[FEATURE] - Independency from Avahi

I wondering since HAP-Nodejs switched to a pure js mDNS implementation a while ago for Bonjour support, why it is required to install libavahi-compat-libdnssd-dev as stated on the readme of that project. Don’t know whether this is specific for Ubuntu/Debian, but I could imagine it would the implementation made more reliable and probably more lightweight? Just an idea.

[crxporter]

Check 1: my latest pi 3 A+ deployment (been running for weeks)

When I run dpkg -l libavahi-compat-libdnssd-dev, the result is no packages found matching libavahi-compat-libdnssd-dev1.

When I run dpkg -l and look through everything, I see these installed packages which mention avahi or mdns:

avahi-daemon
libavahi-common-data:armhf
libavahi-common3:armhf
libavahi-core7:armhf
libnss-mdns:armhf

I don’t want to delete these packages on a running system, I don’t know what installed them (seems to have come with raspbian based on below)

Check 2: fresh install on pi zero

I first loaded up a fresh pi zero with raspbian stretch lite then checked dpkg -l to see:

avahi-daemon
libavahi-common-data:armhf
libavahi-common3:armhf
libavahi-core7:armhf
libnss-mdns:armhf

Step 2- Installed node-red with the pi install script Step 3- Installed NRCHKB with pallette manager Step 4- Check dpkg -l - didn’t find any new libavahi related items

At this point, the plugin appears to work fine.

Step 5- stopped node red and ran:

sudo apt-get remove avahi-daemon
sudo apt-get remove libavahi-common-data:armhf
sudo apt-get remove libavahi-common3:armhf
sudo apt-get remove libavahi-core7:armhf
sudo apt-get remove libnss-mdns:armhf

Then tried using NRCHKB. Including using the previous test along with adding a new bridge and pairing with Home app.

Result: Works fine.

Conclusion… seems like you’re right, @djiwondee.

[djiwondee]

Hello @Shaquu ,

even this issue has been closed so far, I can confirm independency from the libavahi stuff as well.

I’m just about to move my entire smart home setup including node-red-contrib-homekit-bridged from a native Raspi deployment to Homematic which is a quite common platform in Germany. Its Smart Home Central Control Unit CCU3 is also based on the Raspberry platform but is running an own embedded Linux.

The system provides the ability to install 3rd party applications in a particular supported way. One of this is RedMatic, a kind of plugin providing a full node-red deployment with some preconfigured special Homematic related nodes to connect to the Homematic system.

However, I migrated a couple of flows using node-red-contrib-homekit-bridged to that platform and it runs well. In addition to that in the stepwise migration of a lot of flows with HomeKit nodes until now I’ve never seen errors like this nor there was a need to restart the node-red-service, while my repeated stepwise copy and paste deployment of changed flows. The only issue I have so far is blocked ports by the CCU3’s firewall when I try to add a bridge in the HomeKit app. Do you know what other ports are used by in addition to 51826 and 5353?