Anyone have a good way to periodically record HomeKit sensor values? In particular, for those where the seller does not provide logs through their application? Ex: I have aqara temperature sensors that I would like to log in, say, every 4 hours.

Homebridge is an option, but I'd rather not create an ecosystem just for that.

After analyzing and testing what is native available in HomeKit / etc, I came up with a few options that will work for any sensor / status value that is available for shortcuts:

** Option 1: Quick automation switch ** running on an iPhone / iPad that stays home. Via shortcut:

* get the sensors reading through "Get the status of my house"
* Combine text to get all the sensors in one text.
* save to file

Problems:

* the device must remain local
* You must write the same automation n times to run n times a day. And keep those n kids.

** Option 2: Automation shortcut. ** There are only two ways in which I can obtain data from the walls of an automation:

1. Run the script through ssh. It doesn't work for me. It works fine as a test (because it runs on iphone / ipad), but it seems that no one has managed to do this as a home automation on a home hub (it runs from AppleTv / HomePod). So it's not an option unless Apple does something about it.
2. Get the content of the URL (as HTTP POST).

So, I set up web service on a Mac with a very simple PHP script that saves POST data to a file.

We then set up a LaunchAgent to monitor file changes. When modified, it runs a script that reads the new data and adds it to the log file. I probably could have added this to the PHP script (?), But I'm more familiar with shell / python / etc than PHP.

I'd be interested to hear if anyone is using Get URL Content to write something that works really well ... doing what I'm doing I finished the job, but it's pretty weak. There must be a better way!

For example, POST to a Google document. I think there is a way to use a google script to get the data and add it to a sheet.

Finally, I set up Home Automation at midnight, then used a party-like application (Eve / Controller for HomeKit) to add more triggers for every 4 hours.

So a single automation must be maintained (eg adding another sensor) and running on the home hub.

edit: formatting