I have been fascinated by Domotica all my life. As a small child I visited all the house of the future (The House of the Future, a project by Chriet Titulaer, was opened in the summer of 1989 in the Netherlands ), an experience that stayed with me all my life. Now with HomeKit on my iPhone, the future is here now. Maxim Kulkin has the same fascination as me for Domotica and made a sort of ESP HomeKit SDK (ESP HomeKit Software Development Kit).
ESP HomeKit SDK
Create smarter and safer home devices with the EPS SDK for Apple HomeKit. The ESP HomeKit SDK has been designed such that it provides the HomeKit functionality independent of the transport (Wi-Fi/BLE/Ethernet). The sample accessory implementations provide a good starting point for developing HomeKit accessories with standard as well as custom features. The ESP HomeKit SDK is supported on ESP flagship chip ESP32 as wel on the ESP8266 chips. The high performance and low power consumption of the ESP chips target a variety of devices within Apple’s smart home platform. Apple’s HomeKit Protocol offers an end-to-end encryption and authentication between all HomeKit-enabled accessories and iOS devices.
The ESP HomeKit SDK ensures this desired security for the solution by means of hardware and software features of the ESP platform. Apple HomeKit technology provides an easy, secure way to control your home’s lights, doors, thermostats, and more from your iPhone, iPad, or Apple Watch.
Use of the Works with Apple HomeKit logo means that an electronic accessory has been designed to connect specifically to iPod touch, iPhone, or iPad, respectively, and has been certified by the developer to meet Apple performance standards. Apple is not responsible for the operation of this device or its compliance with safety and regulatory standards.
Apple, Apple Watch, iPad, iPhone are trademarks of Apple Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries. HomeKit is a trademark of Apple Inc.
The adventure begins
My adventure begins when I stumbled upon the Git ESP HomeKit Demo from Maxim Kulkin. My interest was awakened. This is a Demo of Apple HomeKit accessory server library. After some investigation I soon enough I knew that this was way above my head, but still wanted to give it a try, this is to awesome to let go.
Installing prequisites
Before I can compile the necessary files to binary files to flash my ESP, I had to install some software. If you know what you are doing, It can be simple. But for me this was my first time I going to do this. I tried to follow each step as good as knew. First I needed to clone the esp-homekit-demo Git, and change the WiFi.h file. This was easy enough so to step two: Install esp-open-sdk. Here It became more ‘interesting’. I tried to follow the Mac instructions, without success then I tried to do it on my Raspberry Pi® under Debian (Linux). Unfortunately without success Google could help me ether. The installed a virtual machine with ubuntu Server, now I had more success, I could install everting, but could not compile the needed files.
I didn’t know what to do any more, I was persistent to get this thing running! So I tried to get in contact with the father of this project Maxim Kulkin. With Success! he give me some pointers on how to get this thing up and running. Time to compile the needed files to flash my ESP.
compiling to binary files
Time to make some Binary files. As I wrote above this is my first time doing this, so I am really exited. by typing the command:
make -C examples/Led
The software starts compiling the binary files, a lot of things are happening on my screen, I don’t have a clue what’s happing. And then it’s finenesses. I go to the LED directory and there it is LED.bin file!
I am now testing these files and keep you updated, so watch my blog for more updates on this project!
Note: To produce and sell HomeKit compatible accessories, your company need to be certified for that (https://developer.apple.com/homekit/, If you’re interested in developing or manufacturing a HomeKit accessory that will be distributed or sold, your company must enroll in the MFi Program.) Espressif have their implementation of HomeKit framework, but it will give you it only if you have MFi certification (notice this text at the bottom of page you mentioned: Please note that the Espressif HomeKit SDK is available to MFi licensees only, and you need to provide the Account Number for verification purposes when requesting the SDK.).This project is a non-commercial implementation of HAP protocol, not meant for commercial use.
REFERENCE
Maxim Kulkin (2019),esp-homekit-demo Apple HomeKit accessory server library for ESP-OPEN-RTOS, https://github.com/maximkulkin/esp-homekit-demo Paul Sokolovsky (2019 )esp-open-sdk.This repository provides the integration scripts to build a complete standalone SDK (with toolchain) for software development with the Espressif ESP8266 and ESP8266EX chips., https://github.com/pfalcon/esp-open-sdk SuperHouse Automation.(2019),esp-open-rtos. A community developed open source FreeRTOS-based framework for ESP8266 WiFi-enabled microcontrollers. Intended for use in both commercial and open source projects, https://github.com/SuperHouse/esp-open-rtos, Espressif.(2019),esptool.py. A Python-based, open source, platform independent, utility to communicate with the ROM bootloader in Espressif ESP8266 & ESP32 chips, https://github.com/espressif/esptool