How do I tag items so they appear as "People" in HomeKit?

Setup, Configuration and Use Items & Sitemaps
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1

I am using the UniFi Binding add-on (version 2.5.1) for presence and I would like to include these items in HomeKit as “People”. Is there a special item type / tag that can be used for this?

I was able to get basic HomeKit functionality using the “contact“ and [ “ContactSensor” ] for my presence items, but I was curious if there was a better way.

Powerkey

  • Platform information:
    • Hardware: Raspberry Pi4 Model B (4GB)
    • OS: Raspbian GNU/Linux 10 (buster)
    • Java Runtime Environment: openjdk version “1.8.0_222”
    • openHAB version: 2.5.0
  • HomeKit Info
    • iOS 13.3
    • HomePod Hub
2

Does homekit have the concept of a person?

3

Possibly a good question, but I believe it does. The automation triggers I am trying to use are “People Arrive” and “People Leave”.

As a complete newbie, it is possible I am thinking about this all wrong.

  • Does openHAB have the concept of a person?
  • Is anyone using (successfully) the UniFi Binding for presence?
4

i think the concept of people in homekit is tied to the presence of iphones using geo fencing similar or the same as the find me app from them. So apple expects everyone in the household to own an iphone and be part of a family sharing group for homekit presence use cases.
Openhab doesn’t have the concept of people per se so i think most people use Switch items that they update in different ways to represent presence as it is a binary thing like a switch, your either their or your not.
Why do you want to use the automation in homekit and not the vastly more powerful options available through openhab?
best regards Johannes

5

It sounds like I am not going to be able to do exactly what I want, but the “switch” option works fine. So, I think I will just stick with that. I will experiment with changing from a switch to a contact so there is no way to change the state from HomeKit.

The reason I am trying to do as much in HomeKit as possible is for the other users in the house. None of them would want to learn to work in openHAB. I would like to get things working in HomeKit as much as possible so they can simply ask Siri to do it.

In any case, thanks very much for the help.

6

If you want to have a more advance Homekit solution, i suggest you have a look at HomeKit holy grail: homebridge-openhab2-complete

There is a occupancy sensor that I think is what you’re searching for.

7

I haven’t heard of that, but it sounds promising.

Thanks very much! I will give it a whirl in the next few days.