Advice for Homekit, Homebridge and Home Assistant

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I wasn’t certain where the best place for this was - if this topic should be moved please let me know.

I’ve been dabbling with Home Assistant for awhile now but mostly just in a testing/dev kind of style. I’m ready to start making some things more permanent.

My goals include wanting the most flexibility to use just about any device - whether it is HomeKit native, or something else. I generally want to use the Home app on our iOS devices for basic control, but I want to leverage HA’s more robust automation, reporting, monitoring, etc. As an example - I’d use HA to monitor our energy usage/reporting - that wouldn’t need to be in the Home app.

But, I’d like to be able to turn a tv on/off from the Home app as well as my Denon receiver, etc. Right now, the Denon is controllable by HA but not by the Home app - so, I have to switch between the two apps (and the same is true for volume, source selection, etc.). Our TVs are LGs.

Based on my reading and studying this seems like a great use case to use HA as the aggregator behind the scenes and then use the Home App as the UI for most basic control situations.

What I’m unsure of at this point is what the best steps are since at the moment, I have a home and things set up in the Home app, and I have some things set up in Home Assistant. I’m also using Homebridge to control my garage door openers (older non-smart models with Security+ coding and I’m using the MyQ gateways and such to make them ‘smart.’) Given the latest issues with the MyQ integration in HA I want to get away from that type of cloud dependence and migrate to local control.

I have most of the typical devices - Ecobee, Apple TVs, Hue lights, etc.

So, I’m looking for thoughts/ideas/suggestions on how to start, or maybe restart? Do I blow away my Homekit Home setup as it is today, and dump Homebridge as well, and use the Homekit integrations in HA to consume all the devices and then expose them to the Home app and such?

I’ve done a lot of reading and video watching, but I’m just quite sure how to start.

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I’m going to guess the first step is to remove all the devices from HomeKit and wipe out my existing home in HomeKit. Then, enable HomeKit in HA and work from there?

Basically - I want to use both HA and HomeKit together - with the primary end user control taking place in HomeKit…

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hello - i’d like to bump this back up again. any advice on steps to migrate to home assistant with an already existing homekit and home assistant environment? i want home assistant to be the back end but most of the control to come from homekit.

i already have a homekit home setup - but i don’t have anything bridged with HA yet. i’m just curious if i need to remove the homekit home on the iOS side and then start over by enabling homekit in HA?

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What I would suggest is to simply add HomeKit bridge in HA, select the devices and then add the bridge back to your home app.
It’s tedious but it should work.
You do not have to delete your devices. Just add another (second) home for testing.

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thank you for responding. i admit i hadn’t thought about a second home for testing. i’ll give that some thought.

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Sorry to resurrect this again but I’m still not sure on the best way to integrate Home assistant and Homekit, specifically with Homekit compatible devices. My goal is the same - to manage complex automations in Home Assistant, but to allow easy control and Siri via the Apple Home app for all household users).

For instance, with a Meross Homekit compatible lightstrip the options seem to be:

  1. Pair in the Meross native app. Then add the Meross HACS integration to Home Assistant. Then use the Homekit Bridge integration to get it into Homekit.
  2. Add to Homekit first. Then remove. Then use the Homekit Device integration to add to Home Assistant. Then use the Homekit Bridge integration to get it into Homekit.

The second way is preferable to me, but so far when I add a new device this way I have to delete and re-add the relevant device bridge in Homekit, and then go through the hassle of setting up each device in Homekit. Is that expected behaviour, or is there a better way?

(I just realised I’m not sure if the OP is talking about a completely separate HomeBridge installation running on a pi or something, or the integration in Home Assistant called HomeKit Bridge. For the record, I’m talking about the Home Assistant version).

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just to clarify - i was talking about getting rid of the separate homebridge. i had it running as a VM.

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I’m interested in doing the same type of things with HA, HB and HK. ie use the HK UI for members of my family. But I don’t know how to best accomplish this. I have a large HK Home with over 200 devices…, 10 ATVs, 15 Apple MiniiPods, 150 Lutron Radio RA 3 lights, 8 Sonos speakers etc., etc.

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Wow that’s a lot of HK!

So the way I think you’re supposed to do it is to remove your devices from HomeKit and then pair HK devices with Home Assistant using the HomeKit Device integration. Then use the HomeKit Bridge integration and config to push whatever entities you want into HomeKit (HomeKit and non HomeKit).

This way, you get all of your HK and Non HK devices in Home Assistant with much better automation than you can do in Apple Home, but your family can use Apple Home without seeing all of the complexity of HA.