Dear lemmy community,
I am currently in the process of migrating my current Homebridge setup to HA OS on a Pi4 4GB, and I’m still discovering and trying to understand its possibilities and limitations.
I’m currently wondering how I would be able to access my devices remotely. I have a FritzBox Router, setup with WireGuard VPN to access my network remotely. I have been able to access HA this way before, but I’d like to be able to “see” my devices without having to turn on the VPN every time.
An idea occurred to me, although not sure if it would work: would I be able to see or get updates from my devices (even if limitedly) through the HomeKit integration in HA?
I am aware this potential solution would mean my devices connecting to apple’s cloud, but that’s a tradeoff I’m willing to take for the many benefits HA brings to the table (in my case, energy consumption logging).
You must log in or register to comment.
If you have a device that acts as a home hub (Apple TV or HomePod) and expose your devices to HomeKit it will work remotely just like any other HomeKit device.
Install the nginx proxy manager add-on, set up let’s encrypt for certificates and DuckDNS for name resolution, forward a port from your router. No need for homekit or a full vpn.
I also have a VPN set up to my home network that I can connect to with my mobile devices. once connected I use the HA mobile app pathed to my local HA server IP. I don’t use HA cloud or any other cloud service. It works well for me, I obviously can’t get notification on the mobile when not connected but I have not had a need yet. If/When I’m do want notifications I would most likely explore, e-mail, e-mail to SMS, SMS API or something that won’t involve external servers. I would not want to send sensitive info via SMS but a shot alert that said there is something to look at like “HA Alert: Motion detected cam 1” or such would be fine.
Update: It works! I get all notifications from my sensors and it’s working great. Thanks everyone!
For future reference, my setup:
HASS OS running on an SSD (Kingston A2000 250GB) connected to a RaspberryPi 4B 4GB
And an addendum: If anyone is having trouble migrating their Zigbee devices from Homebridge to Home Assistant, what helped me was unplugging all previous zigbee router devices before setting up the new Zigbee network, otherwise the coordinator wouldn’t start or some weird issue would pop up during setup. After disconnecting the router devices I was able to start the coordinator, and add the routers again to the new network.
I have a setup like this, and it has worked great so far. I have a home VPN but wanted to have Apple Home access as well for a simpler remote option, and some of my family prefer the Apple Home app. I use the HomeKit Bridge integration to expose various Home Assistant connected devices to Apple Home running on an Apple TV 4K. It has worked well with nearly every device I’ve set up, including lights and light switches, environmental sensors, SwitchBot bots and more. The syncing/updating is near instant for me.
The only trouble I’ve had so far have been with my thermostat, which initially always appeared as “on” in Apple Home, and a couple of breakages with updates. However the thermostat recently started to behave properly, and any update incompatibilities have always been quickly resolved.
Using the HomeKit Bridge also allows you to use Siri to interact with Home Assistant devices which can be useful, especially if you gave any HomePods etc.
Ah, good to know someone with a similar setup! I have some Homepod minis, so siri does get some usage. Did you by chance also migrated from Homebridge to HA? I would have some questions about how to migrate zigbee devices from homebridge to HA… 😅
I started with HA, I haven’t had much experience with Homebridge.
From what I have heard migrating paired Zigbee devices between platforms can be unreliable. If you have a limited number of devices it might be worth repairing them manually.
