I do not use the v2 my self but in my FB group and on other groups user telling they got issues and that it´s buggy and not at all what they expected where things don´t work and where you need to develop your self solutions to make things work.
Well i also know many users how don´t have any issues at all like you say “bvdbos” i my self if i want to upgrade i think i will have no issues as i don´t have any advanced flow´s just kicking my lights on and off the easy way.
But the plain fact is that i also see users that are moving from Homey to other solutions and if this will be a big movement over time than i think that Athom as a small company will struggle to survive.
I myself are running several other solutions and brands to see what fits me the best and still homey is the one i prefer but i rely miss the possibility to edit my flows on my computer as i am use to if i upgrade to v2
And again this is my reflections.
Now I don’t like to add to this discussion for just stirring up the dirt, the client situation is what it is. I also have no idea how large the very vocal ‘bring it back now’ party is, compared to the Jack and Jill’s that are perfectly happy with editing flows on their phone and never visit the fora.
What triggered me to write this blurb was the snippet about Athom stating they are too small a company and cannot allocate the needed resources for developing and maintaining both a phone client and a web client. I am not an agile programmer ticking scrum meetings every other day, but could we make an educated guess about exactly how much resources we are talking about? I see the community driven flow viewer working on the new API and I see a framework from the old editor. It feels to me we are almost 80% there. How much effort will it actually take? And if that is doable with a reasonable amount of programming hours, why not take the effort if you can accommodate enthusiasts that apparently very dearly and adamantly want it back? How big of a job are we actually talking about?
Very substantial and clear post, compliments (not easy on such an emotional topic)
Though I don’t like the decision of Athom, too, I need to remind that it’s not called “Athoms decision for no WebApp” but “Athoms decision for Mobile first”.
I think that the main user base is very much into IT and tech so nearly everybody uses a smartphone. If the decision had to be an “if / or” - then I’m pretty convinced that it would’ve been worse if Athom would’ve put the WebApp first and no Mobile at this point.
As the last mobile version was not really usable but the WebApp has, I think the decision was absolutely right.
Furthermore I wanna mention that the income of Athom may be very very low; just calculate a bit in mind; salaries in NL are not that low and though I feel 300€ is much money, there’s no other source of income, yet.
I can imagine there’s just really no resources left and the WebApp will take time.
Much more important that users are building workarounds. I highly appreciate that but I also would appreciate if Athom could step in here a bit more to give insights.
I’m sorry but it is not a valid excuse to say “We are not making tablet yet because we are a small company”
IF you do your development and planning right - the EXTRA time to do a full featured tablet version with the extra benefits you get from the big screen - is probably around 15-20% extra man hours. But if you only do simple tablet support the extra time taken is maybe 5%. But it requires you to use good cross platform build tools.
I think 70-90% of the homey app could be done in Xamarin Forms 3. Xamarin Forms is an easy to use cross platform library - that works well. There are other great cross platform tools but I’m used to Xamarin so that is my personal preference.
But of course if you have no idea, plan or goal then you start from scratch every time.
Not sure where this forum runs at but if it’s on an Athom server then there will surely be a limit. (For 100€ you may acquire more space here perhaps …)
But to stay OT: It’s the first app that runs pretty well after v1.0 was just crap. So I still got hope that we will See an app before Athom runs bankruptcy.
Ok guys, I must admit I haven’t been faithful to Homey. While I thought it wasn’t in the cards for me, I found new love. Oh, yes! And one more thing, it’s actually a threesome (Node-red, Influxdb and Grafana).
Please don’t judge me.
Owwww, the sirens got a hold on you! You heard enchanting music and now you are heading to rocky shores to never to be heard from again?
Or is that a bit to dramatic and do you have a solid marriage of convenience with Homey, and is this some love on the side?
Yes i am wondering also how long this can go on. I is a pitty if you are not satisfied anymore but it is what it is. Except for some small bugs it is working like charm.
although i am glad to have my flows visible on a bigger screen, because it is giving me more an overview of my flows. So maybe stop complaining.
I‘m wondering too, how long this discussion will go!?
I think the problem is that you are all familiar with the Homey Web UI and now it‘s gone. For me I‘m new with Homey and I like the way the Mobile App works. It‘s very intuitiv and for me it‘s a easy way to create flows. But I definitely hope for an Tablet version. I got two ipad mini on the wall waiting to run the Homey app in landscape mode, as it should be.
I was complaining several times about the missing WEB UI.
About a month ago my Homey crashed and I had to start with a new Homey.
With a new Homey you are forced to go to V2.0.
I was upset end angry. But no choice or stopping with Homey.
I installed the new app on my iPad and started to install Homey again.
I do have about 50 devices and 200 flows.
I had to re-pair and to rewrite all flows again. It took me about 1 week.
Now after that I do have to say that I was happily surprised with the new app and the new way off writing the flows.
I’m not against anymore and even more happy to use the new app.
The only thing I do miss is the total overview of the flows.
But for that I do use the flowviewer and I’m very happy again.
Actually I’m exploring how to complement missing functionality by using external systems.
Homey Insights is lacking
I looked into it and have found a solution using node-red, influxdb & grafana.
Support for certain zigbee devices requires a Zigbee core re-write by Athom. This could take Athom months to implement.
Possible solution is using zigbee2mqtt (requires additional hardware) to complement Homey
a new 433Mhz device requires a dedicated app or gateway of a specific brand
These are some of the drawbacks
a huge amount of hours/days you have to put into it without a guarantee of success
