Moving on and ditching Homey!

Questions & Help
1

I have been enthusaticly upgrading Homey every time a new V1 release came out.
I love the look and feel of the hardware and the way it is just easy for my wife and visitors to use (NFC).
I found the desktop UI great to use.

But…

Noting i have seen or heard on this forum makes me think V2 is a step in the right direction, and there appears to be too many problems to even consider upgrading.

Athom seem to ignore the forum feedback, why are they not active on it, we are the customers ?

No desktop UI - yes i think it was a misguided and backwards descion (wacth this post get deleted for daring to say so). How are people with limited / poor eyesight able to program and control their home of 5" screen ?

No NFC support

Lack of back up facility on V1 and no further development.

Poor and slow support and comunication.

Pathetic compatibillity support for V2, relying on fourm users to provide this service and advising what works.

Any critisium of V2’s lack of desktop UI gets quickly shut down by moderators, probably stopping Athom feeling the true dislike for this strategy.

So time to move on, have ordered a competitors unit (Zipato, mainly for UI) and will shutting down Homey as soon as the new system arrives.

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2

That’s too bad @Rockhoppers!
Thanks for your contribution to this community and my apps!

3

I tossed a bit in between replying here or stay put.

But here it is. Pity we lose a Homey user. Wishing you best of luck! :four_leaf_clover: Hope that Zipato is good.

I’ll only comment on a couple of things.
Almost all Athom’s created apps are compatible with v2. Most of the community devs worked their arse out to fix their apps for v2 and most of them succeed. I was running in 1.5.13 about 25 apps, 70% of the community apps, rest Athom apps and all now compatible with v2.
And last one, I don’t believe that any of the moderators have closed any of the treads because a criticism to v2 or desktop UI. (Look at my profile, I have been reading some 11K posts. :eyes:)

I had Fibaro HC2 twice and both times I came back to Homey.
I hate the guts of not having a desktop UI like in V1 having to program on a small display.
But I like Homey for its interoperability and mostly this community, plus I am sure that one day Athom will create at least a tablet app.

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4

To be honest I also though about zipato, first of all they are from my country, I could go over there to give them a piece of my mind if something goes bad. :smile: :smile:

The thing with zipato is, no netatmo, no smart doorbell, generally no anything except zwave. On the other side they are good if not the best in zwave. So basically you’ve chosen right and if you limit yourself on zwave you will be satisfied while design is beautiful.

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5

@danone

Just in case my comments are not understood.

I think the 3rd party deveolpopers such as Ted and many others who apps i use and have had excelent support from do a truly fantastic job.

I also beleive they should probably get far more support from Athom then i think they do as these are the guys that give their own time and money to add value to and make Homey more marketable and attactive to the end user…keep it up guys !

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6

@TedTolboom, thanks for your support and efforts.

7

@Rockhoppers To bad to see you leaving Andrew.

Also from me a big thank you for your contributions and helping out improving Heimdall!
:+1:

8

@DaneedeKruyff and what a cracking app it is !
Enjoyed using it and so simple and reliable.
Thank for it !

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9

I agree with Rockhoppers on a lot of items, finally a good smartphone app…and now that is the only way to program your Homey Flows.
While I admire Athoms work, programming a flow on your smartphone should be a fallback scenario in my opinion, many of us need either a browser or desktop app, that’s something which added to the whole experience.

Earlier this week I tried programming flows on my smartphone, besides the fact that is it not a comfortable position to work in (neck-strain, eyestrain) my hands also started to cramp after 20 minutes of fiddling.

If you are reading along Athom, please provide a webinterface of some sort, the overview in programming flows in 1.x was awesome!

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10

If this is gonna be anther whining topic about the desktop missing am gonna close it.

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11

I am merely trying to express my motivation why -in my opinion- it is a step backwards.

On top of that some functionality and apps are broken, so forgive me for expressing my frustration, at some point I expect it all to be fixed, and one can only hope for some way to program the Homey and flows through a webinterface, if not I might also ditch Homey and look for another solution.

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12

No need to have 50 topics about the same so I understand the mod’s… When Athom announced that decision about 1,5 years ago no-one else in the room spoke out and after that apparently not enough people either. So for now we have to work with emulators like https://www.bignox.com/

Aside from the desktop-UI, Athom had to do a rewrite to keep Homey fast but also to keep the code managable. Don’t forget it’s multiple controllers (radio’s they’re called) in one… Backup has been announced for after V2.0 and “there appears to be too many problems to even consider upgrading.” is not what I see on the forum. And why Athom isn’t active on the forum, that’s a choice.

