Simple Google Home AND Siri Voice Integration with CBus via Homebridge

To be honest...I didn’t know what HOOBS was...

I had to google it as it sounded like some sort of muppet type show my kids would watch on ABC for Kids.

I am now educated.

Thanks.

Jason

 

hi all, first time long time, really interesting reading, but I do have to ask the maybe basic obvious questions.

So with Homebridge, is this or can this be installed on a Windows PC - I ask as I RDP to a dedicated PC for the CBUS / PICED and this has the USB connections to the network. (its reads as Linux but I think I have seen a Windows install, otherwise I can use an older i7 laptop with Ubuntu)

I also have an old Wiser1 not doing anything so will this now act as the interconnect and I will need to re-create a project on the Wiser and this will form the foundations of what I am going to use with the intergration from Homebridge to Google Home?

I have seen the new Wiser2 as well as the NAC and SHAC on the Clipsal sites ball parking around $2k. They are very pretty but the Homebridge seems to achieve the same result.

thanks Trevor.

 

https://github.com/homebridge/homebridge/wiki/Install-Homebridge-on-Windows-10

setting up a dedicated rpi is also relatively cheap

 

Hi Trevor,

As the author of this thread, I can guarantee you that my whole install of Homebridge, Toolkit, C-Gate, PICED, etc is all on a Windows 10 PC and it works just fine. It uses an internal 8 port serial to PCI interface card to connect to a c-bus serial interface into the c-bus network (The PCI card connects to other devices as well). I have two instances of homebridge running as I have almost 300 accessories running on homebridge with c-bus and non-cbus homebridge plugins.

I also have a Wiser 1 and it can also be used as the interface into c-bus, however, if you do this you cannot use the Wiser App and certain things wont work so well on the Wiser. Save the Wiser for logic (if it's the only logic engine on your network) and use the serial interface or a CN2 network interface to connect homebridge to C-bus.

If you choose to go down the raspberry pi route, you will still need either a serial interface or a CN2. As far as a C-Bus USB Interface connection goes, if your PC talks to c-gate on windows, then it should work fine with homebridge. I am unsure if anyone has the C-Bus USB interface running on a raspberry pi with homebridge?

In your case the homebridge install on a Windows PC is simple and probably easier than on a pi and the c-gate configuration integrates better than when on a pi. The instructions for installing homebridge on Win10 are here:

https://github.com/homebridge/homebridge/wiki/Install-Homebridge-on-Windows-10

For example. if you change anything on your c-gate config with Toolkit, you must copy your config file over to the raspberry pi. You do not need to do this on Windows. I also have a raspberry pi running homebridge/c-gate and this is annoying.

My best advice would be, if you have a dedicated PC running toolkit, c-gate, PICED, etc, then just use this. If you don't have this then use a raspberry pi. It will obviously be less power hungry.

Drop me a line at any time if you need help.

Cheers

Jason

 

BTW Trevor,

If you want your homebridge to start when you boot and login to your Win10 machine and access your c-gate (if it is also running as a service) then you will need to tell c-gate which project to connect to and load. See this thread from the homebridge-cbus plugin github repository for reference.

https://github.com/anthonywebb/homebridge-cbus/issues/102

cheers

Jason

 

cool thanks guys...
T

 

A quick note to say that if anyone is using the homebridge-gsh plugin to provide google voice control integration of c-bus via homebridge, that this plugin will no longer operate from the 1st December 2024 as per the announcement on the developers github site:

https://github.com/oznu/homebridge-gsh

Cheers

Jason

 

As a user of the homebridge-gsh plugin, I say thank you for the service provided, which from my aspect has been excellent.
Any suggestions as to what will easily replace it in homebridge.

