Stuart England Posted January 10, 2017 Share Posted January 10, 2017 Ok excellent.. well worth it then! You mention that you will sell a driver only version of your product, I assume it will be reasonable to run homebridge in docker and retain all of the above features? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stuart England Posted January 10, 2017 Share Posted January 10, 2017 25 minutes ago, Stuart England said: Ok excellent.. well worth it then! You mention that you will sell a driver only version of your product, I assume it will be reasonable to run homebridge in docker and retain all of the above features? Or could you provide one.. to cut down on the amount of kit... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joshua Pressnell Posted January 10, 2017 Author Share Posted January 10, 2017 It is absolutely reasonable for you to run your own homebridge server via docker. My appliance is meant to be a more non-techie consumer-oriented device. I'll license the "web configuration firmware" for dealers that want to install on their own hardware (or home users who are more technical but want an easy way to configure this without using Linux command line tools), but homebridge and my plugin are open source. There's a beta of my driver available on my other thread (and I'll post an updated version today). The latest version of my homebridge plugin is on npm for install like any other plugin. That's all you need to get started. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ILoveC4 Posted January 10, 2017 Share Posted January 10, 2017 Hey Joshua Pressnell, I've got a few questions on this. I've not use HomeKit, so please forgive me if these are standard HomeKit Q&A. With this, can I program custom commands like "Set the sleep timer for 45 minutes"? Where the command can be passed through to C4 and programmed against? Does it support A/V devices? I.E.: "Turn the Great Room TV on to ESPN" or "Watch the BluRay player in the Great Room" Can you string multiple commands together? I.E.: "Hey Siri, turn off the hall lights and bathroom lights". Is this built via supported/official channels to where so long as Apple HomeKit doesn't blow up this will continue to work? Or does it stand a chance to go the way of the "Siri Proxy" that was all the rage a few years back? Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stuart England Posted January 10, 2017 Share Posted January 10, 2017 24 minutes ago, Joshua Pressnell said: It is absolutely reasonable for you to run your own homebridge server via docker. My appliance is meant to be a more non-techie consumer-oriented device. I'll license the "web configuration firmware" for dealers that want to install on their own hardware (or home users who are more technical but want an easy way to configure this without using Linux command line tools), but homebridge and my plugin are open source. There's a beta of my driver available on my other thread (and I'll post an updated version today). The latest version of my homebridge plugin is on npm for install like any other plugin. That's all you need to get started. Could you link that driver here please ill do some testing with docker and report back - nevermind, found it Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joshua Pressnell Posted January 10, 2017 Author Share Posted January 10, 2017 12 minutes ago, Stuart England said: Could you link that driver here please ill do some testing with docker and report back - nevermind, found it For others, reading from this thread, the other thread is here -> The latest copy of the beta driver is always linked towards the end of the thread. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joshua Pressnell Posted January 10, 2017 Author Share Posted January 10, 2017 18 minutes ago, ILoveC4 said: With this, can I program custom commands like "Set the sleep timer for 45 minutes"? Where the command can be passed through to C4 and programmed against? No. Siri is not setup like Alexa and there's no way to pass down basic English phrases as commands. Siri has a "grammar" that she understands which will resolve to pre-defined actions from HomeKit. My driver handles those actions internally and automatically, so there's no programming required (or possible) in C4. 21 minutes ago, ILoveC4 said: Does it support A/V devices? I.E.: "Turn the Great Room TV on to ESPN" or "Watch the BluRay player in the Great Room" HomeKit does *not* have representation for AV devices yet. You can enable some level of room control by using virtual switches (there's a couple of suggestions for these in the thread with my driver) and programming. You use the virtual switches to turn on or off a particular AV component. So you could have a virtual switch called "Great Room TV" and use that to turn on the TV. But you can't set the variable to include the "on to ESPN" part. You can turn on the TV and turn the room off (like a switch). Until HomeKit includes representations for AV components, this is a limit of HomeKit, not my driver. 44 minutes ago, ILoveC4 said: Can you string multiple commands together? I.E.: "Hey Siri, turn off the hall lights and bathroom lights". I don't know... I've never really tried this. 45 minutes ago, ILoveC4 said: Is this built via supported/official channels to where so long as Apple HomeKit doesn't blow up this will continue to work? Or does it stand a chance to go the way of the "Siri Proxy" that was all the rage a few years back? It's sort of a gray area. Apple's HAP (HomeKit Accessory Protocol) is a known published (but proprietary) spec. But there's lots of hardware that has implemented that spec. So unlike Siri, which is Apple-internal software and subject to change completely without warning, Apple's HomeKit protocol is somewhat set in stone. Apple can add to it or expand it, but they can't really deprecate it without making any existing hardware that relies on it unusable (which would piss off the 3rd party vendors who bought into HomeKit and guarantee nobody will support it in the future). Homebridge is *not* "official channel" by any means... but I seriously doubt it will ever "just stop working" because Apple released an update. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cdepaola Posted January 10, 2017 Share Posted January 10, 2017 Cant wait to get mine! Also have you seen this, possible future competition. http://www.consumerelectronicsnet.com/article/Focalcrest-Unveils-Revolutionary-HomeKit-Smart-Home-Bridging-Solution-Mixtile-Hub-at-CES-4762217 Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joshua Pressnell Posted January 10, 2017 Author Share Posted January 10, 2017 I saw them at CES. I'll be following up with them about building a bridge to my driver. At the end of the day, if someone else is willing to put out official HomeKit bridge hardware (like the stuff that got linked), and support it, I'm perfectly fine just selling my driver and letting the other guys handle the hardware. