Using HomeKitty and Apple Homekit for people presense

[OH2TH]

One way to utilize presence from Apple devices is with virtual devices in Homey and publish them to Apple Home with HomeKitty.

Instructions how to prepare HomeKitty.

1. Enable the Virtual Devices experiment from Homey settings.

2. Create a virtual device with On/Off capability for each person:
   

   

3. Use HomeKitty to publish the devices to your Apple Home:
   

   

4. Now in Apple Home, prepare some home and away automations to switch the virtual device on/off for each person:
   

   
   
   
   
   
   
   

5. Finally create flows to update the presence of people in Homey:
   

   

[prosumer]

Does this also work when I go out for a run wearing only my Apple Watch (and leaving my iPhone at home)?

[OH2TH]

If Apple Home is configured to use your Apple Watch as your presence, then maybe. That would be something that needs happen on the Apple Homekit framework.
I don’t have a watch so can’t test this.

So if you can configure your home/away status in Apple Home based on your watch, then this should work.

[prosumer]

I have never been able to do that

Anyone else?

[Torch1969]

I’m using this way of working almost the same for some years for a 4 person household. Works (almost) flawlessly.

I made it a little bit more simple because not all persons are configured in homey:
Define one virtual device “somebody home” and make HomeKit automations based on “first person comes home” and “last person leaves home”.

Also worth to mention is that you must have a HomeKit hub (HomePod, Apple TV or iPad) in your house. And iPads can’t be used in new HomeKit architecture.

[Willie_Plompen]

Does anyone here know how to use the sleep mode of an Apple Watch to put Homey into sleep mode and not sleep mode? I can enable sleep mode, but I can’t disable it.

[Sebastian_Kn]

very nice, I love it!
could you tell me how you were able to select/use the beautiful icons for your virtual devices.
the source I think I found:

Personenreise mit Koffer, Tourist, Liniensymbol. Urlaub, Reise mit...

where can custom device icons be selected in Homey?

Thanks for your advice

[OH2TH]

The icon used for the virtual device is standard from Homey. To change the icon, you will need to use the mobile app and go to the settings of the selected device.

Some device apps provide additional icons that can be selected at the time of pairing. Or use as with Device Capabilities app, the icon can be changed later. a Device Capabilities app’s device has more custom icons.

Currently, Homey does not have a way to load custom icons as standard. This is only available if the app developer has implemented this into the app.

[Sebastian_Kn]

Hi OH2TH,
I am relatively new to Homey and do not yet have much experience with virtual devices.
I have another question about your flow, specifically about the if function - Mode Changed
I have used the build in Homey Virtual Devices and only have the flow cards “Switched On” and “Switched Off”. But the flow does not work with this.
I have tried Device Capabilities app, I don’t know exactly which template to use, furthermore these virtual devices are not supported by HomeyKitti.
Can you please give me a tip on which virtual device I need to use so that I can also select the “Mode Change” for the Wenn Card?

Thank you so much in advance Sebastian

[OH2TH]

The virtual device used in this sample, is the one you get with Homey’s builtin virtual device. However you will need to enable the Virtual Devices experiment from your Homey settings.

[Jonathan_Draper]

By the way, in case anyone is looking to get this same effect but is not otherwise using HomeKit / HomeKitty, there’s a simple way to do so using only built-in capabilities. Roughly speaking:

1. Create Homey flow(s) triggered by webhook events (find the When flow card for Webhook event received under ‘Logic’) and use then cards to update presence (similar to the first post above). You can the use logic card ‘text tag is exactly’ to check the value of the tag from the webhook for the values ‘home’ and ‘away’ to distinguish between arriving and departing - and then cards to set presence accordingly.
2. Use the Shortcuts app on iPhone to create a new personal automation. Select ‘Arrive’ as the trigger, choose the location and edit the geofence size, leave ‘Anytime’ ticked and make sure you select ‘Run immediately’. Then add a single action: get contents of URL - and paste the Homey webhook URL from step 1 in here. Will look something like: https://webhook.homey.app/[your homey cloud ID]/[your event name]?tag=home. Save the automation.
3. Repeat step 2 but with ‘Leave’ as the trigger for the automation, and remember to use ?tag=away in the URL. So my full webhook URLs are: https://webhook.homey.app/[my homey cloud ID]/jon_presence?tag=home and https://webhook.homey.app/[my homey cloud ID]/jon_presence?tag=away

That’s it. You need to set up these 2 personal automations on each person’s main device and the associated Homey flows for each person (I have these all in the one advanced flow for ease of management). But you don’t need to set up HomeKit, use the Home (or Homey) app on the phone or HomeKitty or the virtual devices experiment on Homey.

[staeff]

I have done it pretty much the same way but with the webhooks being called /athome and /away and the tag being the person, but same endresult.

[Cloetnox]

@OH2TH

HomeKitty

Hi,
I need some help : the Homey integration to Homekit using Homekitty works fine, BUT, I cannot select any devices, it takes them all.
I probably missed something but I never saw a list of devices to chose from.
Tks to tell me how to do so.
Nox

[robertklep]

Go to the app settings.

[Cloetnox]

Tks Robert,

I am a newby and started with Homey 2 days ago, sorry to disturb you with stupid questions.
Now I see it, perfect and tks for your help

Bruno