This is yet another example of how UniFi Protect can be made into ultimate smart home device with Home Assistant. UniFi Protect devices can become fully Homekit compatible with high performance using Home Assistant.
Having said this, if your sole goal is to use Homekit as your core home automation platform, Homebridge remains to be my recommendation as it is easier to setup while still providing high performance system. You can read about this option here.
Prerequisite
What do you need?
- UniFi Protect device/controller
- Home Assistant Hub with
- UniFi Protect Integration
- Homekit Integration
In this article, you will learn:
Homekit Integration Configuration
Configuration > Integrations > Add integrations > Homekit
The process here was by no means a difficult but as a new user of Home Assistant, I saw a few points of confusion that could be better addressed by improving UI. First, you’d like to choose HomeKit here rather than HomeKit Controller. HomeKit is for exposing devices from Home Assistant to HomeKit.
After clicking Homekit, you will see the screen above. Here just pick anything camera, media-player or anything else because you will end up changing it. Basically, you need to use “accessory mode” for each camera device and this original creation seems to default to “bridge” mode.
Once the instant of Homekit is created, you need to change it. So hit options.
Configuration > Integrations > HomeKit Instant > Options
Here, you need to change the Mode to Accessory and Camera as shown below.
Hit submit.
You are now prompted to select a specific entity. The drop down box should show list of camera devices you have registered to Home Assistant. In my case, I had only UVC-G4-Doorbell and UVC-G3-Flex camera. I chose G4 Doorbell first and Hit Submit.
Notifications > Scan Q-Code on iOS device to pair in Homekit
Now you will scan QR code on your iOS and the camera should be ready in Home app.
You have to do this for each of camera entities you have. So in my case, I have two Homekit instances on Home Assistant for two of my UniFi Protect camera. In addition, I have one bridge instance for “garage door” entity separately.
Homekit Setup
At this point, Unifi Protect cameras are fully registered as Homekit compatible. For example, if you have Unifi Doorbell, you can now set up through Homekit to have it ring on Home Pods or show notification on iOS devices.
Perfomance
This works fantastically. Below is a quick, subjective test.
As you can see even on Rasberry Pi 3B setup, Home Assistant works well. If you use better hardware, the result is even better than UniFi Protect.