Homebridge air-Q

This plugin for Homebridge is based on the Homebridge Platform Plugin Template.

Plugin Installation

This plugin was developed to be installed and configured with homebridge-config-ui-x. It can be found by searching for air-Q in the Plugins section.

Working Principle

1. The plugin performs an mDNS scan to find all air-Qs in the connected network.
2. For each found device which has also been configured with the air-Q short-ID (1st five letters of the serial number) and device password (as configured in the air-Q mobile phone App), a HTTP network connection will be established.
3. Each device will be initialized depending on the sensor list found in the retrieved device configuration.
4. If a sensor is still in warm-up phase, it will be marked as inactive. The sensor state will be updated every 120 seconds by a data request to this air-Q.
5. Live measured data will be requested every 10 seconds.
6. Many of air-Q's sensors are not supported by the HomeKit specification. To make them accessible anyways, they are disguised as either air quality sensors each by its own (health and performance index, Ozone, Hydrogen Sulfide, Sulfur Dioxide, Nitrogen Dioxide, Ammonia, Formaldehyde, Chlorine, VOCs, particulates), smoke detector (again particulates), leak detector (Methane, Propane, Hydrogen), or light detector (Noise Level and Air Pressure).

Development and Contribution

In order to modify this plugin, the same procedure applies as for the original plugin template. They are as follows in shorted version:

Setup Development Environment

To develop Homebridge plugins you must have Node.js 12 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

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 install 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

Customise Plugin

• src/platform.ts - this is where your device setup and discovery should go.
• src/platformAccessory.ts - this is where your accessory control logic should go, you can rename or create multiple instances of this file for each accessory type you need to implement as part of your platform plugin. You can refer to the developer documentation to see what characteristics you need to implement for each service type.
• config.schema.json - update the config schema to match the config you expect from the user. See the Plugin Config Schema Documentation.

Versioning Your Plugin

Given a version number MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH, such as 1.4.3, increment the:

1. MAJOR version when you make breaking changes to your plugin,
2. MINOR version when you add functionality in a backwards compatible manner, and
3. PATCH version when you make backwards compatible bug fixes.

You can use the npm version command to help you with this:

# major update / breaking changes
npm version major

# minor update / new features
npm version update

# patch / bugfixes
npm version patch

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

# publsh 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