Athom advertises this hub as having IR capabilities. They built the hardware into it to do it and proactively market this feature when trying to sell these things. This feature does not work properly. They should be responsible for ensuring that it at least works as good as a cheap $20 Chinese IR/433Mhz bridge. At the moment those work better than my $600AUD Homey. This is an integrated “feature” of the Hub,. They are ultimately responsible that it works to an acceptable and useable standard …
My Homey is in my lounge room. All my devices are in my lounge room. It doesn’t work with most of them. ?? Sorry but your logic does not make a justification,.
Again, one of the reasons I purchased this Hub was that it’s “meant” to control IR devices and that it’s meant to be an “all in one” solution so you don’t néed to have a tangle of third party hardware bridges…
Everyone’s answer, just go and buy a tangle of third party bridges , not pressure the company into getting the feature (they paid for) to work properly with a simple software upgrade…
And what was the response from Athom ? I mean, u did ask them didn’t u?
Over here we have a “reclame code commissie” . U can complain about stuff not doing as advertised. Don’t u have that in Aussie?
This is one of the problems that are present since years now. Even this topic is started in dec 2018!
But to answer all ur questions in one answer: there is nothing we can do about ur problems, Athom is the only one.
There are several options for u.
Bring it back and say it doesn’t do like advertised and ask ur money back.
Buy some cheap RM mini’s and attach them to Homey, IR WILL work then.
Sell Homey on EBAY and search for another hub that does what u expect. ( this time do some research before u buy something )
These are options brought to u by the community of which we are all part. We are not payed employees from Athom. We are just customers, like u.
And if u wanna pressure Athom to fix things, go email Athom. Again: nothing we ( customers) can do about ur problems.
Isn’t it? They advertise hardware and offer an API to interact with it. It will be pretty hard to convince anyone that it isn’t possible to write a working app for it unless you tried. Retransmitting learnt codes isn’t what they advertise. You should always be wary with advertising not to read more into it than what they are actually saying.
I’m not saying it is nice what they do, but I don’t think your case will stand up in court.
So what is your point then? You say it DOESN’T work and now you say it does, even providing evidence against your own statement.
Same with 433, Z-wave and Zigbee. It DOES work, but not for ALL the devices in the world that exist.
Again, if you need it to work with some of your devices that are not supported (yet), build an app for it.
And maybe you don’t know or realize it, but it works the same with Fibaro, Zipatile, Smartthings, Vera, Hubitat and all other hard & software systems out there. Owned them all and they all have the same problem in some way.
So, my honest advise is: Sell Homey, buy one of the other brands and go scream in their community. Then end up buying the same IR extender of hub that are already mentioned here. It’s your choice.
@PetervdK Before buying Homey I had tried in the past other systems including jeedom (software), domoticz and Smartthings and they all have their own problems. None of them are perfect, “smarthome state of art” is today far from being perfect.
From all I have tested before I must admit that the one I like most is Homey (around 4 months since I bought it). It is compatible with many different protocols, the interface is nice and it is quite flexible and powerful.
Having said this, I partially understand what @Russell_S says. IR capabilites don’t work well, learning IR capabilities don’t work and certain official APPs like LG IR doesn’t work at all. Due to the nature of the issue and the high impact I would personally expect this to be improved. Not all of us are great programmers and can manage to build APPs, something a standard user would not expect to have to do when buying a device.
However, i don’t agree to the 'high impact" phrase. IR is working, 433 is working. The whole discussion mainly involves the exprimental learning function and the lack of devices that can be used.
Zigbee not working or a flimsy Z-wave range, that IS high impact because it involves 99+% of the users. Not just the ones that complain about an experimental learning part that is long known to be inconsistent to not working at all.
@PetervdK I agree that IR might be working even if for any of my devices doesn’t except if I build an APP myself (LG TV, air conditioning,…) but I would not call LG IR official APP as experimental learning functions but something I would expect to work out of the box. At the time I bought Homey I saw the APP and I thought my LG TV would work, something it doesn’t.
I don’t agree that IR is not a very important functionality. It might depend on the user, in my case it is (eg. controlling TV allows me to have a better control over my children usage of the TV from what I get from basic parental TV control which is normally difficult to handle together with other external smart TV devices I have, also for security reasons simulating someone is at home when you left,…).
Regarding the zigbee and especially zwave range I agree it is a big issue since the range is ridiculous comparing with any other smarthome device and even with usb sticks.
In my case I managed to get stable range -for both zigbee and zwave- adding a couple of plugged devices in the right place (4 floors house + garden, so not easy even with the right range). Someone might argue that adding devices have a cost, complexity and getting too many devices that might be located in a place you prefer to leave free, which I may agree. Same reason I have for not wanting to buy additional IR devices.
The problems have existed for years. 2) Plenty of people have already complained and have emailed them . 3) They are well aware of the issues 4) They promised they would fix it years ago but have never touched it. It would be totally pointless in me trying to contact them .
