Homebridge Plugin for Omni-Link II

Hi,
 
I recently developed a new plugin for Homebridge that automatically creates HomeKit accessories based on your Omni controller's capabilities (ie. areas, zones, buttons, units & thermostats). It's written totally in Node.js so will work on any platform that supports Node.js. It also has support for MQTT for use with 3rd party applications like Home Assistant.
 
Plugin name: homebridge-omnilink-platform
 
Sorry I can't post a link here yet as I'm a new member of this forum but if you search on npmjs.com you'll find it. There you'll find details on how to install and configure the plugin.
 
I decided to develop this plugin as I couldn't find an existing one that didn't require some sort of external platform (such as openHab) to communicate with the Omni controller. My own Omni controller doesn't have many capabilities so testing some functionality is difficult.
 
If you use it and find any problems with the plugin or there's some new feature you'd like added please let me know. Any feedback is welcome.
 
Regards,
Mantorok

Welcome to the Cocoontech forum Mantorok.
 
Thank you for your contribution!!!  
 
Posted your link over here ==>
 
homebridge-omnilink-platform

Hi,
 
I've released an update to the Omnilink plugin (version 1.3.4). The main change is adding support for bypassing zones in both HomeKit and MQTT. I've also improved the startup time of the plugin by caching some details so the plugin doesn't need to do a full scan to determine the Omni's capabilities. If you do change something (eg. adding a new zone) you'll need to set the "Force Auto-Discovery" option to perform a full scan the next time the plugin restarts.
 
Regards,
Mantorok

I downloaded homebridge and the omnilink plugin and it's working great with homekit. However, I haven't been able to get the MQTT client to work with Homebridge and the MQTT Broker. I'm totally new to this, so I don't know if I'll describe my issue correctly or not, but I'll try:
 
It looks like its publishing the topics to the broker, but I can't see them in Home Assistant.
 
            "mqtt": {
                "host": "mqtt://172.16.1.27:1883/",
                "username": "mqtt",
                "password": "*******************",
                "topicPrefix": "omni",
                "showMqttEvents": true
            },
 
In HA:

1. I've just installed the add in "Mosquitto broker"
2. I started "Mosquitto broker"
3. I created a user and password in HA under configuration\user (this is the username and password I put in the Omnilink plugin config file.
4. I went to HA\configuration\integrations and MQTT was listed as new discovered.
5. I selected it and enabled MQTT discovery and hit submit.

Do I need to do anything else?
 
My Mosquitto broker configuration is as follows:
 
logins: []
anonymous: false
customize:
  active: false
  folder: mosquitto
certfile: fullchain.pem
keyfile: privkey.pem
require_certificate: false
 
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks

Hi @cyerye,
 
I don't use HA myself so I probably can't help much on that side of things but there's a few things you can check.
 
Firstly do you see a message like the following in the Homebridge logs when the plugin starts:

MQTT: Broker connected [mqtt://172.16.1.27:1883]

Also, do you see corresponding messages like the following in the Mosquitto logs:

1616363325: New connection from 192.168.1.102 on port 1883.
1616363325: New client connected from 192.168.1.102 as mqttjs_b8bb2de1 (p2, c1, k60).  
This would at least indicate that the plugin has established a successful connection to the MQTT broker.
 
For the HA config there might be someone else in this community or the HA community that can help you out more as I know very little about it.

Hi @mantorok,
 
Thanks for the help. I do see a message in the Homebridge logs that states

MQTT: Broker connected [mqtt://172.16.1.27:1883/:1883]

It then goes on to publish a long list of items and then subscribes to a long list of items.
 
On the Home Assistant side of things, under the Supervisor panel I see the following in the Mosquitto broker log:

1616375258: New connection from 172.16.1.26 on port 1883.
[18:07:39] INFO: [INFO] found mqtt on Home Assistant
1616375259: New client connected from 172.16.1.26 as mqttjs_f93f8e30 (p2, c1, k60, u'mqtt').

