Homebridge - Making my Home a Little Smarter





 The Goal

Ever wish you could remotely control every light in your house? Control a PS3 from your iPhone? Create schedules to automatically turn on and off devices in your house in the most complex way possible?

No? Hmmm. 

It's a little more useful than that I promise. I was introduced to the world of Apple Homekit when my dad wanted his espresso machine to start in the morning before he gets out of bed. Nice little quality-of-life thing. But he went further than just a timer, he got an outlet plug that could be controlled by his phone. And I thought that was soooo cool. 

We bought some more smart plugs, a smart light switch, and a couple of other things. Pretty cool to have all the lights in a room come on with a single switch, without any complex and annoying-to-undo-later wiring. Also a nice bonus that I could control them without getting up.

But smart home equipment is *expensive*. And I already have a server computer. What if some of these devices could be smartified without any extra purchases?

That's where Homebridge comes in.

Homebridge

As its name may suggest, it's a way to bridge your normal devices to Apple Homekit. For instance, I have an Android TV. It's somewhat smart, has networking capabilities, and can be controlled by a phone. So someone has put together a plug-in for Homebridge that interprets Apple Home commands, and then has my server send out Android TV commands so that I can control it through my phone in the Apple Home app. Same situation for my Xbox.

You can be more clever than this though. I have an old android phone running an RTSP server so I can monitor my 3D printer from afar. Using Homebridge, it can show up as a security camera in the Home app on my phone, so I can see it all in one place. My PS3 supports Wake-On-Lane, or WOL, commands. I have Homebridge set up to send that WOL signal when I click a button in the app, and my PS3, designed well before the age of Apple Homekit, is smartified!

I turned an old Xbox 360 Kinect into a security camera, able to watch my cats when I leave on a trip. My humidifier can tell me when it's low on water all through this one app, rather than its stupid proprietary app. 

I got a Homepod for $5 at a thrift store that didn't know what it was, and now I can use voice commands to turn on and off my pc. It's funny when a friend of mine tried to hijack my pc to send a message in a group chat, and I can just shout across the room: "hey siri, turn gaming pc off".

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