Planned support for Apple Homekit.

[Brennan]

Recently Apple announced homekit

Described here:

http://techcrunch.com/2014/06/06/apples-home-automation-success-rests-with-hardware-evangelism/

tech details here:

https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/HomeKit/Reference/HomeKit_Framework/index.html

The Company providing the home automation hardware  has to apply for MFi certification

Apps need to be created to integrate.

There is also a Bridge that allows apple home kit to interface with existing non MFI compliant home automation providers.

I would like to be able to talk to my phone and say " Kitchen lights on"  or  " turn on the hot tub"   or  " whats the temperature of the pool"

So Does qwikswitch have any plans to get Mfi support or to sell a bridge that allows ios - qwikswitch communication?

Does Qwikswitch have stats on ios vs android users?   What about Google voice /Samsung voice integration with your home?

The future is here, lets not get left in the dust.  I really like my qwikswitch solution however I want more.

- Brennan

[PollieKrismis]

Hi Brennan,

Are you an end user only or do you also dabble in some development?

It is something I'm also very keen on to develop, but it does not seem very feasible at this point.

For starters, it will probably cost you R10-15k just to apply for MFi certification and then it does not gaurantee that you will be accepted. 

Then we as developers will not even qualify for MFi certification. You must have a production facility which they will come inspect. So even if we want to do this on our own. We would need it do be done by/as QwikSwitch.

Before Apple will even talk to you whether it requires Apple specific hardware or not, you must be a member. If it is software only it of course makes it a lot easier, but from my enquires it seems that Apple specific hardware is required. This makes sense as it is a way to ensure they get royalties from each unit sold and guarantees secure connections. Additional hardware requirement probably means even more work to be done which may or may not fall outside of a software developers capability.

So I cannot see this happening any time soon, unless we are able to do it on their behalf and with their blessing of course.

iOS app development is a lot easier, but that of course means no Siri integration which is what we are looking for.

So yes, a good place to start is to see how many Apple users there are that would want to buy it and then how many people there are that would want to help getting it done as I would guess the numbers will point to this being a loss leader until such time as Blackberry's don't outnumber Android and iOS devices by many factors.

Regards

Paul

[PollieKrismis]

Hi Brennan,

I found a solution that allows me to use Siri to control my QwikSwitch receivers.

When I have time on the weekend, I'll type up the steps I followed. Hardware wise you'll need the QS USB Modem and a Raspberry Pi (or dedicated pc).

It's a bit of a hack to get it to work, so need some polish to get things other than simple on/off functionality to work. And a lot of work to get it to work like Apple intended, where new accessories and its associated functions/services are "advertised" allowing you to give it names and assign it to rooms/areas/scenes.

Regards

Paul

On Tuesday, 30 September 2014 09:26:28 UTC+2, Brennan wrote:

[Brennan Babb]

Paul

This would interest me intensely. 

I have my entire home automated by my Ubuntu box. 

From tv, roku, explora,lights, home security and all my sensors. I have a event monitor that detects when I arrive home via my phone logging onto the wifi and then executing tasks. 

Walking into my tv room triggers correct lights and puts all my tv shows on ready to watch mode. 

Being able to issue commands and triggers to my device via Siri 1st prize. I have been using assistant.ai to issue ifttt triggers that send json requests to my qwikswitch which works but is tedious. 

So how would you suggest I set this up?

Brennan

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[PollieKrismis]

Here are the steps I followed... There might be gaps/mistakes though as some of it is from memory...

Follow instructions here to setup your pi and load node.js…

https://github.com/nfarina/homebridge/wiki/Running-HomeBridge-on-a-Raspberry-Pi

If you are not going to use a pi then follow the steps here to install the home bridge as it also has some instructions for linux…

https://github.com/nfarina/homebridge

The home bridge needs accessories to be useful so I used the first plugin that looked if it could work…

https://www.npmjs.com/package/homebridge-http

I altered the sample (http) config file to look like this…

 "description": "HomeBridge QwikSwitch Status Control",

    "accessories": [ {

                "accessory": "QwikSwitch",

                "name": “Garage Light",

                        "switchHandling": “yes”,

                                "http_method": "GET",

                                "on_url":      "http://myip:myport/myrelayid=100",

                                "off_url":     "http://myip:myport/myrelayid=0",

                                "status_url":  "http://myip:myport/myrelayid=?",

                        "service": "Light",

                                "brightnessHandling": "no",

                                "brightness_url":     "http://myip:myport/myrelayid=%b",

                                "brightnesslvl_url":  "http://myip:myport/myrelayid=?"

