Adding a SwitchBot Bot to HomeKit (with Home Assistant)

By CLN Posted on 16/02/202317/02/2023 Category :

We will explore the way to add a switchbot to homekit using home assistant
this does not require a SwitchBot Hub (Mini), it uses direct bluetooth communication

On this page

Adding the SwitchBot to home assistant

Make sure you have set up Bluetooth on home assistant (so its configured)

‘securing’ the SwitchBot with a password

before trying to add the SwitchBot I strongly suggest putting a password on the SwitchBot

open the SwitchBot app, and head over to your device (hit the entire tile, not the circle)

and set a password (more like a pin code, but hey, 4 characters yay)

Pairing with Home Assistant

For me, it showed up ‘automatically’ in home assistant notifications

If not head over to integrations and add SwitchBot

look for the SwitchBot integration and click next

it should ask you for the Bluetooth password & click submit

Adding SwitchBot to HomeKit

Now, there are a couple of ways to get the SwitchBot into HomeKit, in my case I use the SwitchBot to buzz myself into my apartment since I have not found time to reverse engineer the proprietary protocols used by our intercom (just to keep myself busy) but then the other expression comes up in my head “if it works it’s not stupid”

anyhow, if your SwitchBot would be turning on a coffee machine I would not worry too much about directly exposing it to HomeKit as a misunderstood command by Siri or an accidental “Hey Siri turn everything on” won’t leave your front door open 😅

currently, in my case, the SwitchBot works a bit funny in Home Assistant, as the toggle buttons don’t nicely swap from “turn on to turn off” since a press on “turn on” does the full motion on the SwitchBot to lower the lever press the button and retract it (I have it configured that way)

so in my case, if I press to turn off it will trigger the SwitchBot and buzz the door, and the same with a turn on.

So what I propose in this situation is to make a “virtual” switch within Home Assistant, expose that to HomeKit and power it with automation to deal with the actual SwitchBot itself

Adding a virtual switch (input boolean) to Home Assistant

You can do this via YAML or via the Helpers (⬅️ suggested way)

Head over to settings > devices & services > (on top of the screen) Helper > (right down corner) > + create helper

after creation check the entity ID of the input_boolean

Now we have a helper toggle we can use!

Exposing our input_boolean / virtual switch to HomeKit

Now that we have our ‘virtual switch’ lets expose it to HomeKit

As you will see I run my HomeKit configs in inclusion mode, meaning only what I chose will be exposed to homekit (allowing me to keep it clean in HomeKit)

Via YAML

homekit:
  - name: "HA Utility Bridge"
    filter:
      include_entities:
        - input_boolean.switchbot

Via the UI

Go to your Home Assistant integrations and configure your HomeKit integration

Give Home Assistant a quick restart (since I’m using YAML) and it should show up in your Home

I’ve put it into a separate room, and renamed both the room and the switch

Adding the automation logic to trigger the actual SwitchBot

So there are a couple of things we have to do

Check if the virtual (HomeKit) switch was turned on
Toggle the SwitchBot itself (in our case a turn off will trigger the SwitchBot, so will a turn on, so we are OK with a toggle)
turn the virtual switch back off (so its state is reflected in HomeKit)
[OPTIONAL] check if the source of the event was HomeKit

alias: SwitchBot
description: ""
trigger:
  - platform: state
    entity_id:
      - input_boolean.switchbot
    to: "on"
    from: "off"
condition: []
action:
  - service: switch.toggle
    data: {}
    target:
      entity_id: switch.bot_a1ac
  - service: input_boolean.turn_off
    data: {}
    target:
      entity_id: input_boolean.switchbot
mode: single

there we have it! when you toggle the switch in HomeKit it will toggle the SwitchBot.

‘Securing’ (🤦🏻‍♀️) the SwitchBot toggle [advanced]

Since Siri does so well at understanding what we ask of it, I want to avoid triggering our door buzzer, or prevent a ‘Hey Siri turn everything on’ would also trigger the switchbot.

So I have come up with some dumb ‘anti mistake’ solution and it works as follows.

