HomeKit Expanded Items

Add-ons Bindings
1

Hi all,

Just wondering if there are any plans / if it is feasible to increase the supported items for the HomeKit binding beyond that of basic switches and thermostat?

I have had great success using OpenHab to control my lights through Alexa and Siri (it’s just so awesome), and yesterday added my Samsung TV to this as well, but realised that the existing bridge doesn’t allow options to set numbers, e.g. “set TV volume to 20”, or input strings, e.g. “change tv source to HDMI 2”.

I’ve seen that the iOS home app has icons for things like TVs, so I am wondering if there are plans to incorporate this later?

Cheers!

2

Hey James,

I can’t offer any help, but I was hoping you could share some of your sitemap configurations. We have a bunch of Echo devices, and homekit up and running, but I can’t seem to get the sitemaps to load properly with both HomeKit and Phillips Hue emulation.

I’m also using Homebridge as well, to make HomeKit able to reach devices not HomeKit enabled.

Cheers!

Jason

3

Hi Jason, are you using OpenHAB 1 or 2? I’m using OpenHAB 2, which takes care of most of the configuration for me, and I just define the items to make available. You can then ‘link’ them to a Thing, which avoids having to write custom rules for each item.

My alexa-homebridge.items for one room is:

Dimmer lr_wall_lights "Lights" ["Lighting"]
Dimmer lr_chandelier_light "Chandelier" ["Lighting"]
Dimmer cy_outdoor_light "Courtyard" ["Lighting"]
Switch ly_tv_switch "TV" ["Switchable"]
Switch ly_tv_switch "AVR" ["Switchable"]

I then link these to the corresponding Thing and Alexa and Homebridge do really well at handling everything from there. As I mentioned in the original post, it would be great if I can get HomeKit to realise that the TV and AVR aren’t just switches.

4

Thanks James,

I’m using 2.0.

So some of what you said seems to confirm what I was experiencing. It seems you can’t put a binding after the type definition, and thus need to create a ‘virtual’ item and a rule to trigger the actual item (be it exec or MQTT bindings).

I’m away this week and won’t be able to tinker with it until Friday. Is there something you need to do to force homebridge to recognize the sitemap and present it out to the Home application? I could see the devices from the URL, but never saw anything new in Home when adding an accessory. Maybe I need to do something with the persistence file. I haven’t tinkered with Homebridge in a while now.

Thanks!

Jason

5

I think I get what you mean. You want to be able to generate virtual ‘Things’ as HomeKit items that you can then control with OpenHAB rules?

I don’t think this is possible. You can create as many items as you want, like I have in my .items file, but they are all tied to a physical Thing that OpenHAB identifies through the binding.

6

Hi,

You can generate virtual things like a switch and controll them. This is a switch that I use to activate a activity of my Logitch Harmony Hub:

Switch DG_Buero_Sonos_Switch “Sonos Buero” (DGBuero)[ “Switchable” ]

And here is the rule:

rule "Buero_Harmony_Sonos"
when
Item DG_Buero_Sonos_Switch received update
then
if(DG_Buero_Sonos_Switch.state == ON && DGBueroHarmonyHub_CurrentActivity.state != “Sonos”) {
sendCommand(DGBueroHarmonyHub_CurrentActivity, “Sonos”)
} else if (DG_Buero_Sonos_Switch.state == OFF && DGBueroHarmonyHub_CurrentActivity.state == “Sonos”) {
sendCommand(DGBueroHarmonyHub_CurrentActivity, “PowerOff”)
}
end

Works fine with Siri, the Apple “Home” app and Alexa…