[OBSOLETE] Hello, Home HomeKit (and Siri!) control via homebridge

I think I’ve got it working now. Since I have the ‘light’ as a wall switch, it doesn’t count as a ‘light’ for Siri’s purposes, ‘Lights’ must dim. This URL was of use:

http://blogs.msmvps.com/connectedhome/2015/06/28/siri-homekit-commands-with-onoff-switches-and-lights-in-rooms-or-zones/

I was trying to follow your steps but got stuck "create config.json in the homebridge directory from the JSON setup ".

Not sure what you mean by …from the JSON setup. can you explain this part?

This was a little bit painful to get going for me. I had legit homekit devices (lutron caseta) and for some reason I had to create a whole new home and re-add everything and then it worked. I had trouble getting the homebridge nodejs app to work too but much trial and error and viola “siri in the house”.

Is this stable for anyone else? I moved to running it on OS X so the bonjour part would be native, but the server still stops responding after a short time and I have to restart it for commands to work again. I even moved to a version for Vera and have the same issues.

No mine crashes as well after a while. Also I cant get the harmony integration to work, though that is not on the smartapp. It says its connected but I have gotten the events to work exactly one time.

It took a few of hours of fiddling, but based on the code and instructions provided above, Siri/HomeKit is now working successfully! (Running the server part on a Raspberry Pi.)

Thanks to everyone who contributed the code to make this possible (since it’s unlikely that Samsung and Apple will ever get along well enough to make this an official feature.)

interesting I updated and now I cannot find SmartThingsHelloHome.js anyone know where it is?

OMG! This project is awesome…

I just bought my first Raspberry PI, with a USB WiFI adapter, installed the OS, installed all the homebridge stuff and configured. Took a little tinkering to get it right from several resources and brushing off the Linux rust skills.

So now I can talk to Siri, even when I am not home, and instruct her to do things! Wow! Very cool!

This project basically creates a Apple HomeBridge device that you sit in your network and does the work of talking to your systems like SmartThings.

Does anyone know how I can make a switch that is on/off respond to siri as open/close. I have a switch that opens our outside automatic gates.

I have to say, “Siri, turn on ‘Gates’” Where ‘Gates’ is the name of a ST Switch. I would like to be able to say, “Siri, Open ‘Gates’”.

Any ideas?
Thanks!

1 Like

So I recently installed the latest from “nfarina/homebridge” on my mac server and it’s been perfectly stable running for days. Also Eve has been updated and now lets me properly phrase good morning and other scenes to siri (running IOS9) and works great on apple watch running the new OS.

My latest questions are with this code and smart things and hue. Eve shows the functionality to change hue colors through the homebridge but the commands don’t result in anything. Does anyone else have this issue?

Thanks!

Now that there’s a real Phillips HomeKit bridge, I’m curious to see what happens with this hack. Anyone running iOS nine having any new problems with the bridge emulator?

I’m running 9.1 and i have no issues, it works great!

You’re probably going to need this project, unless the Phillips HomeKit can interface directly into SmartThings and other platforms.

Need this project for what?

As it happens, I don’t use this particular hack. I do have the Phillips bridge, and it is interfaced to smartthings, and echo, separately.

But I do most of my voice with echo and smartthings right now.

What specifically were you thinking of?

Well then, as you say, it has an interface to SmartThings… I tried to find more documentation on the bridge. Do you have any more information or links about the bridge and support for SmartThings?

There’s an official integration, Hue Connect. It’s not an open API, it was officially developed between Smartthings and Phillips. When you use the smart things mobile app and go to add a device, one of your choices is a Hue bridge. Adding that automatically installs “Hue connect,” and brings in any devices connected to it of a type that Smartthings recognizes. After that, those devices are available for use through all the regular SmartThings control channels. That’s really all there is to it.

There are some community members who have written their own device types which would expose more of what’s available. You might find those interesting. In particular flexi lighting by @infofiend . You can find information about it in the community-created smart apps category under projects. The following is a clickable link.

The hack that’s being discussed in the thread we’re in now is something altogether different. It’s not code that allows smartthings to control Phillips hue bulbs through a bridge.

Instead, it uses the hue bridge emulator, software that Phillips provides for developers to test apps, and spoofs a real bridge so that HomeKit will be fooled into working with it.

