Homebridge Kodi

homebridge-kodi

Control Kodi with HomeKit and Homebridge

This is a plugin for Homebridge that features controls and information about any running Kodi in your network. You can download it via npm.

Feel free to leave any feedback or suggested features here.

Features

• Get TV accessories for controlling the menus in Kodi and watching TV channels.
• Get a remote control for the Kodi GUI with every configured TV accessory.
• Get controls for Kodi Player including Play, Pause, Seek, Stop and Audio/Video Library Scan and Clean
• Set the volume of Kodi
• See Information about the current playing show, season, episode, title, artist, album and type in the Eve App
• See Information about the current playing item's current time, total time and the percentage played in the Eve App
• Supported playing items in Kodi are movies, TV shows, TV, radio, music and music videos

Kodi Preparations

In order to use this plugin you have to enable Allow remote control via HTTP in Kodi first.

You can find a detailed tutorial on how to enable the Kodi remote control via HTTP here.

Installation

1. Install homebridge using: npm install -g homebridge.
2. Install this plugin using: npm install -g homebridge-kodi.
3. Allow remote control via HTTP in Kodi.
4. Update your configuration file. See the example below.

Configuration

By default a lightbulb accessory for controlling the current playback (on/off for Play/Pause and brightness for Seek) and getting information (e.g. in Eve) of the current playing item is exposed. This is the main accessory of this plugin but you can enable additional accessories in the config.

Example Config

Below is an example for all available parameters and accessories of this plugin.

"platforms": [
    {
            "platform": "Kodi",
            "name": "Kodi",
            "host": "192.168.2.100",
            "port": "8080",
            "username": "kodi",
            "password": "kodi",
            "polling": 10,
            "retrytime": 30,
            "debug": true,
            "television": {
                "controls": {
                    "menuitems": [
                        "home",
                        "settings",
                        "movies",
                        "tvshows",
                        "tv",
                        "music",
                        "musicvideos",
                        "radio",
                        "games",
                        "addons",
                        "pictures",
                        "videos",
                        "favorites",
                        "weather"
                    ]
                },
                "tv": {
                    "channels": [
                        "Das Erste HD",
                        "ZDF HD",
                        "RTL",
                        "SAT.1",
                        "VOX",
                        "kabel eins",
                        "ProSieben",
                        "RTL II"
                    ]
                }
            },
            "player": {
                "main": true,
                "play": true,
                "pause": true,
                "stop": true
            },
            "application": {
                "volume": true
            },
            "videolibrary": {
                "scan": true,
                "clean": true
            },
            "audiolibrary": {
                "scan": true,
                "clean": true
            },
            "commands": [
                {
                    "name": "Play Star Wars",
                    "interval": 500,
                    "sequence": [
                        "home",
                        "pageup",
                        "up",
                        "right",
                        "right",
                        "select",
                        "select",
                        "sendtext:star wars",
                        "select",
                        "select",
                        "select"
                    ]
                },
                {
                    "name": "Open YouTube Add-on",
                    "interval": 500,
                    "sequence": [
                        "home",
                        "pageup",
                        "up",
                        "right",
                        "right",
                        "select",
                        "down",
                        "select",
                        "sendtext:youtube",
                        "select",
                        "select"
                    ]
                },
                {
                    "name": "Next Chapter",
                    "interval": 500,
                    "sequence": [
                        "executeaction:chapterorbigstepforward"
                    ]
                }
            ]
        }
]

