Unable to make homekit-bridged work

General
1

Hi everyone!

I installed node-red on docker on my Synology NAS (ds1819+). Installation was really easy and it works perfectly!

I then installed the Philips-Hue stuff and I can control my hue accessories from node-red and receive status change without any issue.

I then installed the homekit-bridge (https://www.npmjs.com/package/node-red-contrib-homekit-bridged), trying to add a lightbulb accessory (111-11-111), deployed the stuff, went in homekit on my iphone and tried to discover the new accessory by entering 111-11-111 but nothing appears!

I'm using my Apple TV as hub. All my IOS devices are up-to-date.
I tried some different libraries like https://flows.nodered.org/node/node-red-contrib-homekit or the -preconfigured one but always the same result, I see nothing in homekit.

Does anyone have the same problem?
Thanks for any help.

1 Like
2

I’m going to take a wild guess, because I don’t know how the Synology installation works... however, I could not get homekit-bridged to work on Docker. It works perfectly on a ‘naked’ RPi (i.e. not dockerised).

I suspect it has something to do with port access; Docker containers run within their own network, so I think I’ll have to open a port to the ‘outside world’ (my network). Perhaps it’s the same issue on Synology.

I haven’t done much research on this, but searching for ‘homekit port’ threw up some potentially useful results.

3

This would mean that every library could use some different ports?

Because it's working perfectly for my Hue devices!

So maybe homekit-bridged is using some ports I need to specify in docker. I'm going to ask google about it ;-). Thanks for your reply.

4

Just found an interesting thing to test. Add --net=host to the docker run command!

docker run -d --net=host ....

Will try it after work!

edit: found it here: https://github.com/nfarina/homebridge/issues/309

1 Like
5

That could be it; homekit needs avahi (bonjour) to work. I’m hoping to have time to test this over the weekend.

6

A technology that I like best is MQTT.
For HomeKit see: https://github.com/cflurin/homebridge-mqtt

7

why do you prefer it? It seems a bit more complex to configure...

8

It's an external app, so it can also be used by other platforms like esp8266. I'm the author therefore I can’t say more :grinning:

9

It's working by adding the --net=host! :grinning: