Homebridge Platform Plugin SOL

This is the homebridge plugin for SOL smarthome controlled devices. It is a very specific setup for one smarthome and not designed to work on other places. SOL is a specific bridge connector for Fritzbox, Shelly, EVCC, Sungrow and Hue with a very specific frontend and caching mechanism.

This plugin provides several device types, like:

• switches (Fritzbox, Shelly)
• ligthbulbs (Hue)
• sensors for light and humidity (Shelly)
• sensors for battery and power management (EVCC, Fritzbox, Shelly, Sungrow).

This repository is based on the template Homebridge dynamic platform plugin together with the developer documentation.

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

We use a local home bridge installation to develop the plugin.

sudo npm install -g --unsafe-perm homebridge homebridge-config-ui-x
sudo hb-service install
sudo hb-service status

This installs a local 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

Development

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": "SOL Platform",
            "host": "http://localhost:8080",
            "platform": "SOLHomebridgePlugin"
        }
    ]
}

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 login
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

Best Practices

Consider creating your plugin with the Homebridge Verified criteria in mind. This will help you to create a plugin that is easy to use and works well with Homebridge. You can then submit your plugin to the Homebridge Verified list for review. The most up-to-date criteria can be found here. For reference, the current criteria are:

• The plugin must successfully install.
• The plugin must implement the Homebridge Plugin Settings GUI.
• The plugin must not start unless it is configured.
• The plugin must not execute post-install scripts that modify the users' system in any way.
• The plugin must not contain any analytics or calls that enable you to track the user.
• The plugin must not throw unhandled exceptions, the plugin must catch and log its own errors.
• The plugin must be published to npm and the source code available on GitHub.
  • A GitHub release - with patch notes - should be created for every new version of your plugin.
• The plugin must run on all supported LTS versions of Node.js, at the time of writing this is Node.js v16 and v18.
• The plugin must not require the user to run Homebridge in a TTY or with non-standard startup parameters, even for initial configuration.
• If the plugin needs to write files to disk (cache, keys, etc.), it must store them inside the Homebridge storage directory.