HomeKit can pair only once, to pair it another time it needs to be unpaired first; a design choice unrelated to HA. But you can “share” your home in the Home app. That will add additional “controllers” to those devices (HA being the device here).
Re:How I wrote my own Smart Home software
by bussyfumes on Monday June 05, 2023 @08:23AM
(#36195247)
Thank you, I thought so. It'd still be nice if they could print it somewhere because that was my first impression so I assume other people not familiar with HA will run into it as well.
Regarding sharing, I tried it, but it says "A home hub is required to add or remove accessories, scenes or people". I looked it up and apparently you were able to use an iPad as the home hub which you'd share access to, but since a certain version of iPadOS/iOS it can only be either an Apple TV or a Home Pod. I think Apple is focusing on being able to access your home setup anywhere so it requires a device that is supposed to stay at home all the time. Still a shame because it hinders offline-first setups like mine.
After setting up a HomeKit Bridge integration, you are given a QR code to connect from the Home app. The code appears in the Notifications tab. I missed the code at first so the Notifications tab was empty and I thought that there should be a button to issue another one? After looking it up online, apparently the way to go is: delete the integration, create it again and be more careful with the Notifications tab.
Then if I want another person in the house to be able to control the lights from their device, I can't show them the code. This makes me wonder whether the HomeKit Bridge supports only one connection or if I just have to screenshot the QR code? It can't be that bad, right?
Other than that, a great piece of software. When I got the smart lights it bummed me out that I couldn't control them with Home and had to use some third-party app to do it so eventually discovering HA significantly improved my experience.