I just don't see any devices or entities showing up under the MQTT configuration in Home Assistant. It sounds like this is a setup issue in Home Assistant. Thanks for your help, you've helped me narrow it down to the Home Assistant. I'm thinking I have some work to do in the File Editor with the configuration.yaml file.
 
Thanks again for your help. Do you mind me asking what you have Homebridge connected to?

Hi @cyerye,
 
At the moment I'm just using homebridge & my omnilink plugin for HomeKit. I don't use MQTT to connect to anything at this stage but may try HA at some point.

@mantorok
 
I want to say a big thanks for the developing the homebridge omnilink plugin. I've been using HomeKit for a while now, but I had only been using the Myro:HomeHelper to connect the HAI OmniPro II with HomeKit. Up until now I pretty much ran my blue iris IP camera system separate because I could never connect the HAI system to the cameras with triggers reliably. Using Homebridge, I've been able to simplify my system and get more things connected. I was able to connect my LiftMaster garage door opener (MyQ) and replace use the HAI button to control the door in through HomeKit. I'm using the camera FFMEG plugin to bring the camera and camera motion triggers into HomeKit and then connect them to the HAI panel in Homekit.
 
At this point, I don't think I need Home Assistant for anything right now, so I've turned it off and repurposed the Raspberry Pi.
 
A couple questions for you:

1. How are messages connected to HomeKit?
2. Is there any way to connect user settings?
3. Are buttons always momentary switches in HomeKit?
4. How to keep a button out of HomeKit? With Myro:Home if it doesn't have a description in PC Access it doesn't show up in the app.

Thanks again.

Thanks @cyerye,
 
Glad to hear you find the plugin useful. With regards to your questions:

1. Sorry, not quite sure what you mean. What messages are you referring to? Omni Events?
2. Again not quite sure what you mean. What are the user settings?
3. Yes. The Omni buttons are stateless whereas the HomeKit switches have "on" & "off" states, so to get around that the switches will briefly turn "on" then back to "off" to simulate a button.
4. The plugin should only show named buttons. I could enhance the plugin to allow you to exclude specific buttons (it does something like this for Omni units). A short term workaround could be to edit the OmnilinkPlatform.json file and remove the button IDs you don't want to include in HomeKit. If you do this you'll need to restart Homebridge (or the child bridge the plugin is running in)

Regards.

Hi @Mantorok,
 
Regarding messages are a setup item in HAI that you can access through the keypad or PC Access. I use them to announce messages on the keypads with speakers.
 
Regarding user settings, they are used in programming to set a value or level for certain parameters. The parameters can be a number, duration (time), temperature, humidity, date, time, day of week or level (%). It's a great way to add automation inside the OmniPro II control panel.
 
I don't need any changes to it, I was just wondering, because when I first synced it with omni and homekit, I got a lot of things I only use in the automation side of the opII. I've since deleted that and I'm taking a lot of unused automation out of the panel and cleaning buttons, flags, and reorganizing some of the HLC rooms. I should have done this a while ago.
 
Thanks again.

Ah ok, I'm not sure how I could include messages and user settings in HomeKit. I'm not aware of any HK accessories that could do this.

Hi @mantorok,
 
I do have a feature request. Could you add access control to the plugin? I currently have it on my panel with two doors with Kwikset SmartCode Zigbee Deadbolts. It would be nice to use Siri to control them.
 
Thanks

Hi @cyerye,
 
I'll see what I can do. I'm guessing the Omni "access control" would be best represented by a "lock mechanism" in HomeKit. (https://developers.homebridge.io/#/service/LockMechanism)
 
What do you think?

@mantorok - I think so too.

Hi @cyerye,
 
I've just released a new version of the plugin (1.4.0) which includes support for Access Controls as well as the following:

• Temperature & Humidity Sensor accessories for Omni auxiliary sensors
• Show Request/Response in Homebridge logs
• Improvements to mapping zones and units to HomeKit accessories in settings

I have no way to test if the Access Control support works so if you could give me some feedback on how it goes that would be great.
 
Thanks