My first experience and oppinion with 2.0

I have. In many respects Fibaro for example is far superior (reliability, built-in apps for heating, alarms, restricted user access, etc.). Sure the UI isn’t as pretty, but at least it works.

However, my observation has nothing to do with home automation competition - it’s relative to normal human beings at home that have some familiarity with consumer applications. Your reference to “tech-impaired people” made me belly laugh! - that is exactly the kind of attitude that allows such poor design to persist and keep products from being successful at scale.

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Never looked into this one (assume you mean Fibaro Home Center?), but right of the bat I see that it has less options with respect to compatible devices (only internet and ZWave), and I don’t see a way to perform automation with it other than writing LUA scripts (automation, not control). (And it’s like 2x Homey’s price)

EDIT: Appears I’m wrong here, looks like you can do basic automation via ‘Magic scenes’

But that’s not a fair comparison. I’m very sure that nobody would say that dairy herding is a high-tech job, or only for the tech-enthousiasts, but you can make it much more technologically complex than the standard herder 10 years ago if you want to (http://www.scrdairy.com/).

Okay, instead of open source projects that are not the actual competition (because Homey isn’t open source, it’s a hardware platform running proprietary software), let’s look at an actual competitor:

$70, supports Zigbee and Z-Wave, has a nice-looking dashboard, has an automations UI, and has a well-enough API so that third-parties can provide a full browser-based automations interface too.

I`m actually thinking of buying Smarthings Hub, just for test, maybe indstead of Homey, who knows…

Same here, it’s cheap enough!

@robertklep

56,99 EUR At Amazon

Looking into this as well but you might want to go for a cheaper 2nd generation if you dont need wifi and the supposedly better range of the 3rd gen. The 3rd gen has a lower CPU of 500 MHz (vs 1 GHz for V2) and lower RAM is 256 MiB (vs 512 MiB for V2). According to Samsung this should not matter but I’m sure they thought the same thing at Athom at some point.

Smart things, wink, Vera, home center are the main competitors. Not home assistant or openhab.

Yes tempting.
You have to add shipping and vat to the pricepoint. Becausr it does not sell in europe.
Still tempting.
The common demeanor in the reviews is: not quite ready for primetime. Add that to the Samsung experience.
And yet still tempting, Just for fun.
But i can’t do it, then i have yet another piece of hardware laying around

As a new user i must say i’m a bit disappointed. I’ve noticed the impact of the upgrade to 2.0 without a desktop controller (not starting a new discussion). My 2019 Homey doesn’t even support voice commands so how does the “when someone says something specific”-card should work then? Left me confused here…

I regret not checking the community first because i decided a long time ago (before people got notice of changes that where coming) to buy a Homey so i still was assuming i would have the same functionality from back then more or less improved since it was a 2nd Gen Homey. I bought my Homey last friday and was spending my whole saturday on figuring out how to obtain a desktop app and get the voice control working (which both obviously has been discontinued after spending some time here). Can you imagine me yelling “Ok Homey…” whole afternoon without zero result? :man_facepalming:t2::man_shrugging:t4:

Clearly all the changes, which created a big fuzz, are partly some kind of strategic commercial move to reach a bigger audience. But as some kind of noob, starting this way with Homey i do think Athom clearly is missing some correct guidance for new users.

If i perhaps missed some details where to get more info then please let me know.
Thanks

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I understand your feeling completely.
To answer above question: This card also works if the speech is handled by a Google Home or a similar device that can work together with Homey.

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I know that now but to do so it requires another investment which i did not think of because i was in a pre-2.0-bubble during my purchase of Homey 2019

Is there any future in Homey integration with Homekit making Siri usefull for voice commands? I saw an option under ‘Experimental’ in the general settings menu.

The Chat function in the App, also “talks” to the voice command input.

edit: See alsso MQTT Gateway

In dutch we would say “Ja, zo lust ik er ook nog wel eentje”

Sending commands through chat is obviously something completely different…

Im on the highway for another solution than Homey, Im concerned of the silence from the guys at Athom…you never hear anything from them, other than there positive things on facebook and there monthly news, for me it is a concern.

You only hear from the moderators of the forum, and a BIG respect for them, those guys are on a difficult mission.

Homey defintly dosen`t got WAF

Hi,
The same experience I have also made with version 2.0.
The new „Flow“-Concept is definitely a step backward.

  • moving or sorting the Flows does not work.
  • The Overview is very poor
  • every App-/Family-User can edit, delete or change my Flows (no Protection)
    @Athom App Developers: please enable the Editing of the Flows on the PC and ensure, that the Flow on the mobile devices are protected to avoid troubles and unnecessary work.
    Thx

Sorry to see you leave,
Thanks for the compliments to the moderators!

I don’t get your issue about the silence,
Athom is a small company and therefore stopped being active on the forum here… already 2 years ago it costed that much time they didn’t make enough progress on coding to read up and respond on the old forum. Therefor it is a community forum by you, me , us… The community! and only in specific occasions Athom will react and ask to contact them using the official channels (support)
They communicate and react on the worries exposed here in there monthly blog behind the magic. But I understand they only react there once and in general while there have been many users / owners reacting here all with there own personal feeling and frustrations where there is or was just one answer.

