Homebridge made simple, HOOBS

Updated 2021-08-08 !

I have written several post about the HomeKit Bridge, Homebridge(HB), but if You want another simple way, with GUI, to handle the server and plugins the guys at HOOBS have done a nice software package.

I personally prefer the Homebridge "native" install, which seems to be updated more frequently.

Intro

As you can see on their homepage it's even possible to buy a preinstalled hardware or a SD card for a quick start.

This post are having fewer and fewer instructions, after every update, due to that the HOOBS application is getting better and better. This includes the documentation.

Installation
Documentation

They have put a lot of effort in making good documentation, so go on with the install instructions here or the installation guides.

Image download
An image for use with Raspberry Pi(RPi), HOOBS V4, can be downloaded here.

Manual installation
If you want to start from scratch, running a Raspberry Pi, please start with the install of the Raspberry Pi OS. You can do a headless install since the HOOBS application have its own WEB-server. Then at a command line follow these instructions.

Please note when doing a manual installation !! The user "hoobs", mentioned in the documentation, will not be created and the "hoobs" daemon will be run by "root". So if using "ssh" or the built in "Terminal", via HOOBs GUI, use the user which did the installation instead.

WEB GUI

After the installation your HOOBS server is up and running and can be reached  "http://raspberrypi"(port 80 per default). Or at the hostname/IP you have chosen. Create a login OR use "Disable logins" and You will open up the HOOBS dashboard.

Now you should install the plugins you need and add HOOBS to your "Home App" with PIN ”031-45-154”.

Tutorials for the most used plugins/functions are found here.

Desktop apps

Running V4 makes it possible to use the desktop applications, Mac/Windows, which have some  additional functions compared to the WEB client.