In short Athom do not care… A polite email will do nothing …
I haven’t asked any questions or have asked the Homey community to fix my problems. I did say Athom is ultimately responsible.
What we can do (as a group) is put public pressure on them to do something about it (plus deal with a few other outstanding issues). Companies respond far more to bad or negative press than polite emails… Don’t get me wrong, sending requests via email is alway my first default action but in this case the system is 5 years old now, they know about the problems , they have admitted the issue but simply refuse to touch it. Time for more affirmative action … Be vocal and keep bring it up… They say they don’t read the forum I can tell you they do…
As a last resort I can by a bridge but I bought this product for a lot money as it said it could perform these features. Also I really want a simplified all in one system which with less things to worry about…That is one of then main reasons I purchased the Homey system. It’s all centralised into one unit. That is why many people buy them. I can either give in and spend more money and add an extra bridge to compensate for Homeys failure to do what it was advertised to do, or I can put public pressure on Athom to get these things fix … I chose the later,
Thanks for your input though. You seem more reasonable than some of the others in the thread …
You are technically correct in that Athom “don’t” advertise it as having code learning.
The problem is that all IR/433Mhz bridges have code learning . It’s pretty much a standard feature. It’s reasonable for a consumer to expect it to have that functionality … It sort of crazy not to expect it… All IR/433Mhz bridges do it…
As a comparison, say you go out and buy a brand new car. The car is advertised as having door locks… You get it home to discover that door locks are physically inside the doors but they don’t actually work and you can’t actually lock the car. You complain about this but you just get the response . Ahhh… but they didn’t advise it as being lockable…
All cars on the market are lockable . It is reasonable to assume this when you buy one. Same with code learning. I shouldn’t have to read the fine print or find out after purchase that these features don’t properly work.
That combined with the nature of IR and 433Mhz device’s (If you have ever had experience with them) not having code learning basically makes the system useless. You really need it with this stuff.
Homey mostly just try’s to rely on an IR database (that’s out of date) . It technically does have IR code learning but this is buried away) and is broken so I don’t consider it as existing.
Considering the fact that there are millions of IR/433Mhz products on the market (especially generic Chinese gear) it is virtually impossible to reliably keep or maintain a database which can always be fully up to date. It’s impossible to achieve (especially for a small company) and was a very bad business strategy on Athom’s part…
Don’t get me wrong though, im not opposed to Homey actually having an IR data base, but to just solely rely on a database “only” and not have proper code learning capability’s as a fall back is absolute madness…
That is also another thing that really needs attention.
I can partly forgive Athom as the Zigbee standard is a bit of “a dogs breakfast” as we call it in Australia and is very hard to deal with, but I am very disappointed with the antennae hardware that Athom use.
These have been in production for what , 5 years now. At what point did they know about the poor antenna performance of them and at what point “could” they have simply fitted a better set of antennas… What would the cost be ? Maybe an extra 10 cents for a larger length of wire …This does show their overall attitude. You can see why I’m so fired up…
It’s been 5 years now. It’s a known thing. Athom admitted that it needs fixing a couple of years ago. I’d say enough people have emailed them. After this amount of time emails OBVIOUSLY have not worked.
Despite what people think Athom do read this forum. The notion that they don’t is nuts. Of course they do… If emails don’t work then the next step is to place public pressure on them. Like I said before companies only react when they receive negative press. If thiskeeps getting mentioned and people keep being vocal about it then things will get done…
Emailing has not worked… That is a sad fact I’m afraid…
No i don’t. I see a person that is willing to type miles of useless text fulminating about a device and a company, insult other community members willing to think with you and you dont even bother to contact the company itself asking if they could help.
Again, sell it and buy something else. Or accept this and stop nagging.
You don’t want any help, you just want to whine and nag.
They didn’t force you to to use it for 5 years while you were not satisfied, did they?
So maybe you start point a finger at yourself for being so stupid.
End of discussion for me, i won’t react anymore because it’s a total waste of time.
I have a Rinnia Aircondioner… It’s 3 years old. It does not work with Homey. It’s not listed on the IR database. I tried to get Homey to learn the code for the ON/OFF button on the remote but that also does not work. Is there any advice you could give me on how I can get my system to work like yours ?
As said before in this thread look before you buy if an app is available. I use Samsung tv with IR and the Entone tv box. Works fine. Homey is standing below this.
I’m not sure if this is the best place, but I can’t seem to get my IR output to work at all. Receiving commands and learning from my remotes does work, pretty well actually. The interface is a bit flimsy, but nothing I can’t work with, but the problem is with emitting. Nothing reacts and when using my phone’s camera I do not see anything either. I saw some other people saying that the pro early 2019 model has low range but I have no range. I also tried it literally a couple of cm from the receiver but nothing.
This seems to me like my IR emitting is not functional at all, not just limited functionality. Any thoughts?
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…This does show their overall attitude. You can see why I’m so fired up…