Translated in my own words: we have heard you, but this is how we see we can survive in this market, this is what we can with our limited resources, this is how we are going to do it…

I have still very good contacts with different Athom employees (and not because of my. Role as moderator only) as I am in the alpha test, and also on slack where I see Athom help Developer’s with coding questions but many things they leave to the community. (And spend time on making homey better)
Although we (in this case me personal vs Athom or one of the employees) don’t agree we can discuss things and in some cases I could convince them and see the results in the final firmware or apps as users get them now.

Only thing regarding the last sentence:
If at my home something isn’t accepted by the gf, she is blaming Homey but I see it as my failure. Not Homey’s fault, but I see it as failure for myself … ( Ok, sometimes I say it was firmware or a bug :rofl: )

I hope you will find some system that suits you and gives enough satisfaction as this should be fun to do, not something that bothers you.

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I don’t think anyone is expecting them to monitor this forum 24/7 and provide solutions for all of the questions here BUT participating a little, maybe 30 minutes a day, in certain topics like the current beta program, or pressing issues would make people feel being part of the development.

Maybe take one hour a month to do a Q&A with the forum answering questions about the current development, roadmap etc. So many little things can be done even by a very small and resource limited team to show a little more contact with its costumers / users

That was nice 3 years ago when 500 - 1000 Homeys where produced and the ~ 100 active Backers had every day contact on the Forum and Slack.

Now you can’t keep up with the current posts with only 30 minutes a day,
Take your time on the Forum here 7 to 10 times and you are on par with an Moderator and they/we don’t read everything … there are moderators that have read ~ 1800 topics and 10 times the number of posts… And we can’t keep up (fe one of us having a read time of 5 days (=5x24h) in the last 60 day’s … Guess he is running on Amstel… )

There has been an Q&A once (on Trello) and many Questions that came in where asked many times. For sure it cost them a lot of time! A lot of questions where answered already but often people didn’t want to hear that answer or just didn’t accept the same answer from the community (repeating the answer that we already had from Athom in other channels)
Some just had questions for their particular situation, That just doesn’t work if you create a product for 10.000’s or 100.000 customers…

I Expect you get more than 10 times more help and response from Athom and the community here than fe the developers of a Hue bridge or Trådfri hub. (But I admit these are much simpler devices)

Athom is just somewhat more protective in the current market, communicating as much as possible only officially thru the Blog Posts. Communicating to much/to early just gives more misconceptions and new questions. Being active here once overwhelms them with new questions, PMs and tagging…
Even the Moderators didn’t get an official statement on the rumors about removed NFC and Mic. the day before the release.

If you have an urgent question that can’t be answered here just user the only official channel and make an support request and share your info.
I am sure Athom does it’s best and even more to make Homey an even bigger success than it already is! And they absolutely want to do that with the community as that helps them a lot!

(OT - BTW: Did you already spot some kind of clone online? Order now have it delivered in ~ 6 months. I forgot the name and link… And I just lost my money on one other Kickstarter that only delivered ~ 50% of the devices now used as paperweight)

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@Dijker

First of all, I´m not leaving, but on the highway to look for other alternatives :slight_smile:

After update to v. 2 I have a eco system that is so unstable, it is useless and can´t be trusted, and it is not about not having web based access or discussions of the app…

Some exsamples:

  • Sensors not working about 30% of times (Fibaro and Aqara)
  • Lights turn on an off (IKEA and Hue)
  • Heating valves (TADO) I had to remove them from Homey to operate as they are intended to
  • Homey often unresponsive
  • Takes sometime up till 2 min. for the App to get info = Frontpage

I do know this a third party developers apps, but I have to see it as one unit, and if it wasen´t for the third party developers, there wouldn´t be a Homey anymore!

And yes, I could just reset the Homey ans start from scatch and see if it helps, but with all devise and flows to build again is scaring :wink:
I could also file a report to Athom, but then again, I just fear I don´t hear anything from them…

And this is where I as a customer comes in, cause when I read what both you a moderators and the developers kicks in with you are reporting back to Athom, and nothing happens, and nothing is published from Athom other than positive things, I get concerned.
I did pay a good amount of money, and I do have some buyers right accordingly to EU laws.

Thats correct and very good, but…it is just always only positive news, this could be a way also to inform about there main issuses also and they are working to solve them, not being pinned out, but just a little line as this:

28-01-201: Issues with Zigbee mesh, we looking into it and trying to find a solution.

In this way, users can see something happen, and know Athom has reconized it, this is the way other companies are doing it.

I respect this, but does Athom hear it??? Thats MY concern

Thats good news and I an in no doubt you and the other moderators are also trying to push to Athom, but information should not come from the moderators, it has to come from Athom.

And this is great they listen, thats a positive thing to hear.

She is always blaming me :wink:

Easy now :slight_smile: I´m just looking for alternatives and still having fun with Homey, just frustrations from the lack of silence :slight_smile:

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