Practice

Since practice ultimately represents the practical exercise of a theory, I show under this category how something worked for me, or I give instructions or report on my projects.

Install Homebridge on the Raspberry Pi, it’s easy!

by Oliver Franck
23. September 2023
2 Comments

There are many tutorials on how to install Homebridge “manually”. Or how to manually maintain the system step by step. With almost every update of plugins. In the beginning, I was wondering if the world needed another tutorial on how to set up Homebridge on a Raspberry Pi. But I spent a lot of time setting it up and even more hours maintaining Homebridge, and it was often just trivial things and typos that made me despair. In the end, I decided to develop this post. In the article, I show my current approach that allows newbies with simple steps to get a working and easy to maintain Homebridge at the start.

Connect Homebridge to Hue and expand your smart home

by Oliver Franck
28. December 2022
7 Comments

The original reason for me to set up a Homebridge was the fact that I registered the cheap Osram Smart Plugs on my Philips Hue, thought to myself “Good plan!”. Unfortunately, the plugs were not displayed in HomeKit or forwarded by Hue. So the Hue had to be connected to Homebridge. So that I can also use my smart plugs in HomeKit with Siri. In the end, it wasn’t that difficult. The recipe and the list of ingredients, so that you can do it, are here:

Install Node-Red in parallel with Homebridge

by Oliver Franck
10. September 2022

If you have, like me, already a Raspberry Pi with a Homebridge running, it is a good idea to install Node-Red on the same Raspberry. Node-Red is a real help for more sophisticated automations. Then there is also the possibility, for example, to create physically non-existent switches in HomeKit directly to control devices via Node-Red, which otherwise would have no access to HomeKit at all. Interest aroused? Then read on and take the first step into another level of the Internet of Things, a long way from simply switching on a light!

Control Volumio with HomeKit using Node-Red

by Oliver Franck
10. September 2022
2 Comments

We rely on Siri as the voice interface in our smart home. This has advantages, but also disadvantages and limitations. For example, I was not able to control Volumio via HomeKit or to adjust the volume or change the radio station. But now I have done it with the help of Node-Red! Now I am able to start both Volumio with my favorite radio station, adjust the volume and change the station. How my procedure was, you will learn in the article so read on!

Covid-19 county news as push notifications to your smartphone

by Kay Pohl
10. September 2022

In the actual situation, we (my wife and I) are interested in the current corona case numbers in our county. Until now, we have always done this via the website of the RKI. Since this can be very tedious, I decided to automate the process and send push notifications. I would like to describe in this post in more detail on how did it.