Advertise a _http._tcp. Bonjour service

[lilyball]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe: I often forget what port the config page is running on. I’ve got a bookmark on one of my computers but sometimes need to access it from other computers.

Describe the solution you'd like: Since this vends an HTTP page on a nonstandard port it would be great if it advertised an _http._tcp. Bonjour service. I don’t know if any mainstream browsers still display _http._tcp. services in their UI, but it at least gives me a convenient way to look it up with other tooling.

Preferably it would either reuse the same multicast-dns server that Homebridge itself does, or use the underlying system’s implementation (mDNSResponder on macOS, Avahi on Linux). I suppose setting up a new multicast-dns server in this plugin isn’t the end of the world, but that adds complexity like needing to send goodbye packets and whatnot (bonjour-hap doesn’t currently do that but I have an open ticket on them to add it). Of course, reusing Homebridge’s server would require Homebridge providing access to it.

[asmallteapot]

It would be great to have this as a built-in feature. My current workaround, with a vanilla Raspbian installation, is to create /etc/avahi/services/homebridge.service with the following contents:

<?xml version="1.0" standalone='no'?><!--*-nxml-*-->
<!DOCTYPE service-group SYSTEM "avahi-service.dtd">

<service-group>
  <name replace-wildcards="yes">%h Homebridge</name>
  <service>
    <type>_http._tcp</type>
    <port>8581</port> <!-- nb: replace with the port your instance is configured to run on -->
  </service>
</service-group>

Running sudo service avahi-daemon reload then publishes the mDNS record.

[oznu]

I will do this once homebridge/ciao is out of beta.

https://github.com/homebridge/ciao

[rhwood]

I will do this once homebridge/ciao is out of beta.

Is homebridge/ciao still considered beta?