Athom announced Homey Cloud and Homey Bridge

Will surely do!

A shame, I was hoping for a better more powerful version that is more integrator ready, eg Ethernet port. The multi frequency zwave chip is interesting, if only this was used in the pro so we could get the pro here in Australia.
As for a cloud based Hub, we already have big delays with Alexa and Google assistant commands, I’m guessing due to Athom servers being located so far from here.
The only thing that could make this better is if the new hub can be added to an existing one to extend its reach in large homes and can be displayed all in the one home not as seperate hubs. Though LAN communication here would have been preferable. I guess every other country must have much better and more reliable internet service than us.

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Since when is Athom hosting services for Amazon and Google?

Here’s a simplified flow chart on how Google Assistant works. Notice the “Partner Cloud Services”, which are Athom-managed servers in the case of Homey, “Smart Home” is (f.e.) a Google Nest device (not a Homey device, because there’s no direct connection between the assistant and such devices).

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So users experience the delays between blue and yellow and from yellow to IoT devices

Could be another question for @Athom if users from AU sign up and Homey runs from Datacenter down under will Pro users benefit from that local servers?

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If you look in the link @Dijker gave, you can see a map of current available servers, and “to come” servers.

Check! Whoops, didn’t read that, not realizing it was about an available servers map. Reply deleted.

3 posts were merged into an existing topic: Topic Waiting for an Invite but ordered the Homey Bridge

For myself, I am glad that Homey Pro isn’t going anywhere. If anything, since they now target home automation professionals, we may see some extra care and attention being given to the Pro platform. Great news for everyone that wants to control their IoT locally.

The cheaper version, that relies on a cloud back-end for processing, makes sense to attract new customers. My worry however, is that Homey expects every company that has their own platform, to now write an app for Homey. We’ll have to wait and see if Homey cloud is going to support most manufacturers or if Homey Cloud users become more limited in their options.

How is that different from before?

Theoretically, community developers can build cloud apps, and knowing Athom, if a community-developed “brand app” becomes popular they will get the manufacturer involved (typically by rebranding the app to become “developed by the brand” and letting the manufacturer and community developer work out the transfer).

I can’t say I know much about how professional home automation integrators work, but would any of them actually consider using Homey? The pessimist in me would argue that Athom having to divide their attention between two different (albeit closely related) architectures could potentially reduce the focus on Homey Pro.

This isn’t a question, and it’s something Athom has (sort of) acknowledged, the Cloud users will by design only have a subset of the apps available to the Pro users. If we look at basic devices (swithces, dimmers, bulbs etc) that often make up the bulk of the stuff we have at home I trust most will be supported, but when it comes to stuff like AV-equpiment, climate and security it’s less likely to become available on Cloud. And then of course there’s a whole lot of useful tools not tied to specific devices that will for the most part also be missing on Cloud, so yes, it will be limited.

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Thanks, didn’t know this webpage existed. Got my results, confirms my delays.

O dear crap, Adrian. That sox.
Why does it connect to Europe…? Not SYdney?
To compare: Standard KPN v10 modem, 100MB adsl, NL located:

Check the map, only eu-central is live, all others are “planned”.

Yup, you’re right, didn’t have my glasses on :woozy_face: :upside_down_face:

You mean ‘Sydney”… That’s our major city down here… :grin:

To get fast and acceptable ping times for the Homey Bridge (which is what it totally and fundamentally relies on) I wonder if Athom will need servers based in every county ?

Not every country, they’re using Amazon Web Services so pretty easy to distribute world wide and there’s one planned downunder

I’m sorry, of course I meant Sydney.

I figured they would need some sort of local infrastructure to get the super fast times they promise. If using Amazon will probably be ok…