Should I automate homebridge nodes or homekit nodes

General
1

Hi! New to Node Red, but ive used HomeAssistant, Smarthings and Hubitat in the past.

Node red looks pretty awesome, and im ready to dive in and create flows, but before i go in too deep, should i automate homebride nodes or homekit nodes.

My setup is:

Bunch of homekit devices (brought into homebridge)
Bunch of Zigbee devices (brought into homebridge)
Bunch of TP-Link Kasa devices (Brought into homebridge)
So all of my devices are available in homekit, and in homebridge.

Since i see plugins to manage BOTH homebrige devices and homekit devices, which would be more advantageous. Does it matter? Is one integration easier than the others and requires less massaging of the payloads? So far ive done a few flows (and they work) with the Homebridge palette nodes.

Thanks in advance!
~Maddie

2

I had hoped id have at least a single response in 8 days.... oh well.....

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Possibly few here use homebridge or homekit, and of those that do, perhaps they only have experience of one so cannot compare them.

Try it with both and feedback what you have decided so that others can learn from your experience.

4

Hi sorry I don't come over here enough clearly... I'm one of the people who work on this homekit node which of course I think is the best available. We have a lot of users who are doing zigbee and tp-link. We hang out daily at the discord server (linked in our node's readme).

If you're using homebridge happily then I would say keep using that and find something that will give your homebridge setup some nodered abilities.

If you're looking to dump all that and start fresh - come check out our contrib! It might be what you're looking for!

5

I mostly automate homekit devices in homebridge using mqtt with the z2m homebridge plugin, because I use zigbee2mqtt.

However, the node-red-contrib-homebridge-automation node gives you access to control/automate everything that lives in homebridge, it can also read all the individual accessory properties (for logging for example).

And I create custom homekit devices using homebridge-mqtt, which allows you to create on-the-fly devices with their own properties using mqtt, devices are added/removed instantly, no restarts etc.

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