Homebridge UI raspberry pi image

They were adamant I am wrong and my client who is pretty savvy is wrong. Currently waiting on the sparky to swap in another unit to show it’s not the network

 

Did you check the CGate logs on the raspberry pi?

 

It’s definitely at the SHAC end, I have to re-save the CBUS tab on the SHAC to fool it into reopening its connection without a reboot.

The cgate log gets errors saying the CNI is unavailable.

 

No problem
I just mentioned in case there was something I could try to replicate here.

 

Well it is all working now - even a second instance of homebridge running google home!

I although have another question now. The second instance is loading the google plugin too quickly, is there a simple way to delay the second instance of homebridge so that cgate initialises first? I have about 50 units and it takes cgate a good 5 minutes to sync up.

Thanks for any help.

 

why a 2nd instance? you can just run it all from 1 instance?

 

From Greig's setup there is a file called homebridge.timer
It delays the start of the Homebridge service at boot.
The purpose of the delay is to allow CGate to start and sync the CBus network before Homebridge starts.
I've always had problems with Homebridge CBus and CGate running on a raspberry pi when Homebridge service starts before CGate has finished the initial sync.

The time required varies depending on the time it takes for CGate to scan the CBus network.
Use somewhere between 1 minute for a small network and 10 minutes for a large single CBus network as a guide.
The file is located at /etc/systemd/system
To edit the file
sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/homebridge.timer
edit the time in seconds
save the file
reboot

 

Do you mean two plugins or have you gone and setup two instances of Homebridge?
If you are just wanting to run Homebridge-CBus and Homebridge Gsh you don't need two instances of Homebridge running.

 

Ahh - good to know, I thought you had to run a second instance. The second instance is really easy to setup up so I hope the timer file can be adapted to that otherwise I'll strip it back to one instance. Thanks for the heads up all.

 

2 weeks in - pretty flawless and no issues really. Stable on the raspberry pi, and SHAC as the NIC... I have google voice working on lights, homebridge working - tried a few other plugins... and since removed them - There was a homebridge plugin for somfy blinds using conexxonn - could get it to authenticate - but as I just wanted voice control on this, realised I just had to natively do it with the somfy software... I also tried the ring doorbell plugin and for the life of me could not work out what it actually did... So both of those are gone...

The only outstanding issue I have is I would love the ring doorbell to be announced over google home hubs - but realise that is a long way off with a google / amazon war where they dont want to work well... iftt does not help... Might have to try and write something myself - put google assistant on a raspberry, use tasker and do a stream to google hub of an mp3 file or something... Sometimes the easy stuff is hard

 

I have only used iOS Home App and Siri and can't comment much about Google integration.
If some of your devices can already talk to Homekit via another method I think you should try that first.
The software bridge Homebridge was put together to be used with the Homekit/Home platform for accessories which didn't have Homekit integration.
So even using GSH plugin seems a complex way to go about things to me.

I look forward to hearing more how people deal with multi platform setups.
As good as Homebridge is for the sake of reliability I would still be trying to get CBus devices to do every task they are capable of doing.

 

I have a client with nest doorbell and it works well enough. Although I got a pissy call when I tested it remotely and woke the baby.

 

Seriously though, not a good idea to leave any hint of doubt about the customers privacy.

 

She had drowned the old one watering plants with a hose and wanted this unit swapped in before her husband knew. She knew I was gonna do it, the timing was just bad

 

Fantastic piece of work, and has opened up some controls from CBUS to various other devices such as plugin Alexa modules.

One piece of feedback tho, if there's a connection loss to the CBUS network, the plugin cannot recover - or perhaps it's the local CGate daemon that can't reconnect, until I tell the Pi to restart. Any ideas on how to have it attempt to recover a connection?

 

In the past I tried a quite a few scenarios to break it.
If you can tell me interface type and the steps to lose your CBus connection I will see if I can reproduce it.

 

I have an MSS100 which provides me the LAN connection to the RS232 CBUS module. The reason I saw the error is that the MSS100, and a number of devices, are powered off via a CBUS relay when we arm the alarm and leave the house as they don't need to be on. I've now, for the moment, remove this for this MSS100.

If we do get a power drop though, this would mean the connection would drop. I don't need to restart the MSS100 but a restart of the Pi resolves the connection issue, one assumes because that forces CGate to shutdown and then reconnect upon restart.

 

Thanks for the info.
Obviously it would be better not to shut it down but I do have similar equipment to test that setup.
I will try a few scenarios and post the results.

 

@theboyg
I tested a 10 min loss of power to my serial device server NP5150A and CGate was able to reconnect no problem.

I'm going to leave the device server powered down overnight in case that makes a difference.
Perhaps CGate has a set number of retries.

One other thing I noted is that Homebridge logs showed the loss of the CBus interface but the Home app was showing the accessories operating normally and no indication that the accessories were offline.
This could cause some confusion in certain scenarios but it can be seen in the Homebridge logs.

 

I removed power to the serial device server overnight and turned it back on this morning.
CGate connected without intervention.
Homebridge and Home app seem to be working normally.