NEOSmartShades

This is a Homebridge plugin for the NEO Smart Shade Controller (See http://neosmartblinds.com/smartcontroller/).

These instructions are in rough draft form, but should be enough to get you started Linux Installation Instructions to be added!

Setup Development Environment

To develop Homebridge plugins you must have Node.js 18 or later installed, and a modern code editor such as VS Code. This plugin template uses TypeScript to make development easier and comes with pre-configured settings for VS Code and ESLint. If you are using VS Code install these extensions:

• ESLint

Install Development Dependencies

Using a terminal, navigate to the project folder and run this command to install the development dependencies:

$ npm install

Update package.json

Open the package.json and change the following attributes:

• name - this should be prefixed with homebridge- or @username/homebridge-, is case-sensitive, and contains no spaces nor special characters apart from a dash -
• displayName - this is the "nice" name displayed in the Homebridge UI
• repository.url - Link to your GitHub repo
• bugs.url - Link to your GitHub repo issues page

When you are ready to publish the plugin you should set private to false, or remove the attribute entirely.

Update Plugin Defaults

Open the src/settings.ts file and change the default values:

• PLATFORM_NAME - Set this to be the name of your platform. This is the name of the platform that users will use to register the plugin in the Homebridge config.json.
• PLUGIN_NAME - Set this to be the same name you set in the package.json file.

Open the config.schema.json file and change the following attribute:

• pluginAlias - set this to match the PLATFORM_NAME you defined in the previous step.

Build Plugin

TypeScript needs to be compiled into JavaScript before it can run. The following command will compile the contents of your src directory and put the resulting code into the dist folder.

$ npm run build

Link To Homebridge

Run this command so your global installation of Homebridge can discover the plugin in your development environment:

$ npm link

You can now start Homebridge, use the -D flag, so you can see debug log messages in your plugin:

$ homebridge -D

Watch For Changes and Build Automatically

If you want to have your code compile automatically as you make changes, and restart Homebridge automatically between changes, you first need to add your plugin as a platform in ~/.homebridge/config.json:

{
...
    "platforms": [
        {
            "name": "Config",
            "port": 8581,
            "platform": "config"
        },
        {
            "name": "<PLUGIN_NAME>",
            //... any other options, as listed in config.schema.json ...
            "platform": "<PLATFORM_NAME>"
        }
    ]
}

and then you can run:

$ npm run watch

This will launch an instance of Homebridge in debug mode which will restart every time you make a change to the source code. It will load the config stored in the default location under ~/.homebridge. You may need to stop other running instances of Homebridge while using this command to prevent conflicts. You can adjust the Homebridge startup command in the nodemon.json file.

Publish Package

When you are ready to publish your plugin to npm, make sure you have removed the private attribute from the package.json file then run:

$ npm publish

If you are publishing a scoped plugin, i.e. @username/homebridge-xxx you will need to add --access=public to command the first time you publish.

Publishing Beta Versions

You can publish beta versions of your plugin for other users to test before you release it to everyone.

# create a new pre-release version (eg. 2.1.0-beta.1)
$ npm version prepatch --preid beta

# publish to @beta
$ npm publish --tag=beta

Users can then install the beta version by appending @beta to the install command, for example:

$ sudo npm install -g homebridge-example-plugin@beta

III. Operation

This plugin was designed for use with roller shades that have 1-way communication between the NEO controller and the shade. This means that the controller can instruct the shade to open or close, but it cannot track the position of the shade. That is, even though the shade has been instructed to open, another device (such as a hand-held remote) could change the shade position and the controller can't track this. In order to deal with this issue, I've designed the plugin so it is, effectively, stateless. That is, after a shade has been opened or closed from the iOS Home application, the Home application will show the shade as open or closed for about 20 seconds. After that, the shade is pictured as being at the 50% (half-way) position. I thought leaving the shade at 50% after an open or close operation better indicates that the controller does not really know if the shade is up or down.