homebridge-windy-camera

Captures a live Windy.com radar map screenshot on a timer and keeps it registered as a camera accessory inside homebridge-camera-ui.

This plugin does not implement HomeKit camera streaming itself — it relies on homebridge-camera-ui (which must already be installed and configured) to handle the actual HomeKit video pipeline. Instead, it:

1. Periodically launches headless Chromium (via playwright-core) to screenshot the Windy.com embed map for a configured location, and saves it to disk.
2. On every Homebridge start, makes sure a matching camera entry exists in homebridge-camera-ui's configuration and database — recreating it automatically if it's missing (for example after a partial backup restore).

Requirements

• homebridge-camera-ui already installed and configured.
• A system-installed Chromium browser (e.g. /usr/bin/chromium on Raspberry Pi OS / Debian).

Installation

sudo npm install -g homebridge-windy-camera

The plugin's postinstall script will automatically create a Homebridge prestart hook (under /etc/hb-service/homebridge/prestart.d/) that keeps the camera-ui configuration in sync before Homebridge starts. This is necessary because homebridge-camera-ui overwrites its own configuration from an internal database on every startup, before any regular plugin gets a chance to run.

Configuration

Add a platform block to your Homebridge config.json:

{
  "platform": "WindyCamera",
  "name": "מכ״ם גשם",
  "lat": 32.3167,
  "lon": 34.9351,
  "width": 1300,
  "height": 900,
  "captureIntervalMs": 120000
}

| Option | Default | Description | |---------------------|-----------------------|----------------------------------------------------------| | name | מכ״ם גשם | Camera name shown in HomeKit / used to match the entry. | | lat / lon | Tel Aviv area | Map center coordinates. | | width / height | 1300 / 900 | Screenshot resolution. | | captureIntervalMs | 120000 (2 minutes) | How often to refresh the radar image. | | chromiumPath | /usr/bin/chromium | Path to the system Chromium binary. |

How it works

The plugin does not register any HomeKit accessories of its own — its only job is to (a) keep a radar screenshot fresh on disk and (b) make sure homebridge-camera-ui has a videoConfig entry pointing at that image. The actual HomeKit camera protocol is entirely handled by homebridge-camera-ui.