       }

    ]

Make a copy of everything between the square brackets for each QwikSwitch relay/dimmer you want to control. (Place a comma between each accessory/curly brackets.)

If you leave the accessory as “http” i.s.o. “QwikSwitch” you do not need to alter /usr/local/lib/node_modules/homebridge-http/index.js as follows.

homebridge.registerAccessory("homebridge-http", "QwikSwitch", HttpAccessory)

When you (re)start HomeBridge you should see your accessories listed.

pi@raspberrypi ~/.homebridge $ homebridge

*** WARNING *** The program 'node' uses the Apple Bonjour compatibility layer of Avahi.

*** WARNING *** Please fix your application to use the native API of Avahi!

*** WARNING *** For more information see <http://0pointer.de/avahi-compat?s=libdns_sd&e=node>

*** WARNING *** The program 'node' called 'DNSServiceRegister()' which is not supported (or only supported partially) in the Apple Bonjour compatibility layer of Avahi.

*** WARNING *** Please fix your application to use the native API of Avahi!

*** WARNING *** For more information see <http://0pointer.de/avahi-compat?s=libdns_sd&e=node&f=DNSServiceRegister>

[5/12/2016, 7:31:06 AM] Loaded plugin: homebridge-http

[5/12/2016, 7:31:06 AM] Registering accessory 'homebridge-http.QwikSwitch'

[5/12/2016, 7:31:07 AM] ---

[5/12/2016, 7:31:07 AM] Loaded config.json with 1 accessories and 0 platforms.

[5/12/2016, 7:31:07 AM] ---

[5/12/2016, 7:31:07 AM] Loading 1 accessories...

[5/12/2016, 7:31:07 AM] [Garage Light] Initializing QwikSwitch accessory...

                       

For the HomeKit phone app I used Ezzi Home, but I guess you can use anyone that you prefer.

On Ezzi Home I added my house, then added a room (Garage) and added the Garage Light to the room. You can then use the app to manually switch the (garage) light on/off, but it does not report the status correctly. There are also some funnies when added accessories to scenes, but this can be user error too ;-)

Based on the example you can then ask Siri to switch/turn on/off the garage light.

If you know what you are doing, you can probably have this up and running in a few hours.

The funnies I have traced to the fact that the http plugin javascript expects a simple 0/1 back when it queries the state of the light. I plan to test this theory by parsing the json, that QSUSB returns. Once I understand everything a little better and I can make it work properly and specifically for QwikSwitch, I want to ask how I can get it published on npm. That should make it easier for others to implement.

Also as you can see the mapping from the qsusb devices file to the accessory file is pretty easy so can possibly be scripted to keep the HomeBridge in sync with QSUSB.

Let me know if it works for you.

[PollieKrismis]

Hi Brennan,

It sounds like you have quite a nice setup going.

I'm sure you can get the HomeBridge to work on Ubuntu as well. I'll post my steps here on the weekend. It was actually very easy and one should be able to write a little script to read the QwikSwitch devices file to create the HomeBridge config file.

Siri control is handy for activating scenes and performing actions on something you forgot to or cannot do, i.e. switch off a light you left on or have your hands full. As nice and impressive as it is, the use cases are in fact very limited.

Doing true automation similar to what you have is better done with a dedicated home auto or AI controller. The Home Assistant that Johann (here on the forum) uses looks quite interesting for that as it makes "scripting" complex automation quite easy. I'll also have a look at the one you use for comparison.

Anyway, give a few days for the steps I followed.

Regards

Paul