You want to try Zipato? Don’t think that will be any better judging a recent forum-post there:
To be honest, I’m getting increasingly concerned about the level of support, development and general attitude from the Zipato company. It feels like some users are being actively discouraged from the platform.
and they don’t use a chat-system like Slack (?) but of course, wish you all the luck.

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13

The german Homee looks like a good alternative to replace my Homey.

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14

Just remember that each and every similar product with a small company behind it will run through the exact same as homey has. I am not familiar with all products out there but unless one of the giant companies decides to make a product such as homey, I honestly think that homey is our best shot based on their experience. Of course, feel free in trying your luck with another product but don’t expect to find the holy grail.

15

Mja. Big companies change there strategy or pull the plug on services without blinking…
it’s as the world turns…

But as many people there are, as many opinions there are as well.
And it makes an interesting read to see how other people experiencing other options on the market.

Mind yiou, I am not interested in advertisements and fanboism.

16

Go for homeseer, you won’t regret it.
I have never been happier with my z-wave and zigbee networks.

17

Thanx for the advice

18

I am happy with homey and I switched from homee to homey.
The missing webui would no reason for me to move away from homey.

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19

+1

Sadly the vision that was Homey advertised a year ago has changed, I bought the Homey because it would intergraded with Woonveilig (not working anymore since august 2018). The homey is now an Apple Homekit bridge for my KaKu switches, Apple Home is my dashboard/homescreen.
I’m not sure what they where planning with v2 but I hope they alter they’re course for v2.1, right now it’s not very functional. I’ll check in later or sell it.

20

Just my 2 cents here,

I’ve been reading about V2 a while, and hesitated the upgrade a while. mainly because of technical issues. As soon as they were resolved I did upgrade my Homey, after some small changes to a few flows Homey works as on 1.5.13 again. So from a techinical point of view there is no reason to not do the upgrade. The Woonveilig integration (was broken from Woonveilig) @Bram did already answer this question in another topic.

Now from a functional view I agree with you that the mobile only approach is not so ideal (perhaps a mistake) if you want to create large and complex flows. There is no way you have a proper total view of the complete flow. Let alone you have to set and type variables/cards/HTTP/GET and Post commands.

Having said that, we also must and cannot neglect the target that Homey want to reach with their product. the’re aiming for making Home Automation possible to everyone, not for a few hardcore enthusiasts (Yes I think myself to this last category).

What I’m mainly interested in (and Homey also i hope) how big the demand for a full desktop/browser app really is. The only way to find out I guess is to organize a petition. If everyone who is really missing this feature (me included) signs this petition, we can handover the results to Athom. If these numbers are available it’s to Athom to decide if they are willing to listen to their early bird users (many of us are backers of the kickstart project) who made this product even possible.

From an business case view, we do not make any chance i’m afraid. from the moment Athom sells a Homey to a user, that user is not generating revenue through the lifetime of a Homey (they are not earning money for apps). Only when a users sells another product due to the satisfaction of their earlier product this user generate revenue again. in the meanwhile this user only “costs” money (support, software development, etc). The companies who are really benefiting from Homey are the Z-wave, ZigBee, etc manufacturers like Fibaro/Neo. Athom could make (some) apps paid from the appstore, but they should hire employees which costs money, or the should pay developers (Apple AppStore like construction?) Because they are using the support of 50.000 products as a selling point, not (forgot perhaps)mentioning that the support mainly is from apps writen by enthusiasts not paid/rewarded Athom for it.

Sadly for Homey the lifetime of Homey could easily be 5+ years. So it’s a fact that we early bird users and our opinions are not interesting to Athom AT ALL (because not generating revenue). The only risk they are taking is the risk of reputation damage and selling less units due to this damage.

To conclude, if we want to make a joint front to Athom, we need to organize a petition I think. There are plenty of online tools to organize such a petition. I’m NOT initiating this petition (because i’m not that unsatisfied, and aware of my in-importance), but if somebody else does i’m willing to sign it because I also think it would be “new” killer feature to the V2 firmware.

Leon

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