HomeBridge as a sensor?

Third party integrations Homebridge
1

I have HomeBridge setup and I can use it to control switches and read temperatures, and tell Siri to switch on/off lamps etc.

For show-off effect (the christmas dinner is at our house, so this is important) I’d like to be able to say “Hey Siri, activate blinkenlights!” into my iphone and have HA respond with the appropriate actions (probably by triggering an external script or via the AppDaemon).

What do I need to configure to achieve this?

I think I need to use a HomeBridge sensor, right? Or is there another way to achieve what I want? Maybe to expose my blinkenlights script as a switch somehow?

2

You could create an automation which monitors something you can control with HA, then when that is triggered, it will then trigger the appropriate actions in HA. So if a switch is both in HA and available to Siri through homebridge, you can create an automation that used the switches status as the trigger.

I sort of do this with some hue bulbs to set their color temperature when powered on. The Automation triggers whenever it picks up the bulbs are on 100% bright (when they turn on from a power off and connect to the hue bridge). HA then sets the desired temp. it takes a few seconds in the case of hue, but I think with a switch that reports status immediately to HA it should be pretty quick.

3

I do the same thing but use a switch that does nothing, i call it a dummy switch. I use a unused GPIO or a blank command line switch and have a automation follow it to turn on a script / scene or other switches. You might have to say, turn on instead of active as its a switch.

switch:
  platform: rpi_gpio
  ports:
    1: blinkenlights