homeassistant

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Home Assistant is open source home automation that puts local control and privacy first. Powered by a worldwide community of tinkerers and DIY enthusiasts. Perfect to run on a Raspberry Pi or a local server. Available for free at home-assistant.io

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Remote access possible via HomeKit integration? (self.homeassistant)

submitted 11 months ago by possum to c/homeassistant

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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).

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[–] thehatfox 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] possum 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

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… 😅

[–] thehatfox 2 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

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.