Homey Community Forum

Ideas / Feature / App Requests

Apps
#1

Given that the previous announcement doesn’t allow replies, thoughts on this announcement. Using the forum as a request or an opportunity for development simply doesn’t work.

The app requests topic has over 133 different devices on there, not one of them has been picked up or developed.

I’d happily pay a developer to develop apps for Tilt/Texecom and now Heatmiser, but nobody responds and you hear nothing back.

The removal of the form is just Athoms way of getting rid of a black hole that they created by never having any intention of doing anything about the app/feature suggestions.

As per previous thread I get that development costs money, but surely it would be worth while to pay a decent developer to create apps and then possibly look to monetise these to fund this. The business model is broken, and more recently it seems like the community is also.

Great product, stunted by software.

How long have people been asking for a better pro? Where are the other features promised in the monthly charge?

Why are Athom apps constantly being broken by software updates or just binned. Spotify seems to be the latest. Are we supposed to just change our smart home ecosystems everytime Athom decides it can’t be bothered with a brand or product anymore?

#2

The thing is, there are a lot more users that want support of a device/brand, then there are (community) developers.

Developing an app of a device/brand that you don’t own yourself is definitely not beneficial, also most brands will probably also only have a few hundred users (not even 1% of the user base), which isn’t a lot to put a lot of time into to develop, and keep working when it is done.

The community app topic only has 133 requests, people on this forum aren’t all the users of Homey, there are, most likely, way more brands that have been requested, if an app takes at least 1 day to 1 week to develop, and needs on average 2 hours per month to stay maintained, that is a lot of time, 399 days of time, just to develop (average of 3 days per app), not taking the maintance of those apps into account and also all the brands that have not been put on the request topic, that is enough to have 5-10 developers working on just apps constantly, not just a developer.
Granted, Athom isn’t big enough for that yet.

#3

I’m not sure if there is an official way to indicate that an app has been picked up?

I have picked up the Sky Q and SwitchBot apps from there, plus the SmartThing app, but that is only in the Community Store.

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#4

There is not, but I do occasionally go through the topic to see if any apps that have been created (or duplicates), and delete them from the topic.
Haven’t done it in a while, I guess I should do it again.

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