Home Connect for Indigo

An Indigo plugin for Bosch / Siemens / Neff / Gaggenau home appliances, via the official Home Connect cloud API.

Your dishwasher, dryer, washer, oven, coffee maker and fridge-freezer become Indigo devices with live state — operation state, selected/active program, progress, remaining time, door, and appliance events — streamed in real time, plus control (start / stop / pause / resume programs, power, settings, and commands such as Open Door).

State arrives over the Home Connect Server-Sent Events stream and control goes out over REST, so appliances participate in Indigo triggers, schedules, control pages, and Domio like any other device.

Contents

• Requirements
• Installation
• Supported appliances
• Setup
  • 1. Register a Home Connect application
  • 2. Authorize the plugin
  • 3. Create devices
• Device states
• Actions
• Remote start
• Rate limits
• Triggers
• Troubleshooting
• Design notes
• Acknowledgments
• License

Requirements

• Indigo 2025.2+ (Python 3.10+).
• Appliances already paired to a Home Connect account in the Home Connect phone app.
• A free Home Connect developer account with a registered application set to OAuth Device Flow (walkthrough below).
• No bundled dependencies — Python standard library only.

Installation

1. Download Home.Connect.indigoPlugin.zip from the latest release and unzip it.
2. Double-click Home Connect.indigoPlugin on the Mac running Indigo Server. Indigo offers to install and enable the plugin.
3. Updating: download the new release and double-click it the same way — Indigo replaces the installed version and restarts the plugin. Your settings, authorization, and devices are preserved.

Supported appliances

Six appliance types get a dedicated Indigo device with type-specific states, and a generic fallback covers everything else Home Connect exposes:

The generic type carries the full common state set and picks up any appliance-specific keys as dynamic states. Add a dedicated type on request if you have hardware to validate it against.

Field-validated: Dishwasher (Siemens) and Dryer (Bosch) are exercised end-to-end on real hardware. The other four are validated against the Home Connect simulator. See docs/APPLIANCES.md for per-type capability notes and quirks.

Setup

There are three steps: register an application on the Home Connect developer portal, authorize the plugin against it, then create Indigo devices.

1. Register a Home Connect application

This is a one-time step on the Home Connect developer portal. A few details must be exactly right or authorization will silently fail.

1. Create the developer account with the same email as your SingleKey ID, all lowercase. The developer account email must match the SingleKey ID email you use in the Home Connect phone app, and it must be lowercase — a capital letter in the address is a common cause of "no appliances found" later.
2. Register a new application and set:
   • OAuth Flow → Device Flow. This is immutable — it cannot be changed after the application is created. If you pick the wrong flow you must delete the application and create a new one. The plugin only works with Device Flow.
   • Redirect URI → leave blank. Device Flow does not use one.
   • Home Connect User Account for Testing → your own account (the one your appliances are paired to).
3. Wait for propagation. A newly-created application takes roughly 15 minutes to an hour to become usable. If you authorize immediately after creating it you will get an error — this is normal; wait and try again.
4. Use a dedicated Client ID for this plugin. Rate limits are enforced per client + account (see Rate limits). Do not reuse the Client ID of another integration (for example a running Homebridge instance) — they would share, and starve, the same 1000-requests-per-day budget.

Copy the Client ID from the application's page. If your application defines a Client Secret, copy that too (most Device Flow applications do not need one).

2. Authorize the plugin

1. Open the plugin's Configure… dialog (Plugins → Home Connect → Configure…).
2. Paste the Client ID (and Client Secret if your application has one).
3. Click Authorize. The dialog shows a verification URL and a user code, and the same details are written to the Event Log.
4. Open that URL in any browser, sign in with your SingleKey ID, and enter the code to grant access. The plugin polls in the background and completes automatically.
5. The dialog's status line does not live-update. After you approve in the browser, close and re-open the Configure… dialog to see the status change to Authorized. The authoritative confirmation is the Event Log line Home Connect authorization successful.

Simulator (no hardware): tick Use the Home Connect simulator before pressing Authorize to run against the six preloaded simulator appliances. The simulator uses an auto-approved grant, so there is no browser step.

