Is it worth buying the Homey pro or mini when you can get the cloud service for around 10 years on the same price including a bridge? & i assume the cloud will also include any updates & new features. Anyone using the cloud & happy with it? Or are there any downsides to the service?
The downside is primarily the community apps. You would be missing community apps on Homey Cloud. If you only have devices supported by official Homey apps, Homey Cloud is a good system though for its price.
Other downsides to the cloud solution include:
- It’s the cloud, if your internet goes down your smart home becomes dumb as a brick.
- The Homey Bridge isn’t a Thread Border Router, so you can’t use Matter o/ Thread devices without buying an external Thread Border Router, which the Pro is.
- Response times will be slower with all data having to traverse the internet out to a remote server, and then make the trip back again to be acted on
It’s a cheaper starting point for a lot of people. But there are compromises. It’s like the old adage you get what you paid for.
I think the biggest win for the Pro/SHS solution is local control.
Just looking for the pros & cons & its more that the mini is winning at the moment. .
Two things to note with the Mini, you don’t get the Z-wave, Bluetooth or RF 433MHz radios, or the IR emitter. But they can be added later with a Homey Bridge.
The other is RAM, which isn’t really upgradable. The Mini only has 1GB, compared to the Pro’s 4GB.
I bought my Pro (2026) with the upgraded 4GB RAM earlier this year… and admittedly I’m a beyond average user… but I am bouncing off the limits of what that 4GB will stretch to, frequently dipping below 15% free. If you stick to only a small number of brands for your smart tech (and therefore a small number of apps running) then the Mini is fine. If you want to automate the 
out of your home and have everything smart tech, then the Pro or SHS would be the better bet.
Don’t let the SHS scare you too much. Running it on a Raspberry Pi 5 for example, is as easy as downloading the Pi OS image utility to copy the Homey SHS to an SD card or SSD and booting the Pi off that. They even have guides how to do it on the Homey web site.
Plenty of options, all depends on how much you want to automate, and how much control over it you want.
Seriously wondering how you manage that?
Which apps uses how much memory for you?
Or do you just have that many apps installed?
(Curious)
@Peter_Kawa yeah i have about the same i guess.
Obviously already have the 18 apps i wrote/manage/develop.
Ermmmmm… I hadn’t realised quite how many apps I had installed, until you asked and I counted them… 64 
And I have a few apps that are disabled by Flows, and only enable by flow when needed… to try and conserve memory and CPU resources.
I might have to try and trim that down a bit 
The problem is devices from too many different ecosystems 
Ah yeah, one of the reason a lott of my devices are from fibaro. I try to stick to a few zwave manufacturers, mainly fibaro and aoetec.
I already have so many “tools” apps 
Z-Wave devices are as rare as rocking horse here in the UK 
I only have 2, which are my Aeotec indoor sirens, that are used for doorbell, front and back door (left)opened notifications, and used for my security system and as extra sirens for smoke alarms. I would have liked more Z-Wave devices, and to build a mesh network, but the few you can manage to get in the UK are sooooo stupidly expensive it’s nuts!
I prefer Zigbee and Z-Wave to Thread (especially Homey’s implementation of Thread, that doesn’t seem the most stable… they are by far the most problematic devices I have). And Z-Wave being sub GHz is perfectly suited to home environments with walls and WiFi and microwave ovens (also working on 2.4GHz) that screw with my WiFi and Zigbee devices in the kitchen every time I use it for nom noms.
I am considering replacing all my INNR lights with Aqara and Govee… would be expensive, and I don’t like the idea of having to e-waste a whole load of bulbs I’ve only had for a year max. But I am becoming a bit of an Aqara fan boy, and it would help loosing an app, and make my Zigbee network more stable (there’s a whole other thread on the problems with INNR bulbs and Homey).
I did find it quite fun to see how many apps in common we all have 
Like old school top trumps cards, but apps ha ha.
I do have a plan to solve my memory woes and increase storage capacity at the same time… brain surgery for my Homey Pro, with a new Raspberry Pi CM4 that has 8GB RAM and 16GB flash storage. I just haven’t got around to it yet, as my smart home would be dumb for a few hours while backing up and restoring everything.
How do you manage that? When mine spiked the other day and my hardware monitor reported less than 7% free memory I had all sorts of things go awry… I ended up having to reboot to get everything back working and stable again. Perhaps due to the number of apps I have installed, and the number of advance flows and variables used in them… perhaps I need to calm down on the automating the heck out of my house ha ha
.Variables out the wazoo
That’s very variable!
Yes, I’m aware… it’s because my 2 Levoit air purifiers have overloaded the VeSync API again. I think it’s due to the Device Watchdog app monitoring them causing extra requests which is tripping their request limit. I’ve turned off monitoring for the 2 devices, and disabled the VeSync app on Homey until tomorrow. Then it should hopefully start working again and stop tripping 
M8… after that screenshot, im gonna ask you for your memory and apps screenshot
I was wondering that too please share with the group
@Arie_J_Godschalk / @Drako74 If you insist… 
The danger with this… the possibility of finding more apps to install… nice knowing you free memory
