Okay, so I’ve been wanting to get my Ring doorbell working with HomeKit for a while now. It’s kinda annoying that Ring, being an Amazon product, doesn’t natively support Apple’s smart home system. But, you know, where there’s a will, there’s a way, right? So I started digging around.
The Scrypted Route
First, I messed around with this thing called Scrypted. It’s basically a piece of software that acts like a bridge between your Ring devices and HomeKit. I installed it on my Raspberry Pi – I always have that little guy running for various projects.
Installation was okay, I followed instructions to install *, then Scrypted and also installed some Scrypted plugins. I can clearly remember those steps were “npm install -g @scrypted/cli”, “@scrypted/core”, “@scrypted/ring” and “@scrypted/homekit”.
I did run into a couple of snags during setup. I remember having to poke around in the settings a bit, make sure the right plugins were enabled, and fiddle with the configuration files. I am not a professional programmer, so I was quite anxious during the whole process. Thankfully, there’s a pretty active online community, so I found some forum posts that helped me troubleshoot. Finally, got Scrypted up and running. It recognized my Ring doorbell, no problem. I could see the video feed within the Scrypted interface, which was a good sign.
Then came the HomeKit part. Scrypted has a HomeKit plugin, so I installed that. It’s supposed to generate a QR code that you scan with your iPhone to add the “bridge” to your Home app. I tried, and tried, and… nothing. My Home app just wouldn’t recognize the Scrypted bridge. Super frustrating!
I spent hours trying different things. Restarting the Raspberry Pi, reinstalling Scrypted, double-checking all the settings… I even started wondering if my home network was messed up. No luck.
The Homebridge Path (Success!)
Feeling defeated, I started searching again, and that’s when I stumbled upon Homebridge. It’s similar to Scrypted, in that it’s also a bridge for smart home devices. I figured, “Why not give it a shot?”
I uninstalled Scrypted from my Raspberry Pi first, and then followed the Homebridge installation guide. It was surprisingly straightforward. Way easier than Scrypted, to be honest. After installing Homebridge, I installed these two plugins: “homebridge-config-ui-x” and “homebridge-ring”.
Once Homebridge was running, I installed the Ring plugin. This part was a breeze. The plugin has a really clear configuration interface within Homebridge. I just had to put in my Ring account credentials, and it automatically found my doorbell.
Then, within the Homebridge interface, it gave me a QR code to add it to HomeKit. I opened the Home app on my iPhone, scanned the code, and boom! There it was – my Ring doorbell, showing up as a camera in HomeKit.
Finally! I could see the live video feed in the Home app, get notifications when someone rang the doorbell, and even use Siri to control it. It felt like a huge win after the struggles with Scrypted.
So, my takeaway? Sometimes the first solution you try just doesn’t work out. Don’t be afraid to scrap it and try something else. Homebridge ended up being the perfect solution for me, and now I’ve got my Ring doorbell integrated into my Apple smart home setup. It’s pretty awesome!