My first experience and oppinion with 2.0

Off-Topic
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Hi,

I’ve been very critical about the 2.0 update up front, especially about the lacking web interface and desktop support. I’m not trying to start a discussion on that and will not make any remarks on that from here.

Now that I updated my Homey to 2.0 yesterday, I must say that I have very mixed feelings. The way it was ‘advertised’, was that it was ‘Homey as it was meant to be’ and the best thing that ever happend to Homey.

Disclaimer: The following is solely my personal opinion and view, which I feel I have to expose due to the fact I have been complaining a lot :slight_smile: :

As an end-user of the Homey system, I must say that I don’t really see what all the fuss is about. I am certain that ‘under water’ the entire system has been recreated, but in practice, functionally very little has changed that I can see.

I find the app aesthetically nice. I like the way it looks in general but it also feels ‘unfinished’ for me.

The home tab:
It feels use-impared at best for an end-user (a timeline that shows app updates? Seriously? Nice for the ‘Homey admin’ but for the rest of the family?)
Favourite devices. Can be useful, if you have a lot of devices and only want a to manually manage a few of them on a frequent basis.
Favourite flows. Nice in theory, but the fact that they stack vertically makes them ‘use-impared’ at best.

The Devices tab:
A bit cumbersome and you can’t change the order in which the devices are shown. Also no option to hide devices from the view makes it less useful. (I don’t think I want to always see a wall-switch. A hue bulb more so). Also the default view of ‘Home’ (including all zones) may not be the most practical due to the amount of unfiltered devices.
I would like to see more info on some of the devices (set and actual temperature on thermostats etc) I like the ‘history-overview’ of each device. Not sure how practical it is in practice, but I can emagine it can be useful to have at times.

The flows tab:
This is my biggest dissapointment. This list of flows is completely useles for an ‘in a glance’ overview. Filtering on a ‘directory’ makes it slightly better, though the fact that you can’t change the order of the directories or flows is really poor design in my view.
Creating a flow is quite okay. Simple and more intuitive than I expected on a mobile device. Looking at the contents of a flow is horrible. The fact that you can’t see the entire flow (If, And and Then/Else) is VERY bad.

The more tab:
This tab looks completely unlike the rest of the app. Especially the Settings part. It is functional, but looks kind of bland, but normallyl you don’t have anything to do there, so, so be it.
Some ‘personal’ settings (which push messages you want) can only be changed for the admin user. The rest of the family doesn’t have any say in what is pushed to them.

Insights
In short: Nice. I’m not entirely sure how I will use it (if I would at all), but it’s nice to have an overview I suppose. I can see some practical use cases for it (maybe not for me personally, but for other people, definiately)

Footnote:
I have the feeling the responsiveness of my managed hardware fluctuates more, sometimes it’s faster/slower than other times. This seems to be ‘worse’ than with the 1.5 firmware, but it may be in my head. I’ll see if my family complains about it.

Lastly:
As I wrote, I was very critical on the road Athom has taken. In general the mobile interface isn’t as bad as I expected, but I am also very unimpressed with it. I would have liked to see it’d be released in a more intuitive manner. Of course it’s a ‘getting used to it’ thing and it probably will get better, but they have taken so incredibly long, and this is what they came up with. Let’s just say, I’m not impressed :slight_smile:

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I can agree with you about a lot of what you are writing. I hope for improvements in the near future and. My wife does not need to see al of this so the option of hiding things should be a great improvement. also horizontal stacks are in my humble opinion quite useless.
I still hope that in the near future someone will create an app that you can use, creating flows. Already miss the desktop app just for creating flows. (not starting the discussion again)

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Same here, I agree with above posters. I was more content with the PC application in combination with the preview app on android than this “major” 2.0 update.

I find that you have to be somewhat carefull when scrolling through the devices. Yesterday I accidently managed more of a push than a scroll and turned off my WiFi router when I wasn’t at home. Without the WiFi on, I couldn’t connect anymore obviously until I came back home.

I know I could set it to “always on”, but that seems just a workaround for an issue instead of a cool new feature.

Also the tile are pretty big, especially on a tablet so why not have them display some info, e.g. the temperature on a temp sensor.

I’m curious what the new history/insights" will show. Before I used to export the data to Excel, I hope this will be possible in the future?

Also, wasn’t 2.0 the version which would allow to backup the config, or is that in one of the next updates?