 

Hi Wonkey,

I looked around and all homebridge "google assistant" plugins that I could find in Github seem to end up at the same ozau Oauth setup (the one that is closing). So short answer was no. I looked at a commercial product that looks ok, but if you want a c-bus plugin, you need to spend $500+ for a NUC box with their software.

https://automationbridge.com.au/

I took the plunge and ran up the latest Home Assistant full OS on a Pi 5 that I had put aside for a rainy day and it was remarkably easy to setup. At this stage, I do not have my c-gate running on it. My c-gate runs on windows with Toolkit, so I don't muck around with moving the database to a pi every time I change it. That's a next step that I may look at just for interest sake only as Home Assistant does not run on the Pi OS for full functionality.

However, I do have the following working:

• Home Assistant OS installed on a Pi 5 that does all of the google assistant interface.
• Homebridge Add-On enabled that runs three C-Bus child bridges
• Home assistant "sees" the homebridge c-bus accessories (via an import process) and exposes them to the google assistant interface that runs via Home Assistants Nabu Casa cloud service.
• Home assistant then "re-adertises" the "imported" homebridge accessories as new bridges and you then pair your iOs device with these Home Assistant bridges. It works the same, although a little more convoluted. Explanation why is below *

* The reason I had to "re-publish" the homebridge accessories is because you cant pair homebridge to iOs devices for Siri and Home Assistant for Google/Alexa at the same time. Bridge pairing is a one-to-one configuration and you can't do one-to-many! So Home Assistant acts more like a conduit between homebridge and the iOs devices that provides the google/alexa voice service.

To iOs, Google and Alexa devices, the setup looks EXACTLY the same and I now have a Home Assistant interface to play with. I had an aborted attempt to play with Home Assistant a long time ago and now with the passagee of time, it was a much more enjoyable installation experience.

One other caveat, I had defined a c-bus "valve" accessory for my watering system. These appear as switches with Home Assistant but they are working on a fix.

So far my experience had been worthwhile as I have a relatively complicated network setup and lots of accessories. However, if it was vanilla, I would probably go with the AutomationBridge above. I did send an email to their support page, almost a week ago, but got nothing back from them...

One other thing. I installed the cbus2mqtt Add-On in Home Assistant which does not need c-gate!

https://github.com/MtSamsonite/ha-cbus2mqtt?tab=readme-ov-file
https://cbus.readthedocs.io/en/latest/cmqttd.html

It connected directly to my CNI and basically loaded up all of my main network group address as basic lighting. It also worked just fine, but doesn't really support the range of accessory types that I want and I didn't try too hard with bridged network config, multiple lighting applications and more than 255 accessories etc. Once again, although excellent it appears to be a vanilla solution (if you only have a PCI/CNI connection).

There is a Home Assistant add-on for the newer SHAC etc that supports more accessory types, but I don't have one so I didn't pursue it any further. If you do have one, then this may also be an option.

https://community.home-assistant.io...ners-guide-for-space-logic-controllers/707559
https://github.com/autoSteve/acMqtt

The closure of the homebridge-gsh service forced my hand to get c-bus child bridges working in homebridge to overcome the 149 accessories limit issue that I had previously overcome by running 3 separate instances of homebridge. The multiple instances solution is not recommended anymore and as the homebridge-cbus plugin development is stale it will not play nicely with child bridges in the UI. I also don't know how the plugin will behave under homebridge 2! Will wait and see...

If you are interested in going down this route and require child bridges for c-bus then go here for my experience:
https://github.com/anthonywebb/homebridge-cbus/issues/138#issuecomment-2416532885

Hope this helps for an option for you.

Cheers

Jason

 

Interesting update. It looks like Northerman54 has taken up the challenge of running the google assistant plugin.
There's info on discord and github, he also looking of beta testers.

 

That’s great news! I have made the jump to home assistant and its enhanced functionality was well worth the effort. However, for vanilla Homebridge-cbus installs that just want google/alexa voice, staying with Homebridge will be the best option.

The only other enemy on the horizon for C-Bus Homelit integration is Homebridge 2.0. Hopefully the Homebridge-cbus plugin survives this major “breaking” change. I got it working with child bridges but it generally does not play well with this and the Homebridge UI configuration.

fingers cross for the next issue…