#Trying to make the house wife-friendly (Using HomeKit Bridge)

13 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

long saffron
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So I've gotten Home Assistant set up on a RasPi5 with a Zigbee dongle. Got all my devices added, mostly through native integrations, one or two custom jobs (Hue Bridge for 99% of the lights, vesync custom for humidifiers, winix for air filters, even got my roomba J7+Combo hooked up!) and today I was working on moving stuff off my Hue Bridge and directly onto ZHA. I started in my office because I have 4x hue lights, plus 2 plugs powering some dumb lights, and I wanted to control them all with the Hue Dimmer. I got them all paired and downloaded a blueprint that gives me all the features I need for the dimmer, and I'm really happy with how I can now turn on and off my dumb lights with the switch.

So NEXT STEPS... to make this work for my wife, I need to maintain Siri functionality until I get some Assist devices set up that she can talk to (It works on my phone, but she's going to want the always listening experience) . So I set up HomeKit bridge, and when I added it to HomeKit, even though I said it was in my office, all the devices just popped in on default room. And it showed ALL the hue lights, which are already set up in designated rooms via the HomeKit-HueBridge connectivity.

So is there some way to:

a) Omit Hue Bridge devices from the HomeKit bridge without creating individual bridges for each device
b) Group the items in such a way that they show up in specified "rooms" in HomeKit

Thanks in advance!

vagrant spruce
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Did you use the UI setup or the YAML setup for HomeKit?

long saffron
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UI setup

vagrant spruce
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Personally I have settled on one bridge per HomeKit room. Then I add devices to that and they just show up in the right places.

long saffron
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Okay. That actually makes sense

vagrant spruce
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From the UI setup it's important to pay attention to which devices you're including or excluding. I personally use YAML for HomeKit so it's a very clear list of devices that will show up.

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(When you add the bridge to HomeKit make sure to choose the right room of course 😂)

long saffron
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So I guess my next question would be how to I specify more than one accessory? Is that where the YAML comes in?

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oh, nevermind, figured it out. Bridge Mode, Include Mode. Then it lets me pick entities. 🙂

vagrant spruce
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Yup! The device mode is only for cameras and locks really 🙂

long saffron
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Awesome. Yeah, that worked out exactly how I needed it to. Thank you so much!

vagrant spruce
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No problem!

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