Sonoff-Homekit VS esp32-homekit

To make it homekit compatible you will need to update the standard firmware on the Sonoff. https://github.com/Gruppio/Sonoff-Homekit

Hi, I used some Sonoff basic flashed with the following firmware and some Led floodlights (I have them on all sides of the house): https://github.com/Gruppio/Sonoff-Homekit I’ve put the Sonoff in IP66 junction boxes next to the flood lights and I have no issues. I have two types of automations. The first one is based on PIR (hue and they work very well). The second one based on Apple car play so when my car gets close to the house and it’s night time it turns the flood lights on! In addition I also setup a Hue button to turn all the floodlights on for 5 minutes when pressed, it’s a two step automation but works like a charm if you need near daylight visibility all around the house.

There is a firmware for Sonoff with native HomeKit. here

I would probably base the design off of a ESP32 microcontroller since it has WIFI and HomeKit libraries https://github.com/younghyunjo/esp32-homekit (just one I found, I have never used this library so can’t say whether this specific one is good). You can get ESP32 development boards to prototype with cheaply on Amazon etc, but I personally use Adafruit’s dev boards (like the Feather Huzzah32) even though they’re a bit more expensive. The quality is good and they have an absolute tonne of example code for basically everything. Really cannot recommend Adafruit enough as a starting point for all this stuff. There’s so much information in their learning guides. https://learn.adafruit.com/all-about-leds

Once that part was done, I'd look at the various home automation protocols, possibly even Homekit (https://www.espressif.com/en/news/ESP_HomeKit_SDK or https://github.com/younghyunjo/esp32-homekit).