Homebridge

For those of you who have smart device in your home, such as Nest Thermostat or Ring security cameras/alarm, may have noticed that these devices don’t “play well” with Apple’s HomeKit.

This is not just an Apple thing, as they don’t tend to work well with each other, but when you are an IT geek and you have spent time and money in one manufacturer’s platform (Apple) you start to wonder why the industry is so blinkered and why the different companies won’t work together.

My understanding is that this may be resolved later this year (2022) with the integration of Matter into many smart devices (although probably not the older models), more of that in another post.

My issue is that we have had a Ring floodlight camera for many years (which I have been mostly happy with). The iOS app is good (sometimes a bit slow, not quite what you see on the TV adverts) but I had bought an Apple TV and had seen that security cameras could appear on the screen.

After waiting a while for these companies to sort themselves out (see matter and this post on Smarter Home Guide), I decided to do some research.

I came across some interesting Youtube videos that mentioned the free “HomeBridge” software.

HomeBridge is a “bridge” between multiple vendors interfaces and Apple’s HomeKit.

Various people have created “Plugin”s for HomeBridge ( including for Ring and Nest), to allow you to add your smart devices into Apple’s HomeKit, so that you can automate stuff via Shortcuts or change settings via Siri.

After a short while I was able to add in the Ring and Nest plugins and shortly after that I started to see the devices, that I was previously unable to use on my Apple systems, appear in HomeKit. This was a massive leap forward.

My first test of this was to create a virtual unix machine using VirtualBox on my existing MacBook. I used a spare USB pen drive, created some space, installed one of the default Linux images and then followed the instructions on the HomeBridge site.

After feeling happy with the setup and as I didn’t want to leave my Mac on 24/7 I took the next step and I purchased an SD card and a Raspberry Pi Zero W. The Raspberry Pi Zero is a full computer on a circuit board, not much bigger than a USB pen drive. After a bit of research, I was able to write the Raspberry Pi image for HomeBridge to the SD Card.

Booting the Pi zero and making some changes to the security (more on this in another post) I was able to back up and restore the HomeBridge configuration from my Virtual Unix system to the Raspberry Pi Zero and it came to life as if nothing had changed.

Over the next year or so, I have been using the Raspberry Pi Zero as a Homebridge. The only issue being that the device struggled with streaming from the Ring camera(s) (“live”), due to the limited memory and processing power. Updates to the HomeBridge software were also slow and maxed out the processor.

The solution to this issue happened in the last few weeks, when I found that there was an update to the Raspberry Pi Zero, The Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W.

The Zero 2 is the same size, but has a better RP3A0 chip, which is 5 times faster and can manage streaming images. So it took me no time to order the new model.

Rather than just removing the SD card from the original Pi Zero and inserting it into the Pi Zero 2, I performed a backup, copied the config and then installed the latest Pi HomeBridge image, inserted the card into the Pi Zero 2 and performed the basic security changes, before restoring the configuration.

The new system is soo much quicker, with “live” images appearing straight away and the processor usage (which used to max out at 100%, for a few seconds) running at an average of 3% and the HomeBridge and plug-in updates were a lot faster.

If you aren’t as technical, there is also a solution called HOOBS (which stands or HomeBridge Out Of the Box ) which makes the process more user friendly and less technical, whilst still keeping the same features as HomeBridge (with some tweaks).

So to summarise, until Matter is available (original estimates were late 2021 or early 2022) on all smart devices, I would recommend spending a little money ( under £25, for an SD card and a Raspberry Pi ) and set up HomeBridge as it makes Apple Home a lot easier to use with these troublesome devices.

What I’d like in a future iOS release

later this year iOS 7 will be released.

So I was thinking, what would I like to see in the next release? What improvements would I include? What would I want my iPhone 5 and iPad 2 to do?