Use of the emulator software in this way is a clear violation of the Phillips developer TOS, but if you yourself didn’t commit to that TOS, you’re probably not prohibited from using it once it’s out in the wild. Whoever originally released it may be.

But you certainly don’t need this hack to have Smartthings work with a Phillips bridge. It already does. You only use it if you want HomeKit to work with nonhomekit devices.

The following is the official smartthings support knowledgebase article on connecting to Hue:

https://support.smartthings.com/hc/en-us/articles/200848024-Connecting-Philips-hue-to-SmartThings

Interesting. So by installing the phillips hue bridge, it allows homekit to access SmartThing devices? I just ordered the starter kit to see how it works.

If you were talking about a real, physical Hue bridge then no.

One bridge, many partners, but limited requests

The Hue bridge is extremely “social.” . It’s happy to be in relationships with many different services. So one bridge can be connected to smartthings, IFTTT, several third-party phone apps, echo, HomeKit, iBeacon+, Harmony, etc each as an independent and parallel means of “controlling” the bulbs that are connected to that bridge.

(Actually the Hue bridge is the only real controller of the bulbs, but it is happy to pass along requests from any of the various services it has a relationship with. This is unusual. )

However, the requests are limited to the devices that are actually connected to that bridge. It doesn’t take a Harmony request and pass it along to Ibeacon+ or vice versa. It just takes a request from one of its partners, and passes it to one of its bulbs. The partners can each poll the bridge to find out status of the bulbs, but that’s a different kind of communication.

So the fact that the real Phillips bridge can talk to HomeKit doesn’t change what smartthings can do at all. Smartthings can talk to the real bridge and request that bulbs go on and off. HomeKit can talk to the real bridge and request the bulbs go on and off. But HomeKit and smartthings don’t past messages to each other through the bridge.

The software Hue Bridge emulator can currently be used to create a fake ID for nonHomeKit devices

What people are talking about in this thread is a hack. They are taking software which is designed to emulate a hue bridge (it’s not a real bridge) and using that as a fake ID so that smartthings devices can pretend they are devices attached to a real hue bridge. Then HomeKit thinks it’s talking to a real hue bridge. And it thinks it’s just telling it to turn bulbs on and off. But in fact the fake Hue bridge is taking a request to turn a “bulb” on and using it to turn a zwave water pump on, or whatever.

Obviously this is a huge violation of HomeKit security. I’m actually surprised that it still works now that the official HomeKit Phillips device is out. It seems to imply that the hardware piece of HomeKit isn’t actually required, at least for the developer-approved emulation tools.

My feeling is that this hack will be shut down sooner or later, but what do I know? Maybe it will run forever.

Real Hue Bridge Provided a HomeKit path to bulbs and a SmartThings path to bulbs, but not a HomeKit path to anything else

Anyway, so right now there are two completely different things available. There’s a real physical Phillips hue bridge which has The ability to be added to a HomeKit network. And could still be added to a whole bunch of other partner networks, including smartthings. But what it does is limited to controlling its own directly connected devices.

And there’s this hack, which takes a piece of software which was designed as an emulation piece for developers, and uses it as a fake ID so that HomeKit will talk to devices which are not really HomeKit devices.

So the real hue bridge has nothing to do with what’s being talked about in this particular thread, other than that it’s the identity that’s being stolen to make this hack work.

I played with the home bridge a bit more and discovered the built in support with connecting directly to the philips hue legacy bridge. After I added that to my config I’m now able to fully control color and brightness of my hues along with controlling everything in smart things. “nfarina/homebridge” has been stable for weeks now.
That is except for when Smart things cloud crap forgot my JSON.groovy key and authentication from home bridge died along with a bunch of virtual switch smart apps disappeared.
But that is a rant for another time. Yay cloud :confused:

First kudos to Jesse Newland for contributing to the Homebridge project and getting SmartThings homekit enabled.

Everything works with my v2 hub with home bridge running on a mac mini… as long only lights are involved. My Hue bulbs work but my switches and outlets don’t. And when I say the Hue bulbs work I mean I can switch them on or off but I can’t dim or change color.

Which makes me wonder what the state of the Homebridge SmartThings integration is? I would like to be able to have my open/close, temperature, garage door opener, etc added but there is little to no movement on github that gives me enough hope.

Anyone else working on this?

1 Like