Schinckel.net

MQTT HomeKit Bridge

Writing HomeKit devices is possible (and even simple) using tools like HAP-python. However, devices like the esp8622 are slow to do the handshake stuff, and having to keep them awake to read temperature or other data on demand means you can’t use the deep sleep features.

These IoT devices can, however, quite easily handle publishing to an MQTT topic.

I’ve read most of the HomeKit Accessory Protocol spec (at least, the non-commercial one, but you’ll still need credentials to view that link), and I think I have a pretty good handle on it. And it occurred to me that it should be possible to bridge, in both directions, an MQTT broker and HomeKit.

Basically, you can then have a single bridge device (that you only need to register in HomeKit once), and have this connect to your MQTT broker. It can then perform two actions:

  • Listen for MQTT messages that meet certain criteria, and pass these through to HomeKit
  • Listen for HomeKit messages, and convert these into MQTT messages.

There’s a bit more to it than that: it keeps track of what devices are known, and will automatically add new devices when it detects one (via a matching MQTT topic). It could also remove devices that have not been seen for some time (or when a specific message indicates that device is no longer available).

I’ve chosen to make this as simple as possible - at this stage of my prototype there is no authentication in the MQTT broker, but that will have to change before I hook up anything other than temperature sensors. My Garage Door opener is still a standalone HomeKit device!

So, down to the nuts and bolts.

A message that matches the following pattern will be processed:

HomeKit/<device_id>/<service_type>/<characteristic_name>

For instance, I can currently see some messages that look like:

HomeKit/esp8266_12345678/TemperatureSensor/CurrentTemperature 20
HomeKit/esp8266_12345678/HumiditySensor/CurrentRelativeHumidity 58
HomeKit/123456789ABCDEF/TemperatureSensor/CurrentTemperature 20.125
HomeKit/TEST/Switch/On 1

The thing you might notice is that two of those messages have the same device id - the bridge knows this, and will add a second service to the accessory.

To be honest, this solution seems too simple, but it has been working really well for me for some time now. I have configured the sensors to send retain (persistent) messages, but I think I’m going to turn that off, except in the case of things like the switch device.

The other thing I haven’t totally nutted out yet is the authentication/authorisation stuff for MQTT. I have had some thoughts at this point though:

  • A device will generate a password when it first boots (and stores this).
  • This password will be used with the device id to authenticate with the broker.
  • When the client attempts to connect, a check will be made to see if the user exists - if so, the password must match. If not, the user will be created.
  • Any user created in this manner will be able to read and write topics that match HomeKit/<user_id>/#
  • A special user (the HomeKit bridge user) must be able to read and write all HomeKit/# topics.

Now that I’ve gotten OTA working with these devices, I need some mechanism for triggering this via MQTT.