Athom announced Homey Cloud and Homey Bridge

I did hear Google Home and Alexa for Homey Cloud in the Keynote.

Is HomeKit support beeing devveloped as its is for Homey Pro? (And if yes is it soon out of beta? Cause it not great as off now.)

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Interesting move, was already curious what they wereworking on. I think most of us don’t benefit from this only that there will be more and more users in the future, maybe faster updates. More developers (despite the e99 a year…ouch).
Don’t know if this is a good thing or not, perhaps they will get greedy and get a taste of that subscription based nonsense and stab everyone in the back.

Either way, it wouldve been nice to use the bridge as an extender for the Homey Pro, easy way to sell a few more items.

Now it is time to make a tablet-like homey which runs some kickass dashboard software.

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Strange product!

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Is there a new Homey Pro or is it still the 2019 ?
The backup sub remain the same ?

I very much doubt that the Bridge can support HomeKit. Homey’s HomeKit support was written in an afternoon because an Athom developer thought that they could write a better product than any of the HomeKit apps that already existed at the time. It’s a minimal implementation so they can say that “Homey supports HomeKit out of the box!”.

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This might not be the place but I guess communitiys is for help AND discussions as well.

Why Homey Cloud - whats dos it offer Alexa or Google Home dos not have. It comes with an subscription, no voice-assistent and a smaller platform. Is it the privacy that makes it a deal over the compertission?

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So I guess I am not the only one thinking: “Homey now support HomeKit” - is a bit over selling it!

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Guess you are not the target audience for Homey Cloud, probably you are better suited with a Homey Pro.

No, still the same Pro now.
No changes to backup either.

After several emails trying to lure me into watching the key note, the push notification I got from the Homey app finally triggered my curiousity. Looked like Homey had some big news for me, as a Homey Pro owner.

First they told me I paid way too much for my device (which I by the way do not even agree with). Then they told me a cloud version would be very good. Fully depending on an internet connection and availability of the cloud service. No thank you.

I do understand Athons decision to make something cheaper with a (almost required) cloud subscription. It is a good business model.
But I don not see why they wanted me to see that :grinning:

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Yes, yes, yes, yes, no, no, no, no, no

But I guess a Tesla driver van afford a Homey Pro :joy:

That is the state of apps available for Homey Cloud at this time.

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Just watched the keynote.

These guys know how to make things visual and market stuff but…

  • why invite existing customers to a keynote and tell them that they bought an product that is to expensive (while the normal homey is limited by its hardware).

  • why did i get the feeling these guys are seeking investors and are trying to be bigger then they are.

  • the subscription / cloud based solution was the next logical step in a wrong path they stepped in when they remove the local ui.

  • why did they feel the need to give developers the finger.

As kickstarter homey owner this is just the next disapointment.

We went from a privacy friendly, local hosted voice controlled home automation solution to an internet dependent ikea hub /Philips bridge copy with some extra entannas in 7 years.

Yes i still like homey (the original) as a product. Yes i like the open api. And yes I do understand that there is more money to be made by a cheap, well looking subscription based device as an expensive piece of hardware.

But sadly i also know that when not If amazon, Google get there bridge out, there is no market for athom.

I think they hope to become the next nest and Will be bought by one of the big 5.

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By recreating them after moving the devices from Homey Pro to Homey Cloud.
But I have no idea why someone with a Homey would like to do that.

The Bridge is automatically backup-ed, removing a Bridge and replacing automatically restores the Zigbee, Z-wave pairings and RF / Ir information.

Can the bridge learn / send ir commands like the Harmony Hub?

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So no limits on apps with the Bridge? I.e. you can run 100 apps without slowing down?

Not yet found, I installed ALL now for Homey Cloud available 48 Apps without an issue.
I have to say I didn’t have enough spare devices to test all apps.

No, Learning IR codes is an Homey (Pro) Experiment.
Experiments are not available. but the available DB is Huge.

Honestly I am pretty confused and I think Athom is making a big mistake here. There are various perspectives:

  • existing users aka the entire community as it is now: there are absolutely zero benefits. If you think a little further there are even drawbacks. Athom clearly focuses on “mainstream” users which most likely applies to none of the existing users. It also brings even more fragmentation: we now have the official app store and the community store but the official app store will now split into two. Don’t buy the marketing bla, for most of the current apps it will not be possible to run in the cloud even if the devs would be willing to pay (check the technical doc). It basically feels like current users are now second class customers
  • new “mainstream” users: what exactly is the benefit of homey bridge? Can it compete with Home Kit, Alexa and Google now? If you just have a few devices they are likely from the same vendor so you do not need Homey Bridge. If you have a more complex setup Homey Bridge won’t be enough and the price point of the pro is irrelevant anyway because you already spent a lot more for the devices anyways. Also the price point is quiet high if you consider the monthly due amount and what you get it for, considering Athom calls this a price sensitive customer group I doubt this will generate lots of new users
  • devs: why the hell should you pay just to get into the cloud store?!? I mean at the end the 99 bucks are for nothing else. Also the cloud variant is veeeery limited according to the docs so most apps that do just a little more than providing a Ble, Zigbee or Z-Wave driver will not make it ever into the cloud.

Let’s see what the future brings, but personally this is going in the wrong directio

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According to the docs homey bridge does not support web api at all!

Homey Cloud does not have support for App Web APIs. While this means that you cannot expose a complete REST API you can still receive Webhook updates. Read the Webhooks documentation to learn more.

No local control is the killer of this product.
Anything requiring internet is a no go.
Maintenance or Internet down = no home control.

Look at smartthings. Fell down the toilet.
Homey Bridge is Smartthings 2.0 with less power and capabilities.

Don’t understand why Athom did not release a Homey 2.0 with upgraded hardware and capabilities. Most of the install base is smart people with knowledge.

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