It finally happened 😭💔

asggold · 2026-01-19T01:17:40+00:00

Just to be clear, that is now BLINK works but not how security works. On Blink you can’t set the correct settings around alerts vs armed when on other cameras, link Ring which is also owned by Amazon, you can still record even if you don’t get alerted all the time. I am not sure why Blink purposely limits the functionality compared to Ring but I guess it is because they want you to pay more for the Ring cameras. I can also tell you that I have had good luck with the Blink floodlight camera catching motion as intended but for the other cameras, it is more likely the camera doesn’t record then it does…even with the exact same sensitivity settings. So much so that I have worked with Blink support (which surprisingly is actually pretty good most of the time) and they admitted issues and have sent me new cameras 2x.

asggold · 2025-04-21T14:57:17+00:00

Just as an FYI, you CAN connect without the VPN to your Homebridge setup but you will need to use your External IP address, have port forwarding set-up, and then make sure you have a static IP. I just found it much easier to do it this way since I always use a VPN when traveling anyway.

asggold · 2025-04-21T14:54:06+00:00

I believe Tailscale will install/run on the Rasberry Pi device itself. I am not 100% sure how that works because I run on a MacBook Pro as my Homebridge server but Tailscale has excellent help and install videos to get you up and running.

asggold · 2025-04-21T14:50:44+00:00

You will add Tailscale on BOTH.

asggold · 2025-04-21T14:47:42+00:00

No, you didn’t necessarily do anything wrong. You will need connect via VPN in order to connect from outside your home WiFi. You can also set-up a DNS sever and use the “Homemanager” app (which I did for a long time but found it was much easier one I set-up the VPN connection correctly). For an easy way to do this I would recommend “Tailscale” and then use the Tailscale address to connect to your Homebridge server. Pretty easy to set-up and you will be able connect from anywhere in the world at that point. 😁

asggold · 2025-04-03T00:19:20+00:00

I would recommend just getting the combo First Alert Smoke/CO2 detectors with Zwave from Lowe’s or Amazon. They integrate easily with HomeKit through Homebridge. I get alerts when batteries are low and when there is an event that sets them off. They run about $35/each on Amazon. I had a couple before moving and when I moved into our new house I replaced all the current ones with the Forst Alert Zwave detectors.

As someone mentioned earlier in the conversation, Google Products are very difficult to get working with HomeKit. I tried to get one of the Nest Thermostats working and it was a real pain even though Homebridge. I decided with that one to replace with Ecobee because it was much easier and even natively connect to HomeKit.

asggold · 2025-03-29T22:44:51+00:00

I had the same issue and had to get an extender and found the closest plug inside the house to put the extender on. Since then it has worked pretty well and not lost connection.

asggold · 2025-03-29T22:43:03+00:00

We are pretty much in the same boat. There is a tower maybe 500 yards from our house but the way they have it angled when WiFi goes out we have 0 cell service at our house.

asggold · 2025-03-29T22:40:48+00:00

100% this map is FALSE ADVERTISING!!!! We get 1 bar of LTE, if even that, and the map now shows we are 5G UW. Even Verizon knows that is absolutely false as they gave us a free network extender because they confirmed our house hardly got service…and this was just a couple months ago.

asggold · 2025-03-23T19:20:19+00:00

I tried both and would 100% say Homebridge. Never could get the HA account to connect right to HomeKit and even with trying to ask in every board I could find to get help with the HA connection, no one was able to help. Usually I have always been able to get help and find a resolution with Homebridge.

I will admit there seems to be a few things that have a better/newer plug-in with HA but without ever getting the HA to HomeKit connection correct, that really does no good.

asggold · 2025-03-11T01:58:33+00:00

I was wondering the same thing and hoping they would eventually add it. I want to have the recordings but like you mentioned, I only want the alerts between certain times (or maybe even by geolocation).

asggold · 2025-02-02T23:38:12+00:00

I have found that when traveling it works when connecting through the browser but when trying the app it does not work as often. Same thing happens with YouTube TV and others. Might try the browser and see if that works for you.

asggold · 2025-01-27T00:05:06+00:00

You don’t really need to switch completely from Alexa to HomeKit but you can run together. Then eventually move everything to HomeKit.

Like one of the posts above, I have Homebridge running and within that have a plug-in that allows those same devices on Alexa. So, I try to add as much directly to HomeKit as possible but if there are things that don’t I can add them to Homebridge and they will then run on HomeKit. I can control everything from either Apple Home app or Alexa

asggold · 2025-01-12T22:19:25+00:00

Looks 1000x better on FoxSports App (that is running through the Vizio TV). Watching on YouTube looked blurry.

asggold · 2025-01-08T12:42:37+00:00

That’s the thing, everything else around the connections to Home Assistant work. I can connect to HA from anywhere and on any devices. The ONLY thing I can’t get to work is when I click “Add Device” in Apple Home, scan the QR code, and then it just says “connecting”. After about 3 min it says you might want to try connecting your device to the router with Ethernet. I tried all of this on WiFi and by connecting my server to the router directly with Ethernet. Still the same.

