Apple HomeKit w/ Kscape

[joey_corleone]

Hello,

I am getting my first Kaleidescape system this week! I’m so excited. Strato-E + 48TB Terra.

So, lighting…my entire house is Apple HomeKit. The light switches are a mix of Leviton Smart Decora and Lutron Caseta. Today, I use HomeBridge plugins for Plex and Zidoo to turn down/up lights on play and pause. Works great.

At first glance, I saw Kscape supported Lutron integration, so I thought great I am all set since I already am into Lutron. However, now digging deeper, it is not Caseta support but some kind of other Lutron system.

So, anybody have a solution to integrate Kaleidescape with either Lutron Caseta directly or Apple HomeKit? I looked and didn’t see anything in HomeBridge.

I also have a control4 core light for remote control functions, but nothing with control4 light switches or anything and I prefer everything in HomeKit

Thanks!

 

[SJHT]

Hello,

I am getting my first Kaleidescape system this week! I’m so excited. Strato-E + 48TB Terra.

So, lighting…my entire house is Apple HomeKit. The light switches are a mix of Leviton Smart Decora and Lutron Caseta. Today, I use HomeBridge plugins for Plex and Zidoo to turn down/up lights on play and pause. Works great.

At first glance, I saw Kscape supported Lutron integration, so I thought great I am all set since I already am into Lutron. However, now digging deeper, it is not Caseta support but some kind of other Lutron system.

So, anybody have a solution to integrate Kaleidescape with either Lutron Caseta directly or Apple HomeKit? I looked and didn’t see anything in HomeBridge.

I also have a control4 core light for remote control functions, but nothing with control4 light switches or anything and I prefer everything in HomeKit

Thanks!

Kaleidescape directly works with Lutron RadioRA3 or Homeworks. Otherwise, you need some type of control system to do that integration for you. Control4 is one type of system that can integrate. There are many others…

 

[joey_corleone]

Thanks, yeah I saw that Lutron RadioRA3 is supported natively, but I don't have that. Has anyone here integrated Kscape with HomeKit somehow and if you did, what tools / controllers / what have you did you use?

 

[thrillcat]

I was using primarily HomeKit, but was unsuccessful getting anything with Kscape to integrate.

I added a Home Assistant Green device for $99 and have been using it simultaneously alongside HomeKit to automate Lutron lights (and others as well). It's pretty easy to setup, it doesn't merge with HomeKit (though you can set it up to trigger HomeKit automations through HomeAssistant, not vice versa), but it does allow you to integrate a lot of different items, including your Caseta lighting, with your Kaleidescape, and it doesn't interfere with the rest of your HomeKit automations.

 

[joey_corleone]

I was using primarily HomeKit, but was unsuccessful getting anything with Kscape to integrate.

I added a Home Assistant Green device for $99 and have been using it simultaneously alongside HomeKit to automate Lutron lights (and others as well). It's pretty easy to setup, it doesn't merge with HomeKit (though you can set it up to trigger HomeKit automations through HomeAssistant, not vice versa), but it does allow you to integrate a lot of different items, including your Caseta lighting, with your Kaleidescape, and it doesn't interfere with the rest of your HomeKit automations.

Thanks I will look into this when I get up and running. Sounds like it would be Home Assistant directly controlling Lutron based on kscape events

 

[thrillcat]

Thanks I will look into this when I get up and running. Sounds like it would be Home Assistant directly controlling Lutron based on kscape events

Correct.

 

[LoveCinema]

I also have a control4 core light for remote control functions, but nothing with control4 light switches or anything and I prefer everything in HomeKit

Since you already have a Control4 controller in your house, I'd recommend checking that out as a first step. There should be drivers available for everything that you want to do without adding any new hardware to the environment. Further, Control4's X4 OS upgrade just hit for consumers which claims greater HomeKit integration. I'd definitely reach out to your C4 dealer to see what can be done.

 

[thrillcat]

Since you already have a Control4 controller in your house, I'd recommend checking that out as a first step. There should be drivers available for everything that you want to do without adding any new hardware to the environment. Further, Control4's X4 OS upgrade just hit for consumers which claims greater HomeKit integration. I'd definitely reach out to your C4 dealer to see what can be done.

I missed that completely. Though depending on the dealer it may still be cheaper to add an HA device than to have it added to C4.

 

[SJHT]

My Control4 system integrates seamlessly with Kaleidescape. Control all elements including lighting. Customers with the Composer Home Edition (you do have to pay for this) can do it themselves. My dealer added K, but I did all the lighting programming myself…. This of course assumes your lighting is already integrated into your system. The dealer just needs to add the lighting if not there. Home Edition can’t add new components but you can do all kinds of programming yourself.

