Homebridge is an excellent piece of software which allows you to integrate products into Apple Homekit.

You can find out more about homebridge on their official website and there are numerous different ways to run homebridge within your home;

However, it’s not so obvious how to run homebridge within ESXI, but from experience, I can tell you that it’s definitely possible (and easy) to do!

Table of Contents

Installing Homebridge in ESXI

Download the homebridge ISO file.

Click here to download the latest homebridge-vm-image.iso (70 MB) ISO file.
Create a new virtual machine in ESXI

Create a VM in ESXI

Create a new virtual machine

Give it a name and select Guest OS Family and Guest OS Version
Linux -> Other Linux (64bit)
Configure your virtual machine with the following settings

RAM: 1GB Minimum
CPU: 1+
HDD: 8GB virtual hard disk (thin / dynamic)
Important: Use a SATA / IDE Controller (SCSI controllers will not work)
Network Adapter: VM Network
ISO: homebridge-vm-image.iso (this must stay permanently attached).
Power On Your VM
Connect to the address shown in the console window

Open up your favourite web browser and navigate to the IP address shown in the console eg: http://192.168.1.57:8581
Complete!

That’s it, now all you need to do is add the device to Homekit by scanning the QR code which is generated on the homepage.

You can then setup integrations which you can do by searching the Plugins section of the application