Siri expansion. I use Siri occasionally whilst driving and it’s sometimes a pain, here are some ideas for improvement:

• The ability to open and close apps when locked
• If the above is not possible (security) – The ability to unlock phone using Siri
• The ability to correct Siri’s understanding (I remember early versions of Dragon dictate [on Windows 9X] had an edit feature that allowed it to learn what you meant)
• The ability to correct what Siri says ( British motorways [M8] or Nicola are pronounced very poorly )
• Ability to change the volume. ie ‘change volume’ ‘increase volume’ ‘play track louder’ ‘turn up volume’
• Understand band names like D.R.I. (strangely it pronounces DRI fine, it just doesn’t understand the band’s name ?)
• Allow editing or reminders. You can set reminders via Siri so why not allow you to edit them (especially when Siri gets it wrong).
• When Siri asks a question and the iPhone is on Bluetooth, start the Bluetooth connection. At present if you are using a Bluetooth hands free and Siri prompts for something (such as ‘send or cancel’ when sending a message) you have to press the Siri button on the iPhone because touching your Bluetooth cancels the request.
• The ability to pause and restart music via Siri. At present you can pause or stop but there doesn’t appear to be an un-pause, start (from where you left off), continue playing etc. When a phone call comes in the iPhone does it so the ability is there.
• the ability to ask for and then be able to choose from a list of playlists

Location:

• When setting reminders, based on geofencing, the battery gets depleted very quickly (polling too often ?)
• The ability to submit Wi-Fi details to allow more accurate location info.
• Better way to submit map changes (after submitting a change 3 times I don’t think some of my additions have ever appeared.. Try Linwood High School, Linwood, Scotland [ if you leave off Scotland it gives you a junior school in Philadelphia US? ])
• Adding more information for Scotland, some data appears to be limited to Glasgow (thinking 3D, which is nice), but there’s loads of tourists that would use Maps if they had more accurate information [not to mention Free Wi-Fi available]
• Change maps routing so that it advises of lane changes before you reach the junction not as you are passing it !!?!
• Add 3D info for Florida Please. Trying to figure out where Disney & universal parks are is a pain in 2D (or maybe it’s just me )
• Infact just add more 3D capable areas ( with a page on apple.com advising of places done and expected soon.

Wi-Fi

• Better signal strength indicator ( possibly a percentage rather than the present 3 semi circle indicator?)

Safari

• Pinterest add button in Safari.
• A setting in Safari to stop social media sites (twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest , Facebook, MySpace etc) from loading the mobile site. The mobile sites have reduced features, most or all of which are on the iOS app. I go to the sites to get the enhanced features (such as recommendations and Connection details in LinkedIn), but as soon as you click a link on the site, it takes you back to the mobile version, or they refuse to load the normal site as they have detected an iOS device. [I’ve noticed that some WordPress sites are particularly bad for this, see ifoAppleStore 😉 ] Worse still are Facebook competitions that don’t exist on the mobile version of Facebook ( Just one of many reasons I closed my Facebook account)

I’ll probably add to this list as I think of other annoyances…

UPDATE: There are rumours that Apple has approached their store staff for ideas for future iPhones. If anyone at Apple wants to include any of the above feel free..

UPDATE (19/09/2013): I upgraded my iPhone 5 this morning and so far I’m sitting in the fence. I like a lot of the features. The new keyboard is nice (although I’m using the old keyboard to write this in WordPress [which was also updated this morning] ?).
I hate that the groups are presently showing with a grey background (there must be a way to change that somewhere, maybe in an update?) it looks terrible.
Maps is has not improved much, I do like the Arrival time ( estimate) that appears, if it was in the old maps I must have missed it. The voice (taken from Siri (?) has really dropped in quality, it sounds like my speaker is broken or blocked but I know it isn’t because notifications (mail & messages) are fine [possibly better?].
Some of the animation looks really nice, ie sending a message, logging in with a PIN. I sometimes think it’s overkill but it’s such a nice addition I think I’ll get over my reservation on that very quickly.
Some things are changes that take a while to get used to, for example you no longer close running apps by holding the icon and waiting for the red X to appear, instead you see the applications screen and Icon (like you did in Safari), and you now just swipe it up and that’s it gone. This is a bit strange at first, but is so much easier and sort of makes more sense.

Since this addition is getting quite big I’m going to create a new posting on iOS7, please join me there to find out more.