2 virtual switches:

Start door sequence
Confirm door sequence

The way I’ve implemented this is as follows:

If you switch [start door] it will turn on [confirm door]
after 3 seconds they both turn off again (making it hard for voice usage/voice assistant hacking)
within those 3 seconds you have to turn OFF [confirm door]
if [confirmed door] gets turned OFF and [start door] is still on trigger the actual SwitchBot
turn all switches off

it looks like this in HomeKit

Implementation

You will need 2 input_boolean’s

and I’ve made 3 automations, and I’m sure they can be improved, do leave feedback! 🧡

Launch opening sequence: toggle confirm button on
Confirm button: the logic to toggle the SwitchBot
stop homekit turn on: just turns off the confirm button if you turn it on yourself (by pressing it or voice commands)

[BUZZER LOGIC] Launch opening sequence

The idea is as follows:

If the door buzzer switch (step 1) is turned on for atleast 1 second
and the source was HomeKit and the confirm (step 2) button is off, then turn on the confirm button (step 2)

also turn everything back off after 3 seconds

alias: "[BUZZER LOGIC] Launch opening sequence"
description: ""
trigger:
  - platform: state
    entity_id:
      - input_boolean.door_buzzer
    from: "off"
    to: "on"
    for:
      hours: 0
      minutes: 0
      seconds: 1
condition:
  - condition: template
    value_template: "{{ trigger.to_state.context.parent_id == none }}"
    alias: only run when SOURCE is HOMEKIT (parent == none)
action:
  - if:
      - condition: and
        conditions:
          - condition: state
            entity_id: input_boolean.door_buzzer
            state: "on"
            alias: buzzer ON
          - condition: state
            entity_id: input_boolean.door_buzzer_confirm
            state: "off"
            alias: confirm OFF
        alias: check if buzzer is ON and confirm is OFF
    then:
      - service: input_boolean.turn_on
        data: {}
        target:
          entity_id: input_boolean.door_buzzer_confirm
        alias: turn on confirm
      - delay:
          hours: 0
          minutes: 0
          seconds: 5
          milliseconds: 0
      - service: input_boolean.turn_off
        data: {}
        target:
          entity_id:
            - input_boolean.door_buzzer
            - input_boolean.door_buzzer_confirm
        alias: turn both back off
    else:
      - service: input_boolean.turn_off
        data: {}
        target:
          entity_id:
            - input_boolean.door_buzzer
            - input_boolean.door_buzzer_confirm
mode: single

[BUZZER LOGIC] Confirm button

The idea is as follows: if the confirm switch is turned off and stays of for 1 seconds, check if the source was HomeKit (since we turn off our switch with automations) check if the launch switch (step 1) is still turned on and confirm is turned off (step 2) then we trigger the SwitchBot and turn off all the switches again

alias: "[BUZZER LOGIC] Confirm button"
description: ""
trigger:
  - platform: state
    entity_id:
      - input_boolean.door_buzzer_confirm
    from: "on"
    to: "off"
    for:
      hours: 0
      minutes: 0
      seconds: 1
condition:
  - condition: template
    value_template: "{{ trigger.to_state.context.parent_id == none }}"
    alias: only run when SOURCE is HOMEKIT (parent == none)
action:
  - if:
      - condition: and
        conditions:
          - condition: state
            entity_id: input_boolean.door_buzzer
            state: "on"
            for:
              hours: 0
              minutes: 0
              seconds: 0
            alias: buzzer ON
          - condition: state
            entity_id: input_boolean.door_buzzer_confirm
            state: "off"
            alias: Confirm OFF
    then:
      - service: input_boolean.turn_off
        data: {}
        target:
          entity_id:
            - input_boolean.door_buzzer
            - input_boolean.door_buzzer_confirm
      - type: toggle
        device_id: 0fb91ad50d8c35dc82db35d667e6977c
        entity_id: switch.bot_a1ac
        domain: switch
    else:
      - service: input_boolean.turn_off
        data: {}
        target:
          entity_id:
            - input_boolean.door_buzzer
            - input_boolean.door_buzzer_confirm
    alias: check for BUZZER == on and CONFIRM == off
mode: single

[BUZZER LOGIC] stop homekit turn on

This just turns off the confirm button when its turned on by HomeKit (so this way only our automations can turn it on) its not foolproof due delays and stuff, but its sufficient for me

alias: "[BUZZER LOGIC] stop homekit turn on"
description: ""
trigger:
  - platform: state
    entity_id:
      - input_boolean.door_buzzer_confirm
    to: "on"
condition:
  - condition: template
    value_template: "{{ trigger.to_state.context.parent_id == none }}"
    alias: only run when SOURCE is HOMEKIT (parent == none)
action:
  - service: input_boolean.turn_off
    data: {}
    target:
      entity_id:
        - input_boolean.door_buzzer_confirm
        - input_boolean.door_buzzer
mode: single