 

[joey_corleone]

I

My Control4 system integrates seamlessly with Kaleidescape. Control all elements including lighting. Customers with the Composer Home Edition (you do have to pay for this) can do it themselves. My dealer added K, but I did all the lighting programming myself…. This of course assumes your lighting is already integrated into your system. The dealer just needs to add the lighting if not there. Home Edition can’t add new components but you can do all kinds of programming yourself.

I assume c4 can only control c4 lights? I don’t want to rip and replace my Leviton and Lutron light switches

 

[SJHT]

I


I assume c4 can only control c4 lights? I don’t want to rip and replace my Leviton and Lutron light switches

I actually have Lutron RadioRA2 lighting. Control4 can control many types of lighting systems. Best to check on yours..

 

[josh]

Another vote here for Home Assistant!

I had Kaleidescape directly controlling Lutron Ra3 in our vacation home. Our main home is Ra2, so couldn't do the native integration, but it forced me to get Home Assistant Green... you can find my posts here in this forum area about that. It's amazing, and HA is now in both homes with hundreds of devices controlled. There's ZERO reason I can find to use Kaleidescape's Lutron integration now... HA is just so much better and more flexible. Can be quite the hobbyist time suck, but super fun (well, for some of us).

I've ditched Apple Homekit entirely now as well (I guess it's still running, but I just don't use the Home app on my devices anymore)... HA is just so much more comprehensive and has a massive community of developers contributing features and integrations. Mine's controlling the Lutron lighting (of course with Kaleidescape triggers), 3x Ecobee thermostats, 8x Unifi Protect security cameras, 40+ Unifi networking devices, Simplisafe Security, Lucid cars, BMW cars, Schlage Smartlocks, TailWind Garage door openers, 5 Sonos zones, TVs, audio controllers, 5x Apple TVs, our remote fireplace, 3rd party lighting strips where Lutron wasn't possible, and a few random things i'm forgetting.

 

[joey_corleone]

Thanks , I went deep enough into the rabbit hole the last few days to get it all setup. I short, the switches in my theater are gen1 Leviton Decora. Home assistant can talk directly to them, but sadly only through the My Leviton app, which has problems with the gen1 switches such that they will not onboard into that system properly.

I stood up an HA instance in a VM, and installed the Kaleidescape and HomeKit bridge integrations. Basically, HA talks to my Strato and then exposes some switches in HomeKit via the HomeKit bridge plugin that I use to drive HomeKit scenes.

I just got it all done, and it’s awesome! Best part is I didn’t even have to replace any light switches!

 

[joey_corleone]

Here is a brief tutorial of how I got my HomeKit controlled lighting automated with Kaleidescape. My entire home runs on HomeKit and a few things in HomeBridge, and I was totally new to Home Assistant. I spent a few days hashing all this out, and I am posting this in the hope that it will help somebody else down the road. First of all, in my theater room, I have Leviton Decora Smart switches (Gen1, WiFi). A few hurdles to start with

1) Kaleidescape is not natively supported with HomeKit, i.e. you can't just add a Kaleidescape Strato into HomeKit.
2) There is no HomeBridge plugin for Kaleidescape, so I had to find another way

However, there is an excellent integration for Kaleidescape in Home Assistant. There is also a Home Assistant integration for Leviton Decora switches, but it relies on having your switches onboarded to the "My Leviton" app already. In my use case I use the My Leviton app in HomeKit only mode, so nothing is onboarded, and unfortunately, in newer versions of iOS, it seems impossible to successfully onboard gen1 hardware. Luckily, there is a HomeKit Bridge integration in Home Assistant I was able to leverage. Essentially what this means is that Home Assistant will talk to your Strato, and then via the HomeKit Bridge integration, it will talk to HomeKit, so you can create lighting automations in the native HomeKit Home app. Home Assistant is basically a bridge between the Kaleidescape and HomeKit.

Step 1: Deploy Home Assistant - Get a Home Assistant instance stood up. In my case, I deployed the OVA on VMware vCenter / ESXi. How you do this is up to you, and is out of the scope of this tutorial. I believe the "easy button" on this one is buy a Home Assistant Green, which is a small computer that has the Home Assistant software already installed and ready to go. Pretty much plug and play.

Step 2: Install necessary integrations. You want to install the Kaleidescape integration and the HomeKit Bridge integration. The Kaleidescape integration allows Home Assistant to talk to your Strato. The HomeKit Bridge integration allows you to essentially import anything from your Home Assistant setup into HomeKit, so you can then setup HomeKit automations to fire based on things in Home Assistant. If you have a Strato and a Terra server, when you setup the Kaleidescape integration, use the IP address of your Strato, as the integration speaks directly to that. If you have a Terra, and use the default of my-kaleidescape.local, it will fail because that will resolve to the Terra server, and the integration doesn't know what to do with that. Once you install the HomeKit Bridge integration, you need to add it to your HomeKit setup by scanning the QR code provided. The HomeKit Bridge should show up in your HomeKit setup as a bridge. You can also configure it to only expose what you want. In my case, I only allow the HomeKit Bridge integration to expose the helper switches, because that is really all I need.



