V1 of my domotica project was running on a Raspberry Pi 1, and it served me well for 3 years. You could actually only notice the lack of processing power when you toggled some bigger scenes. It took the Raspberry Pi somewhere between 1 and 2 seconds to turn on over 10 Philips Hue bulbs.

The setup itself was very nice to work with, it could be controlled very easy from Smart TV, Phones, Browsers and some hardware Fibaro switches. But it lacked decent NL Siri support. This post describes how to get things up and running with localized Siri support. By using https://github.com/nfarina/homebridge you get decent Homekit support even for devices that are not Homekit certified. Your Domoticz server will work as bridge to devices that don’t support Homekit.

Note: An extra, rather personal, requirement is that I don’t like to open up my house (and it’s data) to the cloud and or Smart Home device suppliers, so the domotica system is available from within the house, when I need external access I use a VPN to reach the Domotica/Homekit server. An exception was needed for a workable solution with my new NetAtmo Themostat’s as it always needs access to a NetAtmo webservice.

When ready you can do things like:

Problems

Currently my home setup includes:

• Around 20 Hue bulbs and one Go
• 4x Fibaro controllable blinds (Z-wave)
• 12x all purpose Fibaro switches, wall mounted (Z-wave)
• 3x Fibaro Smoke & CO2 detectors (Z-wave)
• a couple of cheap Chinese temp probes (433Mhz)
• a humidity detector (433Mhz)
• a Trust z-wave kit with 3 bulbs (Z-wave)
• 12x general purpose Klik Aan/Uit outlets (433Mhz)
• 2x Klik Aan/Uit movement detectors (433Mhz)
• 2x Klik Aan/Uit Doorbell (433Mhz)
• a DIY c.v. controller (for sale) based on old Klik Aan/Uit circuitry (433Mhz)
• NetAtmo Smart CV
• USB RFXCOM controller + USB Z-wave controller

Except for the missing Siri support: I only experienced some minor problems in the last 3 years of running it:

• Updating was error prone: e.g. after an update you had to debug stuff to get it to work again
• Speed of switching larger scenes could be improved
• Siri support at home was limited to only Philips/Hue devices, not all Domoticz scenes could be used with Siri/Homekit
• An app is needed on iOS to easily use domoticz stuff
• The Pi would occassionaly crash (once in 3-4 months): never really debugged it

Most of my problems can be solved by emulating some HomeKit stuff: that way I can add scenes and switches for stuff living inside Domoticz.

Installing Domoticz

To start it of I decided to re-install domoticz on one of the industrial shuttle PC’s I had lying around. It features a double celeron CPU and 30Gb of SSD storage. Most people will use a Raspberry Pi 3, which is a cheaper option. As I want/like the flexibility to run other services on the Domotica controller/computer I decided to go for a more complete computer.

Note: An extra, rather personal, requirement is that I don’t like to open up my house (and it’s data) to the cloud I might port it to a docker based setup in another post so that you can run different versions of Domoticz next to each other. The easiest way to create a self update-able Domoticz is to run it from source and occasionally align it with the last master branch.

I first looked at debian packages but decided to follow the running from source aka the Hard Way as desribed on: Compile_Domoticz_from_source.

After completing the instruction you will have your domoticz install in [~/dev-domoticz]{.title-ref}

After that I installed Homekit support with the instructions on Homekit_Siri. As you need to start some stuff which is based on Node.js when the machine boots, they opt to use PM2 to start and manage the processes instead of making full fledged Linux service services from it. That’s fine. PM2 suprised me: it even provides an REST FULL API to interact with your scripts and processes so it will be easy to integrate it in dashboard and monitoring.

Some PM2 shortcuts:

Updating domoticz

I’m currently running it from the development branch branch but you even switch branches in most cases.

Updating your domoticz is easy now. You can write a crontab for it but for I know I’m doing it manually (once a month) with:

Updating homebridge

I’m currently running homebridge via npm package. Docs for Homevridge itself: Homekit_Github and for the plugin you can use homekit_Domoticz_Plugin. I configured my home setup with room support to easily hide all homekit devices and scenes that are not in the living room.

Tips and tricks

To enable room mode: Go to [Domoticz > Setup > More Options > Plans > roomplan]{.title-ref}.

Add only the devices you wish to be exposed to HomeKit to this new roomplan within Domoticz, and take a mental note of its [roomidx]{.title-ref} number. Set “roomid” in your config.json file to this room number.

the config file of homebridge lives in ~/.config/

Current config example:

Suggestions are welcome.

Security

All 433 Mhz stuff is inherently unsafe, but also easy to control with domotica gear. So watch it don’t use it for critical stuff: I only use it to monitor som temperature and to switch some lights.