How does HomeAssistant detect Homekit devices? I assumed it was just mDNS, but is there something else at work for those devices?
TL;DR
I have HomeAssistant running in a docker container on an Ubuntu 22.04 system. I also have ESPHome, Zigbee2Mqtt, and several other containers running on the system. My main router for the house is a Ubiquiti Edgerouter-10X. Zigbee is my main device protocol, with a small number of Wifi devices.
Initially I had all the Wifi devices on my main LAN. About 6-9 months ago I setup a couple of VLANs for Guest and IoT networks and started migrating Wifi devices to the IoT VLAN. HomeAssitant is still on the main LAN. Initially I could not detect ESPHome devices on the IoT VLAN automatically, nor connect the ESPHome dashboard to them. After some trial an error I got the ER-10X mDNS repeaters working, at least to the point that the ESPHome dashbaord and HomeAssistant could see the ESPHome devices on the IoT network.
Within the last couple of weeks I’ve gottan an Aqara FP2. When initially playing with it I connected it to the main LAN to a dedicated 2.4 GHz SSID, and after configuring it in the Aqara app, HomeAssistant immediately detected it as a new Homkit device. I didn’t add it to HomeAssistant at that time. After playing with it for a bit, I factory reset the device (reset button X 10) then configured it for the IoT VLAN dedicated 2.4GHz SSID. From that point on, HomeAssistant failed to see the device. I moved the device back to the main LAN, and HomeAssistant immediately detected it again.
So, I’m 95% sure I’ve got mDNS working correctly between the main and IoT LANs, but HomeAssistant isn’t seeing the FP2 on the IoT VLAN. So, do Homekit devices HAVE to be on the same LAN as HomeAssistant, or am I missing something in the VLAN setup that is preventing these devices from being found when on the IoT VLAN?
Thanks in advance…