3. Create devices

1. Devices → New…, set Type to the matching model — Dishwasher, Dryer, Washer, Oven, Coffee Maker, Fridge Freezer, or the generic Home Connect Appliance.
2. Pick your appliance from the Appliance menu. The menu is populated from discovery, so authorize first; a specific device type lists only appliances of that kind, and an appliance already assigned to another device is marked (in use).
3. Choose the Treat "disconnected" as Off policy (see offline vs off) and save.

Device states

Every device type carries this common state set:

Type-specific additions:

Dynamic states

Home Connect adds and renames enum keys without notice. Any key the plugin does not map explicitly surfaces automatically as an extra string state on the device (via getDeviceStateList). Unknown keys therefore appear as raw states rather than crashing the plugin — if new states show up after an appliance update, that is expected.

Actions

All actions are device-scoped (pick the Home Connect device in the action's dialog). Every control call is pre-flight-checked locally before any request is sent, so a call the appliance would reject is refused with an actionable message instead of burning your request budget.

Start / Select dialogs offer a Program menu (built from the appliance's full program list) and an optional Option overrides field — one key=value per line, e.g. BSH.Common.Option.StartInRelative=3600. Values coerce to true/false (bool), whole numbers (int), otherwise text. Leave it blank to start with the program's defaults.

Both dialogs also have a Power on first if needed checkbox (on by default). Many dishwashers power themselves off after a cycle and on door events, which would otherwise leave a scheduled Start Program refused as "not ready". With this ticked, the plugin powers the appliance on and waits for it to become Ready before starting — so a schedule works even if the machine has switched itself off. Power-on cannot grant Remote Start (you still enable that on the appliance — see the 24-hour rule), and appliances whose power is read-only (some dryers) cannot be powered on remotely and are refused with a clear message. Only a powered-off (or Inactive) appliance is woken — Standby is treated as on and is not woken by this option.

Menus for programs, commands and power states are served from a 24-hour capability cache, so opening an action dialog costs at most one request the first time that day.

Remote start: the 24-hour rule

Home Connect only lets the cloud start a program while BSH.Common.Status.RemoteControlStartAllowed is true, and you can only enable it at the appliance itself — there is no API to turn it on. Critically, the appliance auto-expires this permission roughly 24 hours after you enable it. This is a Home Connect platform rule, not a plugin bug.

Consequences:

• A Start Program action that worked yesterday can fail today with "Remote Start is not allowed…" simply because the permission lapsed. Re-enable it on the appliance (usually a long-press or a "Remote start" toggle on the machine) before running the program.
• Select Program, Stop, Pause/Resume, Set Setting and Set Power do not require Remote Start — only starting a fresh program does.

The plugin exposes the live permission as the remoteStartAllowed device state so you can build a notification for when it lapses — for example a trigger on remoteStartAllowed becoming false that sends you a reminder to re-arm it before your next scheduled wash.

Rate limits

The Home Connect API budget is per Client ID + account and is strict:

• 1000 requests per day, 50/min, 10/s (burst 20).
• 5 program starts and 5 stops per minute.
• 10 consecutive errors in 10 minutes → a 10-minute block; repeated violations can block for 24 hours or lock the account.

What the plugin does to stay well inside it:

• Uses one global SSE event stream for all appliances instead of polling — state changes are pushed, not fetched.
• Caches program/command/power capabilities for 24 hours (with stale-fallback), so building menus and surviving restarts costs almost nothing.
• Runs a plugin-wide request gate that honours the server's Retry-After for every request, plus local limiters that refuse a 6th start/stop within a minute before any request goes out.
• Refuses locally any control call whose preconditions aren't met, so a rejected call never counts toward the 10-errors block.
• Logs a running daily counter (debug) and a single warning at 800/1000 so a runaway loop is visible before Home Connect blocks the client.

What you must NOT do:

• Do not build triggers/schedules that poll the appliance rapidly (e.g. an Indigo schedule firing a Start/Select every few seconds). The SSE stream already keeps state current; manual polling only spends budget and can trip the error block.
• Do not share one Client ID across this plugin and another integration (Homebridge, Home Assistant, a second Indigo server). They share the same 1000/day budget and will starve each other. Register a dedicated Client ID per client.