Settings

• name is the name of the prefix that is used for all accessories, optional, default "Kodi"
• host is the IP address or hostname of the Kodi instance, optional, default "localhost"
• port is the port set for the Kodi remote control via HTTP, optional, default "8080"
• username is the username set for the Kodi remote control via HTTP, optional, default "kodi"
• password is the password set for the Kodi remote control via HTTP, optional, default "kodi"
• polling is the polling rate in seconds for updating all accessories when playing, optional, default 10
• retrytime is the time in seconds to retry when Kodi is stopped or not found, optional, default 30
• debug enables Logger for all events and status updates, optional, default false
• television > controls is a TV accessory for changing the current menu in Kodi, is automatically active when Kodi is running and also enables remote control in iOS/iPadOS for controlling the Kodi GUI, optional, default false
• television > controls > menuitems is an array of menu items that can be opened in Kodi. See example config for all available menu items
• television > tv is a TV accessory for watching TV in Kodi, is active when a TV channel is playing and also enables remote control in iOS/iPadOS for controlling the Kodi GUI, optional, default false
• television > tv > channels is an array of TV channels that can be switched to in Kodi. Channel names must be exactly the same as in Kodi for them to work
• player > main is the main lightbulb accessory of this plugin for controlling the playback in Kodi, shows extra information of the playing item in Eve, optional, default true
• player > play is an alternative switch for controlling the playback in Kodi, optional, default false
• player > pause is a switch for pausing the current playback in Kodi, optional, default false
• player > stop is a switch for stopping the current playback in Kodi, optional, default false
• application > volume is a light bulb for controlling the volume in Kodi and controlling the current volume via a brightness slider, optional, default false
• videolibrary > scan is a switch for starting a video library scan in Kodi, optional, default false
• videolibrary > clean is a switch for starting a video library clean in Kodi, optional, default false
• audiolibrary > scan is a switch for starting a audio library scan in Kodi, optional, default false
• audiolibrary > clean is a switch for starting a audio library clean in Kodi, optional, default false
• commands is a list of switches for user defined sequences of commands sent to Kodi, optional
• commands > name is the name of the switch for the user defined sequence of commands
• commands > interval is the number of milliseconds between each command to wait, optional, default 500
• commands > sequence is the sequence of commands sent to Kodi as list, see supported commands below

Supported Commands

A variety of commands are supported: First and foremost all available inputs in Kodi and all actions that can be executed.

Here is a list of all supported commands to date and how to use them:

Command	What does it do and how to use it?
home	Goes to home window in GUI
down	Navigate down in GUI
up	Navigate up in GUI
left	Navigate left in GUI
right	Navigate right in GUI
select	Select current item in GUI
back	Goes back in GUI
info	Shows the information dialog
contextmenu	Shows the context menu
showcodec	Show codec information of the playing item
showosd	Show the on-screen display for the current player
sendtext	Send a generic (unicode) text. Just add the text you want to send, e.g. "sendtext:Game of Thrones"
executeaction	Execute a specific action Just add the action you want to perform, e.g. "executeaction:smallstepback". You can find all the possible actions here (Expand JSON Schema Description under 6.10.1).

Known Problems

• This plugin is a dynamic platform so please only add one platform of Homebridge-Kodi per instance and config. As of right now it only supports one running Kodi instance. This feature might be added in a future update.
• When renaming or adding a input (a control or a channel) to a TV accessory or changing the "name" you should delete the TV accessory first or you might see the input as a new accessory inside the TV accessory.
• Library scan & clean: Though the current scan/clean status is displayed and saved in HomeKit, it can't get the current status from Kodi. It can only get status changes (when this plugin and Kodi are running at the same time). So there's no guarantee it always shows the right status. Also the switches cannot abort the currently running scan/clean when setting them to off. The API is missing some of those features unfortunately but it should still work pretty well.
• Only internal players are supported right now.

Contributors

Many thanks go to

• Kodi-Team for their excellent work on Kodi and their JSON-RPC-API that makes this plugin possible
• SmartApfel - HomeKit Community for their interest in smart home accessories and their motivation to develop and test great homebridge plugins
• naofireblade for his plugins, e.g. homebridge-weather-plus that helped me personally developing this plugin
• elpheria for their rpc-websockets library (the only working one I found to support notifications with the Kodi JSON-RPC-API that are needed to get aware of changes in Kodi outside from homebridge, e.g. from remote controls)

Attribution

• Powered by Homebridge and Kodi.