Step 3: Configure Helpers - Configure helpers in Home Assistant. Helpers are essentially dummy switches that will be switched on / off by home assistant automations, depending on what is going on with your Strato (play, stop, credits, etc). These switches will be consumed by HomeKit, and will be the basis of your HomeKit automations later. Below, I configured 4 helpers of type "input boolean"



Step 4: Configure Automations - Now we setup the brains of all of this, the home assistant automations. Here is a summary of the automations I configured. "Kaleidescape Play" defines what we want to happen when the Strato starts playing content. "Kaleidescape Intermission" defines what we want to happen when the content location changes to "intermission". "Kaleidescape Credits" defines what we want to happen when the content location changes to "credits". "Kaleidescape Resume" defines what we want to happen if we move between pause and play, i.e. you are back from intermission. "Kaleidescape Stop" defines what we want to do when the movie ends / we press stop.

I put screen shots below of each individual automation configuration. Essentially, the automations will trigger the helper switches to go on and off. Since those helpers are visible in HomeKit, you will see the state of those switches change as they change in Home Assistant. Then, setup HomeKit scenes and automations that revolve around those switches going on. For example, in my setup, I have a HomeKit scene called "Theater Mode" that turns off all the lights in the the theater. I then created a HomeKit automation that says "When the Kaleidescape play switch goes ON, run the Theater Mode Scene". You define those on the HomeKit end

Happy movie watching!



Here are the detailed automations for each...

 

[joey_corleone]

Also, I want to give a shout out and a huge thank you to "AV Nirvana" on YouTube. Dude, if you are here, thank you so much - This video was so very very helpful. He is using Home Assistant natively for the scenes and automations, so no HomeKit, but this laid the foundation for what I had to do.

 

[ahard]

Also, I want to give a shout out and a huge thank you to "AV Nirvana" on YouTube. Dude, if you are here, thank you so much - This video was so very very helpful. He is using Home Assistant natively for the scenes and automations, so no HomeKit, but this laid the foundation for what I had to do.

I believe that he does post here.

 

[thrillcat]

Also, I want to give a shout out and a huge thank you to "AV Nirvana" on YouTube. Dude, if you are here, thank you so much - This video was so very very helpful. He is using Home Assistant natively for the scenes and automations, so no HomeKit, but this laid the foundation for what I had to do.

That's me. Glad it was helpful!

I'm still doing content for AV Nirvana, but will be doing much more on my own channel going forward, so make sure to give me a follow there, too.

Thrillcat Cinema Lab - Home Theater Conversation

Travis Ballstadt is a home theater designer, audio/video consultant and video producer in Seattle, WA.

www.youtube.com

 

[josh]

Curious about something: once you have gone to the trouble of getting Home Assistant up and running, why would you even use HomeKit?
I understand HomeKit for people who just want simplicity and might be intimidated by Home Assistant. Probably the easiest way to get started with some automations and triggered scenes, etc.

I'm an Apple superuser, and I do have HomeKit running in the house also, but i don't really use it for anything anymore. Just so much more flexible and powerful to do what I want in Home Assistant. I don't think i've even set up the bridge between HA and HK because HA found every device and system in the home and can directly address all of those things.

Are there examples of things you use HomeKit for that can't easily be done in HA?

 

[joey_corleone]

Curious about something: once you have gone to the trouble of getting Home Assistant up and running, why would you even use HomeKit?
I understand HomeKit for people who just want simplicity and might be intimidated by Home Assistant. Probably the easiest way to get started with some automations and triggered scenes, etc.

I'm an Apple superuser, and I do have HomeKit running in the house also, but i don't really use it for anything anymore. Just so much more flexible and powerful to do what I want in Home Assistant. I don't think i've even set up the bridge between HA and HK because HA found every device and system in the home and can directly address all of those things.

Are there examples of things you use HomeKit for that can't easily be done in HA?

Just familiarity, simplicity. I don’t have a lot of motivation to migrate because I have a LOT of HK accessories, carefully thought out scenes and automations, 3 HomePod mini’s, 3 Apple TV’s I use with Siri/HK, and everything works pretty well.

 

[Edgar]

I’m also an Apple super-user, but have moved away from HomeKit and into Home Assistant for all my lighting and detailed A/V automations. And also based on @thrillcat helping out!

HomeKit is just last in line to get a native integration, and my lights will eventually show up as “not responding” in the Home app, when they are very much responding in the specific app for the product. I’m done with that.

However I still do use HomeKit for my security system, doorbell, video cameras, and door locks. It’s very nice to respond to front doorbell callers from my phone, open my front door by tapping my phone, and see packages arrive as a video notification on AppleTV.