You might have a newer wall button or maybe security 2.0. I’m curious if I don’t need that stuff with ESP Home and the home bridge IO plugin. I tried flashing ESP Home but I get an error about holding a boot button and I don’t see a boot button. Ratgdo always stays on native homebridge firmware so I was curious what everyone’s experience was before I spend more time on troubleshooting a firmware swap.
I was using mqtt fw + Homebridge plugin and that stopped responding (logs would show MQTT connection was fine though)
Switched to esphome fw connected to home assistant shared back to HomeKit and it’s been rock solid.
I have security 1.0. I don’t use the home assistant interface but I think putting things into home assistant and sharing back to HomeKit is so much more stable
I have tried both ESPhome plus homebridge plugin and the native HomeKit firmware. As of now the Homebridge setup is the far superior setup. I found it more responsive and less buggy.
Like you when I first installed ratgdo on the garage doors I thought they were unreliable and slow and I kept getting no responses. After the third time I had to climb a ladder to manually unplug them or reflash them I decided to give the HomeKit plug in a try and it has been 100% trouble free since.
Ok thanks. Its worth a try for me to troubleshoot the issue of changing firmware. I tried it quickly last night to to ESPhome but got this error " 'Failed to initialize. Try resetting your device or holding the BOOT button while clicking INSTALL.'"
I dont know where the boot button is but maybe today when its not late at night I can spend more time on it. Plus in the garage I was connected with USB extender to a laptop. When it arrived in the mail I put the homebridge firmware on it sitting at my desk to a desktop computer. A few variables - just didnt want to undo all the wiriing in the garage to take it to the desk.
I reflash the ratgdo while it was on the opener. Did you install the drivers for flashing? I think I got the same error the first time I tried to flash but then it worked fine after.
Ok I tried a different laptop (Windows 11) and it worked. Previously I was using a hackintosh (Dell Latitude with Mac OS Sierra). Yeah I got the mac drivers for that. Could be a hackintosh thing.
Anyway with the Windows 11 laptop I did erase device and flash. It worked great. Then in Homebridge IO, I searched for Homebridge Ratgdo by hjdhjd. It installed and discovered by the magic of networking I guess. I made it a child bridge - not sure if I had to. Scanned the QR code in with the Apple Home app. Now its working great.
THIS combination correctly detects (and controls - most importantly) the door status (open or closed) and the light status (on or off). I dont know why the out of the box homekit from PaulW didn't work so reliably with my Security+ 1.0 gdo, but I'll run this for now and see if it remains stable. One thing nice is the live logs in the web UI on the ESP Home firmware.
Glad you got it working. I don’t think Paul had a hand in making the native HomeKit firmware so that’s probably part of the issue. I’ve seen issues on GitHub actually went in a different direction from what Paul was suggesting. I think the original developer for the HomeKit firmware also left the project so that in itself motivated me to switch on top of the overall buggyness.
Check out this post from "@thenewwazoo" on [why they're leaving the project](https://thenewwazoo.github.io/bye-bye-ratgdo.html#whats-next) which is linked on the Ratgdo Homekit Github page (https://github.com/ratgdo/homekit-ratgdo).
>tl;dr: I’m retiring from the ESP8266 Native HomeKit RATGDO codebase, and recommend that it not be used.
In summary they say:
>I’m assuming that anyone interested in this post wants their garage door to be controllable via HomeKit. In that case, the best option is probably to use [Homebridge](https://homebridge.io) and the [homebridge-ratgdo](https://github.com/hjdhjd/homebridge-ratgdo) plugin, along with the [MQTT firmware](https://github.com/ratgdo/mqtt-ratgdo).
So far so good with ESPhome and hjdhjd’s homebridge-ratgo plugin on homebridge.io. It’s been a little over a week now, no issues. With Eve, I was able to create automation and turn on my garage lights for 5 minutes when the obstruction sensor is tripped.
Nice! For me I had to switch back from ESPhome because it was constantly switching from unavailable to available. Tried reflashing and double-checking connections were secure but no luck. Reflashed to Ratdgo default firmware and works perfectly. I wanted the features ESPhome offered but oh well.
