How To Guide on controlling a SOMA Smart Shade with Apple's Home App using Homebridge on a Raspberry Pi 3 Model B

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Items needed for this project:

• 1x iOS 10 device running Apple's Home App
• 1x Roller Blind (Example: LINK)
• 1x SOMA Smart Shade (you can buy them from: LINK)
• 1x Raspberry Pi 3 Model B (you can buy them from: LINK)

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Mount your Smart Shade.

Install and setup your Smart Shade into your desired location as normal using the Smart Shades app, a guide for doing this can be found here: https://youtu.be/9DTAcZiiFYU

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Setup Your Raspberry Pi & Install Homebridge.

Follow this step by step guide to install the HomeBridge service on your Raspberry PI which is used to connect/bridge your non-HomeKit accessories and make them HomeKit enabled

https://github.com/nfarina/homebridge/wiki/Running-HomeBridge-on-a-Raspberry-Pi

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Configuration.

Copy the files to the Raspberry Pi.

• Download and place the control.py, blinddown.sh & blindup.sh files in your /home/pi directory.

Find the Bluetooth MAC address of the Smart Shade.

You need to find the Bluetooth MAC address of the SOMA Smart Shade so your Raspberry Pi can communicate with it.

• Enable your Bluetooth adaptor on the Raspberry Pi using the command:

  sudo hciconfig hci0 up
  

• Now scan for your Smart Shade (it will normally be identified with the name RISExxx) using the command:

  sudo hcitool lescan
  

• Make a note of the Smart Shades MAC address.

• Open the blinddown.sh and blindup.sh files and edit the MAC address codes (00:00:00:00:00:00) so that they match the MAC code of the Smart Shade that you just found.

Configure Homebridge to create a switch to move the shades up and down.

• Install the Script2 homebridge plugin using the command:

  sudo npm install -g homebridge-script2
  

• Configure the plugin to create a switch, on your Raspberry Pi go to your /home/pi/.homebridge folder and edit the config.json file

Add in the following code under the accessories section.

"accessories": [
{
  "accessory": "Script2",
  "name": "Blind",
  "on": "./blinddown.sh",
  "off": "./blindup.sh",
  "fileState": "./script.flag",
  "on_value" : "true"
}
]

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Finish

Now that everything is installed and configured you should be able to run Homebridge on your Raspberry Pi with the command:

homebridge

And if you did everything correctly a new Blind accessory switch will show up in your Home.app on your iPhone or iPad

Turning the Switch OFF will raise your blind and turining it ON will lower it.

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Guide created by SkyJohn on March 25th 2017

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Changelog

1.0.0

• How To Guide created.