Steps I took

1. Go to the homebridge terminal, you can SSH or I just used the homebridge UI.

2. Install Playactor sudo npm install -g playactor.

3. Run playactor browse and find your PS5, remember its name like “PS5-XXX”, you’ll need it later.

4. Run playactor login --host-name PS5-XXX --no-open-urls to register your device as a remote play controller. The --no-open-urls is important here because by default it tries to open a browser which isn’t gonna work if you’re using SSH or homebridge UI.

Since moving to Seattle I have been gradually automating an ordinary apartment. The goal is not to build a trade-show demo; it is to make the lights, TV, door, and vacuum respond consistently. Online discussions often highlight the worst connected gadgets, but with some patience (and a few hubs) the living room can anticipate daily routines instead of fighting them.

Where we are and how we got here

The automation itch started in the laziest way possible: I was already under the blanket and wished the lamp would turn off by itself. That nudge toward Philips Hue led to HomeKit, which led to buying a Raspberry Pi at 1 a.m. because I could not believe there was no native way to control the TV. Once one subsystem cooperated, every other annoyance turned into a candidate for automation. The snapshot below shows the apartment as it stands today.

Update June 2021: people felt the methods in this post are too extreme. Fortunately, ASUS has since published a new support article on this topic, and I’ve heard that it works better. I haven’t tried it myself since I changed to eero (which works perfect with HomeKit) more than a year ago. Original post below.

I’ve had pretty good experiences with HomeKit with Philips Hue and Lutron Caseta. However, I noticed that standalone devices (ones that don’t have hubs) would often show “No Response” in HomeKit. This post shows some things that I learned trying to get all my devices to be reliable.

Homebridge is a key part to my home automation setup. I run it on a Raspberry Pi (gen 1, pictured in header) and it allows me to integrate my TV, Apple TV, and robot vacuum into HomeKit. However, it does crash quite a bit. Here are some things I did to make Homebridge easier to deal with.