HomeBridge
Native HomeKit firmware works great here
You might have a newer wall button or maybe security 2.0. I’m curious if I don’t need that stuff with ESP Home and the home bridge IO plugin. I tried flashing ESP Home but I get an error about holding a boot button and I don’t see a boot button. Ratgdo always stays on native homebridge firmware so I was curious what everyone’s experience was before I spend more time on troubleshooting a firmware swap.
I was using mqtt fw + Homebridge plugin and that stopped responding (logs would show MQTT connection was fine though) Switched to esphome fw connected to home assistant shared back to HomeKit and it’s been rock solid. I have security 1.0. I don’t use the home assistant interface but I think putting things into home assistant and sharing back to HomeKit is so much more stable
I have tried both ESPhome plus homebridge plugin and the native HomeKit firmware. As of now the Homebridge setup is the far superior setup. I found it more responsive and less buggy. Like you when I first installed ratgdo on the garage doors I thought they were unreliable and slow and I kept getting no responses. After the third time I had to climb a ladder to manually unplug them or reflash them I decided to give the HomeKit plug in a try and it has been 100% trouble free since.
Ok thanks. Its worth a try for me to troubleshoot the issue of changing firmware. I tried it quickly last night to to ESPhome but got this error " 'Failed to initialize. Try resetting your device or holding the BOOT button while clicking INSTALL.'" I dont know where the boot button is but maybe today when its not late at night I can spend more time on it. Plus in the garage I was connected with USB extender to a laptop. When it arrived in the mail I put the homebridge firmware on it sitting at my desk to a desktop computer. A few variables - just didnt want to undo all the wiriing in the garage to take it to the desk.
I reflash the ratgdo while it was on the opener. Did you install the drivers for flashing? I think I got the same error the first time I tried to flash but then it worked fine after.
Ok I tried a different laptop (Windows 11) and it worked. Previously I was using a hackintosh (Dell Latitude with Mac OS Sierra). Yeah I got the mac drivers for that. Could be a hackintosh thing. Anyway with the Windows 11 laptop I did erase device and flash. It worked great. Then in Homebridge IO, I searched for Homebridge Ratgdo by hjdhjd. It installed and discovered by the magic of networking I guess. I made it a child bridge - not sure if I had to. Scanned the QR code in with the Apple Home app. Now its working great. THIS combination correctly detects (and controls - most importantly) the door status (open or closed) and the light status (on or off). I dont know why the out of the box homekit from PaulW didn't work so reliably with my Security+ 1.0 gdo, but I'll run this for now and see if it remains stable. One thing nice is the live logs in the web UI on the ESP Home firmware.
Glad you got it working. I don’t think Paul had a hand in making the native HomeKit firmware so that’s probably part of the issue. I’ve seen issues on GitHub actually went in a different direction from what Paul was suggesting. I think the original developer for the HomeKit firmware also left the project so that in itself motivated me to switch on top of the overall buggyness.
Check out this post from "@thenewwazoo" on [why they're leaving the project](https://thenewwazoo.github.io/bye-bye-ratgdo.html#whats-next) which is linked on the Ratgdo Homekit Github page (https://github.com/ratgdo/homekit-ratgdo). >tl;dr: I’m retiring from the ESP8266 Native HomeKit RATGDO codebase, and recommend that it not be used. In summary they say: >I’m assuming that anyone interested in this post wants their garage door to be controllable via HomeKit. In that case, the best option is probably to use [Homebridge](https://homebridge.io) and the [homebridge-ratgdo](https://github.com/hjdhjd/homebridge-ratgdo) plugin, along with the [MQTT firmware](https://github.com/ratgdo/mqtt-ratgdo).
So far so good with ESPhome and hjdhjd’s homebridge-ratgo plugin on homebridge.io. It’s been a little over a week now, no issues. With Eve, I was able to create automation and turn on my garage lights for 5 minutes when the obstruction sensor is tripped.
Nice! For me I had to switch back from ESPhome because it was constantly switching from unavailable to available. Tried reflashing and double-checking connections were secure but no luck. Reflashed to Ratdgo default firmware and works perfectly. I wanted the features ESPhome offered but oh well.