I was looking for a solution to control non HomeKit devices (lights, coffee machines, etc.) via HomeKit.
It turned out that a Raspberry Pi is a perfect platform for doun such things. Homebridge is a verry extendable base with a variety of already developed plugins. Unfortunately all the available plugins did not work for some rason. My solution was to controll the GPIO pins via shell script and use homebridge-script2 to controll the script.
Smartapfel has a verry usefull guide to setup homebridge. Hovewer I wrote all the steps down to have it in a single guide.
The repo includes this guide, my shell script to control the GPIO pins and an example config.json for homebridge.
I use a standard raspbian image. There are enough install guides on how to prepare an SD card tor your RPI.
- Make sure to change the pssword for the PI user.
passwd - If you need ssh access without a monitor, create a file calles
sshon the root partition.
Specify a hostname for your RPI by editing the folloiwing files:
sudo nano /etc/hostnamesudo nano /etc/hosts
Specify a password for the PI user, don't leave it standard!
passwd
sudo apt-get install libavahi-compat-libdnssd-dev
- First you need to determ your platform:
uname -m - Then go to the NodeJS download page: https://nodejs.org/dist/latest/
- And copy the link for your platform. (make sure you copy the one ending with *.tar.gz)
- Download the file:
wget https://nodejs.org/dist/latest/node-v11.3.0-linux-armv7l.tar.gz - Extract the file:
tar xf node-v11.3.0-linux-armv7l.tar.gz - Now you can copy the files: `sudo cp -R node-v10.4.1-linux-armv7l/* /usr/local/
To install homebridge do a: sudo npm install -g --unsafe-perm homebridge
To install homebridge-script2 do a: npm install -g homebridge-script2
Create a directory: sudo mkdir -p /var/homebridge/relaycontrol/
and copy the script (relaycontroller.sh) into it.
We need to configure a service to start homebridge on boot. To do so, follow the steps below:
- Create a service account:
sudo useradd -m -c "Homebridge Service" -s /bin/bash homebridge - We ned to configure permissions for that user. Therefore we need to create a file:
sudo nano /etc/sudoers.d/homebridge
And ad the following into it:homebridge ALL=(root) SETENV:NOPASSWD: /usr/local/bin/npm, /bin/systemctl restart homebridge, /bin/journalctl, /usr/local/bin/node - TO access GPIO we need to add our user to the GPIO group:
sudo adduser homebridge gpio - Now we need to set permissions for that file:
sudo chmod 640 /etc/sudoers.d/homebridge - Now we create the service file:
sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/homebridge.serviceand add the following content:
[Unit]
Description=Node.js HomeKit Server
After=syslog.target network-online.target
[Service]
Type=simple
User=homebridge
EnvironmentFile=/etc/default/homebridge
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/homebridge $HOMEBRIDGE_OPTS
Restart=on-failure
RestartSec=10
KillMode=process
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
- And a 2nd file to configure the enviroment:
sudo nano /etc/default/homebridgewith content:
# Defaults / Configuration options for homebridge
# The following settings tells homebridge where to find the config.json file and where to persist the data (i.e. pairing and others)
HOMEBRIDGE_OPTS=-I -U /var/homebridge
# If you uncomment the following line, homebridge will log more
# You can display this via systemd's journalctl: journalctl -f -u homebridge
# DEBUG=*
- Next we need to reload systemd:
sudo systemctl daemon-reload
And enable our service:sudo systemctl enable homebridge - To manage the service we can use the following commands:
- Start:
sudo systemctl enable homebridge - Stop:
sudo systemctl stop homebridge - Restart:
sudo systemctl restart homebridge - Display Log:
sudo journalctl -fau homebridge
To Configure homebridge, we create a config directory and place our config.json into it.
- Create directory:
sudo mkdir -p /var/homebridge - Create our config file:
sudo nano /var/homebridge/config.json
with the following content:
If you use other GPIO pins, don't forget to change them in the config file.
Do also modify name, username and pin.
{
"bridge": {
"name": "SWITCHBOX-4P-001",
"username": "02:68:B3:29:DA:98",
"port": 51826,
"pin": "094-31-749"
},
"description": "This is my configuration",
"accessories": [
{
"accessory": "Script2",
"name": "Relay 01",
"on": "/var/homebridge/relaycontrol/relaycontroller.sh on 17",
"off": "/var/homebridge/relaycontrol/relaycontroller.sh off 17",
"state": "/var/homebridge/relaycontrol/relaycontroller.sh status 17",
"on_value" : "ON"
},
{
"accessory": "Script2",
"name": "Relay 02",
"on": "/var/homebridge/relaycontrol/relaycontroller.sh on 23",
"off": "/var/homebridge/relaycontrol/relaycontroller.sh off 23",
"state": "/var/homebridge/relaycontrol/relaycontroller.sh status 23",
"on_value" : "ON"
},
{
"accessory": "Script2",
"name": "Relay 03",
"on": "/var/homebridge/relaycontrol/relaycontroller.sh on 24",
"off": "/var/homebridge/relaycontrol/relaycontroller.sh off 24",
"state": "/var/homebridge/relaycontrol/relaycontroller.sh status 24",
"on_value" : "ON"
},
{
"accessory": "Script2",
"name": "Relay 04",
"on": "/var/homebridge/relaycontrol/relaycontroller.sh on 25",
"off": "/var/homebridge/relaycontrol/relaycontroller.sh off 25",
"state": "/var/homebridge/relaycontrol/relaycontroller.sh status 25",
"on_value" : "ON"
}
],
"platforms": [
]
}
- Change permissions for our config directory:
sudo chown -R homebridge:homebridge /var/homebridge