[APP][Pro][SHS] Data Pulse — Know when your Homey data stops arriving

Apps
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Data Pulse

Know when your Homey data stops arriving.

Formerly Data Watchdog
Starting with v0.1.2, the app was renamed to Data Pulse to better reflect its focus on data freshness and reliable delivery. Existing monitors, devices and Flows remain compatible.

Data Pulse monitors the Homey data sources that matter to you and warns when expected activity or fresh data stops arriving.

The important difference is that Data Pulse does not assume that an unchanged measurement means something is wrong. A temperature can stay at 21.3 °C for hours while the sensor is working perfectly.

Instead, you choose what actually counts as proof that a source is still alive and delivering correctly.

How does it work?

Data Pulse supports three monitoring methods:

Device activity

Checks whether Homey has seen the device recently.

This works well for devices that regularly report activity even when their measurements do not change.

Last data received

Uses a field whose value itself contains the time when fresh data was received.

For example, an integration may expose a last updated or last received timestamp that moves forward every time new data arrives.

A normal measurement such as temperature, CO₂ or power usage is not treated as a timestamp, and Homey’s lastUpdated metadata is not used as a substitute.

Flow confirmation

A Homey Flow explicitly tells Data Pulse that an update was successfully delivered.

This is useful for integrations or custom sources where you know exactly when delivery succeeded.

The confirmation should follow a real successful update. A repeating timer by itself is not proof that the source is working.

Simple setup

Adding monitors is deliberately kept compact:

Add monitor → choose a method → select one or more devices → set the timing → add monitors

The selected devices can share the same timing, while individual devices can still be adjusted when necessary.

Nothing is monitored automatically. You decide which sources are important enough to watch.

Incidents and recovery

Data Pulse does more than report individual stale sources.

If several monitored sources from the same integration stop reporting around the same time, they can be correlated into one integration incident.

Recovery is also handled deliberately: fresh updates must remain stable before an incident is closed. This helps avoid repeated stale/recovered notifications when a source is unstable.

Homey Flows

Data Pulse provides Flow cards for individual sources, integration incidents and general Data Pulse incidents.

For example:

WHEN

  • Data Pulse incident started
  • Data Pulse incident recovered
  • Monitored source stopped updating
  • Monitored source recovered

You decide yourself what happens next: push notification, Timeline message, another Flow, or nothing at all.

There are also conditions and actions for checking monitored sources and for explicitly confirming successful delivery.

Local test source

Data Pulse includes an optional Data Pulse Test Source (simulation).

It can safely generate test updates locally so you can verify:

  • stale detection
  • recovery
  • notification Flows
  • Device activity
  • Last data received
  • Flow confirmation

It does not control or modify your production devices.

Supported Homeys

Data Pulse currently requires a platform v2 Homey running Homey 12.9.0 or later:

  • Homey Pro (Early 2023)
  • Homey Pro mini
  • Homey Pro (2026)
  • Homey Self-Hosted Server

Older local Homey models using platform Version 1 and Homey Cloud are currently not supported.

Privacy and local operation

Data Pulse runs locally on your Homey.

There is no Data Pulse cloud backend and no external service collecting your device data.

The app uses Homey’s local API to inspect the devices and integrations required for the monitors you configure.

Because of this, the app requires the homey:manager:api permission.

Test version

The current version is available through the Homey Test channel:

Data Pulse is currently going through App Store certification.

Source code and documentation

Data Pulse is developed publicly on GitHub:

The repository contains the source code, user guide, architecture documentation, self-test documentation and issue tracker.

The software is licensed under GPL-3.0-only. The Data Pulse name and visual branding remain separate from the software license.

Feedback and support

Questions, experiences and ideas are very welcome in this topic.

For reproducible bugs or technical issues, GitHub Issues is the best place:

Data Pulse is built around real-world use, so practical feedback is especially useful.

:hot_beverage: Support development

Data Pulse is a free community project developed in my spare time.

If you find it useful and would like to support the time and resources that go into development, testing and maintenance, a donation is always appreciated.

Support Arrow87:

Donations are completely optional and do not unlock features or support.

2

Seems similar to:

3

Thanks! There is definitely some overlap, especially around detecting devices that stop reporting.

Data Watchdog takes a slightly different approach: it focuses specifically on proving that fresh data or device activity is still arriving. A monitor can use Homey’s last-seen activity, a real delivery timestamp, or an explicit heartbeat. It also correlates multiple stale devices from the same source into an integration-level incident.

I mainly built it because I wanted to distinguish “the value hasn’t changed” from “the source has actually stopped delivering data”, while keeping the setup understandable for less technical users.

4

Formerly Data Watchdog — renamed to Data Pulse from v0.1.3.

Data Watchdog is now Data Pulse

A small name change, but quite a lot has happened behind it :slightly_smiling_face:

After the first App Store review I got in touch with Rick, the developer of Device Watchdog. We ended up comparing both apps much more deeply than I initially expected — including actually using them and looking at the architecture behind them.

That discussion made the distinction between the two apps much clearer.

Device Watchdog is built around broad, automatic device monitoring: install it, monitor the environment, and fine-tune where necessary.

Data Pulse takes the opposite approach. You deliberately choose the sources that matter to you and decide what actually proves that they are still delivering correctly: device activity, a real “last data received” timestamp, or confirmation from a Flow.

The old Data Watchdog name made the apps sound much more alike than they really are, so I decided to rename the app to Data Pulse.

The conversation with Rick has been genuinely useful in both directions. His feedback confirmed something I had already started running into myself: the original setup was technically correct but simply too cumbersome. That has now been redesigned as:

  • choose the monitoring method;
  • select one or more devices;
  • set the timing once;
  • only override individual devices when necessary.

The Settings interface has also had a fairly substantial overhaul, English/Dutch localization is now complete, the Flow cards have been cleaned up, and selection of “Last data received” fields is much safer.

Under the hood the app is still the same app. Existing monitors, devices and Flows remain compatible; the technical Homey app ID has deliberately not changed.

Version 0.1.3 is now available as a Test build while I prepare the new App Store submission.

Test version:

And thanks to Rick for the constructive discussion. This is pretty much the outcome I hoped for: two different tools for different use cases, with both developers able to learn something from the other one. :slightly_smiling_face: