKit Action if you told me what you wanted to send to the plugin?

That's coming but it's not yet ready for prime-time. I actually have an API that will allow you to have full HomeKit functionality built right into your plugin, bypassing the requirement for someone to add it to a server or change the type or any of that. It's in early alpha now.

For now, until the API is complete, I think I'll probably try to wing it first to see what happens. If I can take HSCt from HomeKit and translate that to "it's got color or it's white" then I can call the right action on the LIFX plugin. It's actually what I'm working on this very moment.

[Colorado4Wheeler]

And Beta 15 is released (click to download)

[siclark]

Sorry I've been absent a few days. Now in France so testing options limited. I know Iwas one commenting on the UI so wanted to add to comments from last few days. The UI is not bad, it just takes some getting used to. Maybe the crazy detailed initial screens you had can deal with that, or just a link to the wiki. I certainly found it easier once I had read it.
Once you know what you are doing its ok to use, just not particularly fast, to set up all your devices. If you have 200 in indigo but want 40 setup you need to do them one at a time which is slow. Adding 12 motion sensors in one go would be easier.
However I guess anyone using indigo is somewhat technical and will figure the UI out pretty quickly, and would rather the bugs were fixed and the plugin did everything we would like than risk delay with UI changes.
I don't think you need to do crazy with extra text or crazy detailed text windows, just the odd word here or there to help make things clearer.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[autolog]

And Beta 15 is released (click to download)

It's my bedtime (nearly midnight here in the UK) but I have installed 15.0 and done a LIFX test.

I see the colour controls in the Home App and it works after a fashion. For example if I go to the colour edit circle for a LIFX Lamp and click edit and then just tap somewhere in the colour circle, I get this sort of response:

Code: Select all

   LIFX                            sent "Landing Lamp" set Color Level to hue "62440", saturation "41" and brightness "11" with duration of 1.0 seconds
   HomeKit Bridge                  Waiting for homekit.runPluginAction to complete
   LIFX                            sent "Landing Lamp" set Color Level to hue "216", saturation "26869" and brightness "34" with duration of 1.0 seconds
   HomeKit Bridge                  Waiting for homekit.runPluginAction to complete

Note that some of the Hue levels and Saturation levels appear to be out of range. Also I am getting two messages for one tap.

Also I if I drag my finger round the circle in edit mode, I get lots of messages all queued up that take a while to process.

I will test more tomorrow (actually as it is now after midnight, later today!) - It's a very good start.

[Colorado4Wheeler]

Well it was experimental and I don't have the benefit of having one of those bulbs to play with. That being said, I'm going to ramp up work on the API now that most of the bugs have been squashed and that may be better for a long term solution.

[sarahcat]

The thing that surprised me was that my iPad Mini 1, which only goes to iOS 9, still supported listening for Hey Siri, and even though it did not have the Home app, would still execute HomeKit commands.

The other thing that surprises me is that even though we now have Siri on the Mac, it still doesn't do HomeKit

Yes, those are unexpected outcomes and that's all I can say.

[ZachBenz]

Hm, so Beta 15 has broken everything for me. It worked when I very first upgraded the plugin, but moments later none of the bridges (accessory servers) start anymore. I tried deleting everything (all devices, the plugin, all relevant files in Preferences) and reinstalling to no avail. Anytime an accessory server device tries to start, it hangs for 30 seconds, with the event log showing:

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   HomeKit Bridge Error            HomeKit server 'BETA TEST' 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 'BETA TEST'
   HomeKit Bridge                  HomeKit server 'BETA TEST' has been stopped
   HomeKit Bridge Error            send "BETA TEST" on failed

Strangely, the only thing in the Preferences folder under the device id now is config.json; no homebridge.log or anything else.

[Coolcaper]

All working fine for me

[Colorado4Wheeler]

Hm, so Beta 15 has broken everything for me. It worked when I very first upgraded the plugin, but moments later none of the bridges (accessory servers) start anymore. I tried deleting everything (all devices, the plugin, all relevant files in Preferences) and reinstalling to no avail. Anytime an accessory server device tries to start, it hangs for 30 seconds, with the event log showing:

Code: Select all

   HomeKit Bridge Error            HomeKit server 'BETA TEST' 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 'BETA TEST'
   HomeKit Bridge                  HomeKit server 'BETA TEST' has been stopped
   HomeKit Bridge Error            send "BETA TEST" on failed

Strangely, the only thing in the Preferences folder under the device id now is config.json; no homebridge.log or anything else.

Considering that B15 didn’t do anything other than a few bug fixes, you might have filesystem issues.

[Colorado4Wheeler]

If you remove the server ID folder it will recreate automatically on restart of the plugin.

[Colorado4Wheeler]

Beta 15.1 is released (click to download)

[autolog]

Well it was experimental and I don't have the benefit of having one of those bulbs to play with. That being said, I'm going to ramp up work on the API now that most of the bugs have been squashed and that may be better for a long term solution.

Testing using 0.15.1

I am unclear what the Home App / HomeKit is actually sending to the HomeKit Bridge when you adjust the colour. I have tried Temperature (White) and it sent a White temperature of 140? So what ranges is it using? Subsequently, while still in Edit > Temperature it started sending through colour commands, not white commands.

As previously mentioned, It would be extremely easy to add in a specific action to support whatever HomeKit sends through.

If the API is the favoured approach, can you give any indication as to how the API is intended to work. Will it be an API the plugin has to support so that HomeKit Bridge can "call" the plugin?

[Colorado4Wheeler]

I am unclear what the Home App / HomeKit is actually sending to the HomeKit Bridge when you adjust the colour.

While 15.2 will have this feature to view a log file (already coded in), you can take a look at the Homebridge log, it will show you every transaction between Indigo and HomeKit, so you can see what we send to HK and what HK sends to us. That might clear up some of the confusion. You'll find the log under the Indigo Prefs folder for HKB and then the server ID of the server in question.

As previously mentioned, It would be extremely easy to add in a specific action to support whatever HomeKit sends through.

I think maybe once you see that, and also be sure to review the HomeKit Model Reference that I have on the Wiki regarding Lightbulbs, you can click the characteristics to see the limits of what HK is currently doing. I can tweak those limits if they need to be (within reason).

If the API is the favoured approach, can you give any indication as to how the API is intended to work. Will it be an API the plugin has to support so that HomeKit Bridge can "call" the plugin?

It will be the favored approach when it's ready. I've added you to the private Git for the API, it's very much Alpha, but you can see the direction it's going and it should answer your questions. Oh, and it's all Wiki at the moment so go there to see the docs .