Triggers

Everything surfaces as device states, so native Indigo state-change triggers cover the common cases without any custom event type:

• Program finished — trigger on operationState changing to Finished, or on lastEvent.
• Remote start lapsed — trigger on remoteStartAllowed becoming false.
• Consumables / alarms — saltNearlyEmpty, rinseAidNearlyEmpty, waterTankEmpty, beanContainerEmpty, dripTrayFull, doorAlarmFreezer, doorAlarmRefrigerator, preheatFinished.

Duplicate appliance events (some dishwashers re-send ProgramFinished on reconnect) are de-duplicated before they reach state, so a trigger fires once per real event.

Troubleshooting

The program menu is empty. Program menus are built from the appliance. If the appliance is off, or has just finished a cycle with the door still closed, Home Connect may report only the program on the dial (or none). The plugin works around this by listing the appliance's full program set and marking entries (not currently available) rather than the momentary available-list — but the appliance must be on and reachable. Power the appliance on (open the door after a finished cycle) and reopen the action dialog.

The appliance turns itself off, so scheduled starts are refused as "not ready". Many dishwashers power down after a finished cycle and on door events. A Start Program guard rail requires operationState = Ready, so it refuses while the machine is off. Leave the Power on first if needed checkbox ticked on the Start (and Select) action — the plugin powers the appliance on and waits for Ready before starting. Note the two limits: the appliance must still have Remote Start enabled (power-on cannot grant it — see the 24-hour rule), and appliances whose power is read-only cannot be powered on remotely (you get "cannot be powered on remotely — press its power button").

A control action fails with a "409" / conflict. The appliance rejected the request. Common causes and fixes: - RemoteControlNotActive — enable Remote Control on the appliance. - RemoteControlStartAllowed lapsed — re-enable Remote Start on the appliance (see the 24-hour rule). - LocalControlActive — someone is using the appliance at the panel; wait until they finish. - Door open — close the door before starting. The plugin's error message names the concrete next step; follow it, then retry.

"Authorization required" appears / control stops working. The refresh token was revoked or went unused for more than 60 days (e.g. the plugin was disabled over a long holiday). Re-open Configure… and press Authorize again to mint fresh tokens. The Event Log carries the "authorization lost" error and the Configure… dialog's status line shows Authorization required; device state stops updating until you re-authorize.

No appliances in the picker. Confirm the appliances are paired in the Home Connect phone app, that authorization succeeded (Event Log), and that your developer account email exactly matches your SingleKey ID email in lowercase. A just-created application may still be propagating.

Offline vs off

Some appliances report power-off as a disconnect, making "off" and "offline" indistinguishable over the API. Each device therefore has a Treat "disconnected" as Off checkbox:

• On (default) — a disconnect shows the device as Off. Best for appliances that drop off the cloud when powered down.
• Off — a disconnect flags a device error state instead, so you can alert on an appliance that unexpectedly dropped off the network.

Is it me or Home Connect?

Home Connect (BSH) cloud outages produce error floods and empty reads. The plugin throttles its own error logging and falls back to cached capabilities during an outage, but if nothing is updating, check the community-run unofficial status page before digging further: https://homeconnect.thouky.co.uk.

Design notes

• Cloud-only. There is no local Home Connect API; everything goes through BSH's cloud.
• One SSE stream + minimal REST, a global Retry-After-honouring request gate, 24-hour capability cache, and local pre-flight checks — all to live within the 1000/day budget.
• Stdlib only — no bundled dependencies, so nothing to pip install on the Indigo server. Tokens live in a 0600 JSON file under Indigo's Preferences (not in plugin prefs), and tokens/appliance IDs are redacted in log output.

Acknowledgments

The architecture of this plugin owes a great deal to homebridge-homeconnect by Alexander Thoukydides (ISC licensed) — years of documented, battle-tested handling of the Home Connect API's rate limits, event stream quirks, and appliance edge cases informed this design. No code was copied; the plugin is an independent Python implementation.

The author of homebridge-homeconnect also runs an unofficial Home Connect API status page.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.

Home Connect and the Home Connect logo are trademarks of BSH Hausgeräte GmbH. This plugin is an independent open-source project, not affiliated with or endorsed by BSH. The logo (in docs/assets/) is used solely to identify the service the plugin connects to and is not covered by this repository's MIT license.