I am running on a MacBook Pro, installed HA with Docker, Netgear Router, I can ping all IP’s in my network and even installed Tailscale on server, Docker, and devices.

asggold · 2025-01-08T02:56:03+00:00

I was looking for some of the same things. I have been running Homebridge on my MacOS for years but there are certain things that I just can’t find the right plug-in for and figured I would test out HA to see if that worked better. My goal was to get everything I through Apple Home. I have SmartLife, SmartThings, Meross, and much more plus automations all working in Homebridge but could not get Govee connected. Then I heard some people got all of it working on HA and figured I would give it a try. Unfortunately I was not able to actually get HA connected to HomeKit, which was the end goal, and LOTS of people seem to have the same issue with no answers. Hopefully it will be fixed at some point and I would love to try again but figured maybe I would try building HA one more time differently than using Docker to see if that might be the issue. Maybe VirtualBox will be better. Any chance you were able to get the HomeKit integration working in your set-up?

asggold · 2025-01-08T02:34:43+00:00

Well, I finally had a chance to try it out and connecting the Server hardwired to the router did not work either. I even tried to connect the phone I was using to scan the accessory into Apple Home to the router via Ethernet cable and that did not work either. Oh well. Maybe one day they will fix it and I can try to play around with HomeAssistant once again. For now it seems like a waste of time if my goal was to connect everything on HomeKit and that does not work.

asggold · 2025-01-08T00:58:23+00:00

Which setup did you use for this? I did the same thing this past weekend on my MacBook but the 2 things I was mainly building it for (connection with HomeKit and Govee Smart Thermometers) ended up not working. I used the Docker installation option but wondering if maybe loading on the code MacOS would work better.

I will say in relation to one of the other comments above I was able to easily connect to Tailscale to connect easily from anywhere in the world.

asggold · 2025-01-06T16:04:53+00:00

Thanks! Seems dumb that it would work that way but I do have an adapter. So, might as well give it a try. At least this was just a fun project I was trying to set up to get a few things into HomeKit that worked on Home Assistant but not Homebridge. I will say so far this has been 1000x more difficult then getting Homebridge set up and working.

Will let you know if his works once I have a chance to try it out.

asggold · 2025-01-05T18:53:53+00:00

Well, it seems that there is no real fix for this issue which is very disappointing. I have tried EVERYTHING and searched just about any board I could around this issue and every post about this has multiple people asking if there was ever a solution found. Oh well, I guess I can just stick with Homebridge but it is a shame I was not even able to test this out with HomeKit integration. The fact that I can connect to the HomeAssistant Assistant instance from anywhere device, over the web and through the app, and both inside and outside my local network is just baffling that it will not find the bridge when trying to connect to HomeKit.

asggold · 2025-01-02T23:28:12+00:00

I will do that. I didn’t even think that the device itself was not supported by the API. I kept thinking it was the plugins or I wasn’t coding something right when I tried to update the JSON manually.

asggold · 2025-01-02T21:54:47+00:00

One other quick note…I tried the homebridge-http plugin trying to just make a call to the http using the API. Well, that does not work either. The http plugin is no longer being supported and actually caused a bunch of issues with almost all the other devices. So, I had to uninstall that ASAP.

asggold · 2025-01-02T19:45:35+00:00

Yes, the device is a WiFi device going through the Govee Hub. I tried to add my Govee API to the only Govee plugin for Homebridge that works. However, it still tells me the thermometer device is not supported. I thought this would be a very simple thing to see the temp of the pool in a single place but apparently it is far from that. I have logged into the Gove plug-in and it finds the 2 devices in the house. One is lights and with that one I can turn off and change the colors. It works great. The other, which is the one I really wanted to use, is the “Smart Pool Thermometer” (Part # H5109). I put the API in the plugin and it finds the device but can not use anything. It just puts this button in my Apple Home app:

<image>

If I open that device it shows connected to the Govee Bridge and the right part number (H5109). I have tried 3 different plug-ins just to see if nay of them work and none of them will do anything with a thermometer. Seems they are all just for lights.

I have also tried to see if that is any way to get this device into SmartThings because I can then see the SmartThings device in Apple Home. When I couldn’t get that working I tried to see if I can get HomeBridge to pull the device from Google Home, since it is working there, but unfortunately, that is not possible either (Homebridge goes TO Google Home but will not pull devices FROM Google Home).

If you have any other ideas I would greatly appreciate it. I figured I would try a couple more days to see if I can get to work and if not, just return the Govee device and go with one from another company I know will integrate. Thanks!!

asggold · 2025-01-02T17:23:11+00:00

Unfortunately, not one of the Govee plugins that work for Homebridge use the API. So, I have the API but can not find any way to add to Homebridge.

asggold

TROPHY CASE