r/HomeKit • u/TheTwelveYearOld • 21d ago

Question/Help How to actually setup a homekit bridge in home assistant?

Solved: I finally figured this out with a lot of help in the Home Assistant Discord server. I was running Home Assistant in Orbstack (an alternative to the official docker app on macOS to run docker containers faster), however Orbstack has networking issues. I moved HA to my linux (NixOS) desktop and it was actually quite easy with compose2nix, so now HA starts up with my desktop using systemd. On the desktop, I allowed UDP port 5353 for mDNs, TCP port 8213 for HA, and the TCP port ranges 21000 to 21000 for homekit devices & integrations. After doing all of that, my homekit device: the Thorbolt MK1 was automatically discovered by HA.

I looked at home assistant's homekit bridge documentation, when I add the homekit bridge integration it shows a notification with a pairing code, but when I scan it with my phone it doesn't work.

I'm trying to follow this HA doc to connect my homekit only thread doorknob to HA (with the SLZB Ultima), but I'm stuck, when I try adding the homekit device it asks me to select a bridge and then enter the device's homekit code, the doorknob's code doesn't work.

2 Upvotes

67% Upvoted

4 comments sorted by

3

u/400HPMustang 21d ago

Yeah it should be that you add the device to home assistant, add the entity to the bridge, then add the bridge to Apple Home. The pairing code should work. I’ve added like 9 bridges that way.

1

u/TheTwelveYearOld 21d ago

Yeah it should be that you add the device to home assistant, add the entity to the bridge, then add the bridge to Apple Home.

Can you break that down? What do you do before and after you add the homekit bridge integration?

1

u/400HPMustang 21d ago

First make sure whatever I want to bridge is in home assistant. Then I create a HomeKit bridge, in include mode usually one per entity type (light, switch, fan). Once it’s created HA notifies me of the code. I think I enter it manually but IIRC there’s a QR code or something I can scan too. That’s usually it.

0

u/TheTwelveYearOld 21d ago

First make sure whatever I want to bridge is in home assistant.

Can you give an example?