Query: Does someone have a way to use their web-based GUI while offline? Aka, not using their cloud?
Explanation: I’d like to be able to use the interface found at my.homey.app but completely offline with my local device within’ my local network, I need to be able to manage the “advanced flows” which you can’t do with the mobile app. This topic seems to get raised in some different forms with slightly different names/purposes.
I have a new single Homey 2023 Pro and things are going pretty well. I find it a lot easier to work with than Home Assistant. I’m fairly competent as an engineer by trade and I’ve found I don’t have the free time necessary to setup, manage and maintain HA. I want things to “just work” but also to be flexible enough for me to program some custom conditional logic into things and support for all my devices for both now and the immediate foreseeable future. Homey really fits the bill so far.
I ask this because I don’t want to be reliant on the company to keep existing, I worry that in a few years the company goes under and I’m completely hosed. I want to plan for the future, for at least 5 if not more years. I want to do this and not worry about this company going out of business in a few years and their cloud based app going offline and being completely wrecked by not being able to manage my own device any more since all my flows will be Advanced Flows with reasonably complex logic in them.
Is there any plans to support this? Can I do a simple curl/wget mirror of the my homey site and hack the JS and self-host it on a local NAS to manage my local Homey(s)? Is there some plan or way to embed this web based interface on the Homey directly locally so it can be fully featured without cloud? It feels like bait-and-switch that for any level of complexity Homey HAS to be linked with and communicate with the cloud. That feels really scuzzy.
Thanks folks. Sorry if this has been answered elsewhere I’ve searched and just don’t have a clear answer of this yet.
What if the company disappears. How would you utilize community apps offline, etc.
I rem when SmartThings almost went under and then I think Samsung bought it. Was a very troubling time and transition. I quickly grew to hate that platform.
I was just reading a bit about HA. I guess that’s the advantage there is that it’s open source… hmmm
Long ago the UI was actually hosted on Homey itself and the device was really usable offline, but at some point (firmware v2.0 I think) a lot of stuff was moved to the cloud, including authentication and discovery. In theory, Homey (Pro) can run offline for a short while (until the authentication token expires), but in practice it depends on Athom cloud services (even though Homey is marketed with “Everything Local” ). And that’s only if you were already authenticated; if not, Homey will just not be usable offline.
I doubt the my.homey.app UI will ever be shipped as part of the firmware, for the simple reason that it’s an eternal WIP and shipping an embedded version means for every change a new firmware needs to be published.
IMO Homey is a cloud-dependent home automation platform, and I don’t want such a dependency, so it’s one of the reasons I moved to Home Assistant some time ago.
Yes, as it is advertised as “everything local” there should be at least a restricted possibility to run and maintain it without internet access.
That was one of the major reasons I spent a fortune on this tool.
Yeah, I will definitely send in my thoughts to them as well. The tag-line of Homey is “Everything local” which is clearly not true. At the least, false advertising. Hearing that they “used” to have this feature also makes it feel like a bait-and-switch as well that they’re regressing backwards.
I’m extremely not okay with this situation and with the advertising of a product which can’t do what it claims to be able to do.
I’m sorry to hear that the wording around the always up part is confusing. It is indeed true that even without internet the Homey Pro itself will continue executing all automations you’ve made and will work offline indefinitely. However, access to the device to change things does indeed require an internet connection. This is so that authorisation tokens can be updated to verify the user is who he says he is. These should work up to a maximum of 14 days after losing the internet connection.
So if you have spotty internet that is intermittent this should not be causing any issues, since you need contact only once to refresh these tokens again. So if you have an unstable connection Homey Pro should always work and be accessible. If you have no internet at all than you will not be able to change the flows/devices on the device, but everything already on it will keep running indefinitely.
I hope this clarifies the always up statement on the website, that this means that Homey Pro will continue to work and do the things you’ve told it to, even during prolonged internet outages.
That is clarifying but not satisfying.
At least it seams that you only need a short connection to the internet every two weeks.
I did not check. Hopefully it works.
The more people complain with Athom the better is the chance that we get a solution, probably “at your own risk, if activated”
Having authentication for a local device in the cloud is not “absolutely necessary”, so perhaps if people point Athom at their own marketing BS #wishfulthinking
As long as we are forced to use my.homey.app to see the interface it’s cloud based.
This should be “easily” fixed by allowing users to see the interface via local IP and have the option to use local logins.
Not that I don’t like the idea to have also Authentication and the (AF) Web interface local…
But I think “We” are only < 5 % who want that and there is only ~< 0.1% who make it an Issue…
So #wishfulthinking but maybe in 5 years the next HP29 has an option like an Intel NUC with everything Local / autonomous running… But I don’t expect it …
Would already be happy if they still exist and keep innovating / providing updates to the current Homey Pro ecosystem.
It seems completely unnecessary to me that authentication for a purportedly “everything local” device happens on a cloud server, and it introduces a level of indirection that can only cause problems (ask anyone that gets a “Homey offline” message while their Homey is working just fine).
I guess that we’ll just have to ask that ~<0.1% when Athom or AWS suffers a major outage and nobody is able to access their Homey anymore.
). And that’s only if you were already authenticated; if not, Homey will just not be usable offline.
