Issues with Multiple HomeKit Bridges and Adding a Temperature Sensor to an Existing Integration

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Hello,
It’s my first topic, please bear with me

I’m experiencing some issues with HomeKit integration in my Home Assistant setup and would appreciate your assistance.

Problem Overview:

I have successfully set up Home Assistant with HomeKit Bridge to integrate with Apple HomeKit. Everything is working fine, and I can control devices like blinds with percentages in Apple HomeKit. However, I recently added an Aqara Roller Shade Driver E1, which also includes a temperature sensor. Although the temperature sensor is correctly detected and functioning in Home Assistant, it does not appear in the existing HomeKit Bridge configuration.

Steps Taken:

  1. Added HomeKit Bridge Integration:
  • I configured HomeKit Bridge in Home Assistant to work with Apple HomeKit.
  1. Added Aqara Roller Shade Driver E1:
  • Integrated the device via Zigbee2MQTT and confirmed that the temperature sensor data is available in Home Assistant. The sensor entity is named sensor.maciek_roleta_lewa_device_temperature.
  1. Configured configuration.yaml:
  • Updated configuration.yaml to include the temperature sensor in the HomeKit Bridge configuration:

yaml

homekit:
  name: "Home Assistant Bridge"
  filter:
    include_entities:
      - sensor.maciek_roleta_lewa_device_temperature
  entity_config:
    sensor.maciek_roleta_lewa_device_temperature:
      name: "Temperature Sensor"
  1. Restarted Home Assistant:
  • Applied changes by restarting Home Assistant.

Current Issue:

Despite having only one HomeKit Bridge configuration in configuration.yaml, a new HomeKit Bridge instance is created every time I restart Home Assistant. This results in multiple HomeKit bridges being detected in the Apple HomeKit app. Consequently, I end up with two HomeKit bridges: one with the existing devices and another with just the temperature sensor from the Aqara Roller Shade Driver E1.

Desired Outcome:

I want to integrate the temperature sensor into the existing HomeKit Bridge configuration so that it appears alongside my other devices in the same HomeKit bridge, rather than creating a new bridge.

Questions:

  1. How can I ensure that the temperature sensor is added to the existing HomeKit Bridge instead of creating a new bridge?
  2. Is there a way to merge or manage multiple HomeKit bridges within Home Assistant to avoid multiple entries in Apple HomeKit?

Any guidance or suggestions on how to resolve this issue would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you!