Overall, I’m dissapointed. You hyped it so hard, and while it maybe true major stuff has been updated under the hood, the UI is “meh” at best.

Regards,
Dennis

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Hi Guys,

@Athom, keep up the good work !

First of all I mainly agree as well with the posters above !
But, I think the app has a very good potential, we need to be careful not to bash but keep it positive and give them good feedback ! I think most of the comments you guys described is what will come eventually.
I’m VERY pleased they keep putting effort in Homey not like other homedomotic controllers who basically bleed to death.
A lot has changed but we as users don’t see it, we (as basic users) only see the UI app and yes some things don’t feel finished yet.

My future suggestions for the V2.1.etc… should be:

  • Homescreen - Make it so that one can select what he wants to see ( like only favorite devices ) personly I don’t care about timeline
    - no horizontal scrolling

  • Devices tab - Make tiles hide-able
    - Make tiles resizable or different variants or selectable info you want to see on it (like the sliders directly)

  • Athom Website - https://www.athom.com/nl/homey/inzichten/ there is no link where you can find the insides
    You can only find this info https://blog.athom.com/homey-v2-0-wat-is-er-nieuw/?lang=nl

Maybe this post should be on the forum category “IDEAS & SUGGESTION”

With kind regards,

Dave

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Insights is here to be found… https://insights.athom.com/

Only thing about insights that is missing is the presence of the users in my opinion…

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Thank you Joep I know i was just pointing out that the webside is not yet updated :wink:

But I made a new post on the Suggestions and Ideas forum so people can add there ideas

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I agree that the app has potential yes.The base-idea is okay, but the state it is implemented in does not do justice to a ‘2.0’ version if you ask me. It would be a 1.8/1.9. Especially the vast amount of time Athom has put into it and the ballyhoo it.

Absolutely. Given that what they say is true it’s a complete rewrite of the entire Homey system. However. We buy a Homey because of the advertised simplicity and usability. We could also have put down the exact same amount of money and install Home Assistant/Domoticz/Whatever on a pi with a few antenna’s.
The GUI is something that makes Homey unique in it’s product type, so that part should be ‘good’ at least and not ‘half-made’.

Maybe it’s just me, but I have a really big “Is this it? Is this what they came up with after all this time?”-feeling

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Just one very simple question… Do lightwaverf wireless devices work yet?

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Version numbers can be used in a variety of ways - purely as a marketing tool ‘Word 95’ was actually Word 7 - but because the number was so much less then Word Perfect they upped it to 95.

Used to set expectations to end users, ie. a minor change which changes the look and feel might be a version bump.

Technically a version bump is introduced to show that the version introduces breaking changes. (google SEMVER).

Ive personally done a version bump when there just has been a HEAP of work and changes into the core in order to easy differentiate between what app users are on.

So … if you are introducing all of the above … v2.0

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Hey all,

Again i agree with what is being said in regards to some of the items that need to be polished off.

What @Athom have released is pretty great for a mobile app i have found it pretty sweet already that i can do changes on the fly but agree when i look at some of my more busy flows it was much nicer to look at on my computer screen compared to my phone, If a web interface or app comes back again that will be awesome.

The work they have done is very noticeable for me, the old app was super slow to load my devices etc the new app is with in a fraction of the time it used to take and i can see everything so that is a huge benefit for myself.

Home
I think the likes of the time line etc would be better if you could collapse it and expand it allowing you to have more room for your favorite devices etc as the icons are large so the more room they have the better it would be or have the ability to shrink the tiles
Devices
This should either remember what view you last chose or at least go to the filtered view of home whats the point of putting devices in folders to then have them shown in one huge list, Also as what Dave mentioned it would be good to get details on the tile e.g my temp sensor show me the current temp with out having to go into the device.
Flows
Flows i like but its more that i would like to still be able to view them on a large screen but what is in the app is pretty great!
More
This makes sense but not exactly sure why settings is all the way at the bottom and not just in the list with Apps Alarms and Logic ?
Settings
There is some improvements that would be good to see,
Privacy - before we used to be able to set the radius of the presence but this seems to not be an option any more you just turn it on ?
Integrations - the screens do not actually represent what is happening e.g Alexa is connected but the app just shows the same message connect to Alexa

I really think its all come a long way since the first design and its all looking great so i hope all the people who have worked on this don’t feel disheartened with some of this feedback!!
We all want this to just keep getting better !

Thanks Matt

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@Matt20v posting your post in multiple threads is naughty.

