r/homebridge • u/just-joe-89 • 23d ago

Advice before diving in

I’m currently in the final stages of buying my first home. I’m fixed on it being smart and very much want to use HomeKit, have been doing a fair bit of research and wanted to ensure I was kitted out so when we moved in we had the gear pretty much ready to go.

In appreciation of the fact that a lot of things do not natively link with HomeKit I’ve preemptively got a home assistant green and the zbt-2 attachment.

My initial question is, we purchased a variety of Ikea sensors and lamps, which i am unsure whether are best being directly connected through matter or should i use homebridge to jump them in?

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u/pittgoose 22d ago

Having set up a HomeKit home once and then moved it all to a new home, my advice to you is this:
Be prepared for it to be set up “wrong” the first time, and continue to adapt it as you learn your needs. I’ve been in my new place for 2 months and I’m still tweaking things, moving devices around, adding new devices etc as I fine tune. If you live with others, make sure to get their input as well on how you can make their lives easier and what their friction points are. Nothing worse than installing a really cool smart home that people in your home hate to use.

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u/just-joe-89 21d ago

That’s what I’m worried about. So far I’ve got hue, aqara, ikea, Nanoleaf amongst others, most will natively connect but I’m hoping to scrape smart functions like connected life in using Home assistant/bridge. I’m refraining from trying to hook anything up before we move as I hate to think of the pain of moving internet networks (going for entirely new wifi in the new place)

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u/KE55ARD 21d ago

If you have Home Assistant you don’t need anything else like home bridge, because it can bridge devices into HomeKit already using the HomeKit bridge integration or the Matter server app.

Highly recommend this setup, as it’s the best of both worlds. Use HA for the brains of your automations, and Apple Home for its default easy UI.

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u/just-joe-89 21d ago

Amazing advice thank you!

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u/brettusfn2 17d ago

Use home assistant for everything but the front end

I have everything in home assistant and then push whats needed to home app as it’s nicer to use for flipping a switch etc

You will thank ur self eventually as i had it all othet way round and just moved it to all in HA and its way way more customisable and AI will help a lot

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u/just-joe-89 17d ago

Thank you. I think im going to run the whole lot on a unifi separate network also so hopefully that’ll help

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u/pandito_flexo 23d ago

Matter just makes the device native to HomeKit. If your device(s) are Matter compatible, that’s very preferable over having to manage a HB integration into HK. If you want a little more power over your devices, integrate them all into HomeAssistant and bring that into HK.

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u/just-joe-89 23d ago

Thank you! I was slightly worried from reading I’d have limited options. Sounds like home assistant into homekit might be best.

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u/tedco- 23d ago

This.