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stuart England Posted January 10, 2017 Share Posted January 10, 2017 ignore - working now Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stuart England Posted January 12, 2017 Share Posted January 12, 2017 Hi Joshua, So, got the driver working. The main advantage it offers over web events is status feedback but whats really lacking is the dynamic update of drivers in Homekit without having to copy/paste the JSON from the LUA tab. I understand this is a feature which you have in your hardware appliance. I think you should consider making a docker image (that you could charge for) as an alternative to your hardware appliance. I'm sure other people like me don't want additional hardware. Stu Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VINCELdUB Posted January 12, 2017 Share Posted January 12, 2017 I second the docker image. I have many clients with either SYNOLOGY or QNAP systems. Happy Automating! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joshua Pressnell Posted January 12, 2017 Author Share Posted January 12, 2017 I'm certainly not against putting together a docker image and licensing that. I've already put together a Raspberry Pi 3 image that folks can drop on their own hardware, so I don't think a docker image would be too much of a stretch. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RobbieF Posted January 15, 2017 Share Posted January 15, 2017 Sounds great - time for me to revisit the Siri integration! I had this working about a year ago on a Rpi, but it flaked out my preference is definitely to have a docker image rather than another hardware device pretty please! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joshua Pressnell Posted January 16, 2017 Author Share Posted January 16, 2017 On 1/12/2017 at 4:54 AM, Stuart England said: Hi Joshua, So, got the driver working. The main advantage it offers over web events is status feedback but whats really lacking is the dynamic update of drivers in Homekit without having to copy/paste the JSON from the LUA tab. I understand this is a feature which you have in your hardware appliance. I think you should consider making a docker image (that you could charge for) as an alternative to your hardware appliance. I'm sure other people like me don't want additional hardware. Stu Ok... so I'm waiting on my shiny new NAS to get docker setup there and get an image configured with my web portal software. If you could share your base image that already has homebridge setup in it with me, I could use that as a starting point. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joshua Pressnell Posted January 16, 2017 Author Share Posted January 16, 2017 All beta hardware units have been shipped as of tomorrow. Emails have been sent out to folks receiving them. Looking forward to getting some feedback here. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
eddy.trochez Posted January 19, 2017 Share Posted January 19, 2017 Where is the C4 driver? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joshua Pressnell Posted January 19, 2017 Author Share Posted January 19, 2017 1 minute ago, eddy.trochez said: Where is the C4 driver? There's a link to the forum thread specifically for the C4 driver slightly higher up in this thread. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
eddy.trochez Posted January 19, 2017 Share Posted January 19, 2017 Got it. Thanks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
eddy.trochez Posted January 19, 2017 Share Posted January 19, 2017 Joshua, is it ok to leave the HTTP Port on the default value? My iDevices can't see the appliance. Devices where discovered and Appliance restarted. C4 shows it as running. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joshua Pressnell Posted January 19, 2017 Author Share Posted January 19, 2017 43 minutes ago, eddy.trochez said: Joshua, is it ok to leave the HTTP Port on the default value? My iDevices can't see the appliance. Devices where discovered and Appliance restarted. C4 shows it as running. Which HTTP port? There's a couple at play. If you left the HTTP port as default in the C4 driver, and the appliance was able to import the devices into the configuration, then the C4 driver is probably fine. Are you talking about the HTTP port for Homebridge in the web settings? That should likely be left at default as well. Try enabling the advanced mode. Then delete the persistence directory (using the web portal) and change the HomeKit user ID by one character. Save the configuration, then restart Homebridge. See if that helps. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
eddy.trochez Posted January 19, 2017 Share Posted January 19, 2017 17 minutes ago, Joshua Pressnell said: Which HTTP port? There's a couple at play. If you left the HTTP port as default in the C4 driver, and the appliance was able to import the devices into the configuration, then the C4 driver is probably fine. Are you talking about the HTTP port for Homebridge in the web settings? That should likely be left at default as well. Try enabling the advanced mode. Then delete the persistence directory (using the web portal) and change the HomeKit user ID by one character. Save the configuration, then restart Homebridge. See if that helps. No luck. I have no problem accessing the web portal, and C4 communicates with the appliance. iDevices can't see it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joshua Pressnell Posted January 19, 2017 Author Share Posted January 19, 2017 3 minutes ago, eddy.trochez said: No luck. I have no problem accessing the web portal, and C4 communicates with the appliance. iDevices can't see it. Ok. I tested that they would talk to my devices before I shipped them out, but maybe something is getting stuck, or there's something about your specific configuration that's causing issues. Please email me at josh@varietassoftware.com and we can work out what's going on. This is the "fun" part of beta software. The easiest way to diagnose this (and fastest) is to port forward port 22 (for SSH) to your appliance IP and let me know your external IP. I can SSH into your appliance box and take a poke around and see why the iDevices might not be seeing it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stuart England Posted January 20, 2017 Share Posted January 20, 2017 On 16/01/2017 at 5:29 PM, Joshua Pressnell said: Ok... so I'm waiting on my shiny new NAS to get docker setup there and get an image configured with my web portal software. If you could share your base image that already has homebridge setup in it with me, I could use that as a starting point. Josh sorry for delay I used this one as it was clean: https://hub.docker.com/r/marcoraddatz/homebridge/ all I had to do is create a link for /homes/myuser/customsettings and link it to /root/.homebridge and place the .json files there Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stuart England Posted January 20, 2017 Share Posted January 20, 2017 3 hours ago, eddy.trochez said: No luck. I have no problem accessing the web portal, and C4 communicates with the appliance. iDevices can't see it. Do other bonjour devices discover across your wifi / LAN? Some AP'a can block bonjour I'm assuming bonjour is in play here Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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