For ages and ages I’ve been wanting to get HomeBridge working on a raspberry pi, but for some reason I just couldn’t get it working. Today I finally managed to get it working on my #SynologyNAS 🙂 I need HomeBridge because of the lack of support Apple provide when it comes to managing my Nest products in the Home app.
Technically I don’t need to control my home via Siri but it’s just one extra thing I can do!
What’s needed:
- Synology NAS (Obviously)
- Docker
- Nest Thermostat with a developer ID
The guide I used for getting Nest within HomeBridge was this one here from the developer
Once the easy part is done, and HomeBridge is up and running within Docker, the part I always found frustrating was the .json configuration files! Never been able to get my head around it and I don’t think I still can. But I finally managed to get it working today with the following config:
{ "bridge": { "name": "Homebridge", "username": "CC:22:3D:E3:CE:30", "port": 51826, "pin": "031-45-154" }, "description": "This is an example configuration file. You can use this as a template for creating your own configuration file containing devices you actually own.", "accessories": [], "platforms": [{ "platform": "Nest", "token": “MYSUPERSECRETTOKEN", "clientId": “MYCLIENTIDFROMNEST", "clientSecret": “MYCLIENTSECRETFROMNEST", "code": “MYAUTHCODEFROMNEST" }] }
and it really is as simple as that, it’s the formatting that always got to me but with the help of a validation tool it helped me out where I was going wrong and even now I don’t fully understand but hey… it’s working 🙂
The Nest plugin on Github is really handy to have a look through, it points you in the right direction for creating a Nest App and Developer ID but I found it got a little flakey when it came to the config part.