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That was an easy check:
https://community.homey.app/search?q=lightwaverf

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I thought the other section was where suggestions should go and this was more of a discussion. !

I can delete it if needed !

Cheers

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I can come in to that. I’ll just see version 1.7 alpha 10 for myself then as it isn’t feature complete yet. (Besides: Word 95 was a product name, not version 95 of Word :slight_smile: )

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Hey what ever makes you sleep better at night.

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Aside from starting the first two items in that list! i’m not sure I could’ve done it without you bvdbos!!

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Touchez. My apologies for my childish reponse.

But I’m curious. Do you really think that what Athom has provided, warrents a ‘v2’ from a pure functional perspective? Maybe I’m just too critical (I know I can be), but it’s just that this product has so much potential, but the company behind it just doesn’t seem to do it logical to me. They’re focussing on the wrong things from my view.

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From a pure functional perspective, I do think it warrents a v2. Simply being able to make the flows on the mobile app is enough to give it a version upgrade IMO, irrespective on the other parts of the app, and irrespective on whether or not you like it.

Next, I think Athom does focus on the correct things for Homey. Simply put, I think the main current problems on the forum boil down to a single issue: the people that have a Homey are tech-enthousiasts, while Homey is made for non-tech-enthousiasts.
If you look at all popular smart home devices (Google Home, Amazon Echo series, Apple Homekit, etc), they have 1 thing in common: they are incredibly limited in what they can do. The reason they are limited is because this simplifies the end-user experience. None of those devices are made to be completely customizable (heck, you can’t even send custom HTTP requests from any of them, which they all support), but they are made so that anyone can use them.

This is what Athom wants to achieve with Homey, but with the added benefit that tech-enthousiasts like you and me can get more out of it. I believe that if you have this in the back of your mind, all design choices make sense. The app needs to look and feel nice, a press of a button should do something, all devices should be listed, and flows should be able to be made anywhere, by anyone, on the devices that are most popular: mobile devices (keep in mind that none of the big smart devices have desktop apps due to this same reason: phones are everywhere and used by everyone, desktops aren’t anymore).

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Amen.

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Thank you for your complete reply :slight_smile:

I can partially agree with you on the basics, but where you see it as an added value to be able to manage your Homey stuff via a Android or Apple phone (too bad for Windows phone owners), I see it as a limitation that it’s only possible via a phone, but that’s just my perspective. I can’t look into the head of non-tech enthusiasts and if the majority of that group would see this as a limitation and/or if they would dislike it or not.

My problem with Athom’s focus, is that it appears they are trying to add more and more and more features, rather than getting the basics to a ‘great level’ (For example being unable to change order of flows/devices/zones/rooms as a small/silly example) before adding new features. (Of course a balance is required, but from my perspective that balance is way off)

As for all the other assistants, I have no idea what they can do more or less than Homey in regards to controlling certain items in your house. They of course lack zigbee/zwave/433 antennas, but for the web controlled stuff I have no idea.

Both Google and Amazon have an APIs and webhooks you can poke into (no custom HTTP-requests, per say, but it can be quite powerful from what I understand from it. I’m not sure about Apple (though I suspect that Apple probably won’t allow it without actively interfering with it :slight_smile: )
I have no idea how forthcoming they are as the method that Athom has created for Homey, but it is there.

As for the design of the app, it looks ‘nice’, but it doesn’t feel very functional due to the limitation/decisions I wrote in my opening post. (why would I want to see the ‘wall button’, that functionally does nothing in the app (other than, if you press-hold it, show that it can’t be managed, it’s good that it’s there of course, but I can’t hide it from my overview for day-to-day usage)

That’s absolutely true, but all the big smart devices have a singular function (be it a washing machine, thermostat or a perfume dispensor), Homey is a Smart Devices hub on which you can ‘automate everything’. There’s a big difference in that.
I’m not saying it’s a bad thing Homey can be managed by an Android phone or Apple phone, but limiting it to those two doesn’t feel very good. (being able to switch on/off the lights from the couch is quite handy even, but creating a whole series of flows is a very tedious job to do on a phone, at least in the way it is implemented now). This even counts for the Google Home/Amazon Echo type stuff. They have singular functions (talk to it, they do a single action), you don’t customize their functionality.

At any rate. We clearly disagree on this subject :slight_smile: which is good. Keeps everyone on their toes :slight_smile:

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