Support for Robot Vacuum Cleaners in iOS 18

[azmke]

Current Situation

Currently, robot vacuum cleaners are not natively supported by Homebridge or HAP-NodeJS. As a result, they are often represented as switches in existing plugins, which limits their functionality and integration within the Home app. According to Apple, robot vacuum cleaner support is expected to be natively available in the Home app with iOS 18, allowing them to participate in automations, scenes, and be controlled via Siri. However, I couldn't find any indication of support for vacuum robots in the code of either the Homebridge or the HAP-NodeJS repositories.

Proposed Change

Introduce native support for robot vacuum cleaners in HAP-NodeJS to leverage the new capabilities in iOS 18. Apple has announced native support for robot vacuum cleaners in iOS 18, which means Homebridge should enable vacuum cleaner plugins to utilize these new capabilities. This would involve adding a new accessory category and associated characteristics to properly represent robot vacuums. This change would then enable Homebridge to support plugins that can fully utilize the new robot vacuum cleaner controls, providing a more integrated and functional user experience.

Additional Context

• Source: Apple Newsroom - Updates to the Home Experience
• Official Apple page for iOS 18 mentions that robot vacuum cleaner support is "coming later this year": iOS 18
• The implementation of this feature would allow users to integrate their robot vacuum cleaners more effectively into the Home app, enabling better automation and control through Siri.
• Example use case: A user could create a scene that includes starting the robot vacuum cleaner along with other actions, or use voice commands to control the vacuum cleaner directly.

[ebaauw]

We need to see whether these will actually be supported through HAP. I suspect they might be Matter only.

[hjdhjd]

As @ebaauw indicated they're currently Matter-only, specifically Matter 1.2 which iOS 18 now supports. HAP-NodeJS is HomeKit-specific, at least at the moment. I wouldn't bet on this happening anytime soon I'm afraid. It remains to be seen whether or not Apple will ultimately deprecate HomeKit in favor of Matter or not over time.

TL;DR: unlikely to happen until HomeKit supports robot vacuums (or any other device class).