Bridged and Unbridged Mode and Problems
In some cases you may encounter problems when trying to add a device to HomeKit.
Usual this is caused when a device was already added through bridged mode and then is unbridged by setting the corresponding option in the configuration.
These are technical terms and describe the way a device is added to HomeKit via a homebridge plugin.
If a device is bridged it is bundled with all other bridged devices within one homebridge instance. This for one means that you usually only have to add the homebridge bridge in HomeKit and all bridged devices will appear automatically by loading the plugin.
However this also can have negative effects. Like when a device is slow in responding it will prevent other devices from communicating and so slow down the whole homebridge instance. For this plugin this may be relevant when a camera is taking a snapshot for example. This process can take a few seconds depending on the used configuration and hardware. In this timeframe all other bridged devices can not communicate with HomeKit.
Unbridged devices are decoupled from the other devices in a homebridge instance. So the negative effects described above will not happen. However these devices will have to be added manually by the user by touching the '+' in HomeKit and choosing 'Add Device'. All unbridged devices will usually use the same 8 digit code for connecting that is used by your homebridge instance (e.g. 123-45-678).
Child bridges is a feature in homebridge available in versions >1.3.0
This feature is generally the same as described above only that a whole homebridge instance is decoupled and can itself contain bridged devices. You can read more about this feature on the homebridge-wiki.
Which mode you choose is up to you. However it is good to know that changing this setting after you've already set up your devices can cause issues in some cases.
Homebridge will internally store a cached device. If you unbridge an already existing device (e.g. that was bridged before) it is possible that you cannot add this device again in homebridge. After selecting 'Add Device' in HomeKit the device will just not be found.
If you encounter this problem and you can't add a device in HomeKit, you can follow these steps (This will most likely always be an unbridged device, since bridged devices will already be added automatically):
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Login to your instance of homebridge-ui
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Click on the three dots an select 'Homebridge Settings'
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Scroll down and select 'Unpair Bridges / Cameras / TVs / External Accessories' under the 'Reset' category.
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Look for the device that's causing issues and remove it from the list. This will unpair it from homebridge and you should be able to add it again via HomeKit.
