Considering migrate from vera to Homey

Questions & Help
1

Hello all!

I’ve been luring around the forum a while, just to check everything out. Today I own a Vera Plus, and eventhough I like it very much, it feels like there is something missing.

It looks like Homey might have, right now atleast, a better product than vera (ezlo). However, I’m still in need of covincing in the direction for why I should migrate. What more do I get from Homey, that vera cant offer.
Today, I maily use vera for heat and lighting control. What good apps is there for Homey for this purpouse?
Right now I’m using reactor, in vera, for all my automation, and it is really good. How does homey compare to this? Do everything have to be its own flow? Like, one flow for lights on, and one for lights off?

How is the support for zigbee vs z-wave? I have many components with both systems.

There is probably more questions, but these are the one that popped into my mind right now.

Thanks in advance,
Kenneth

2

It is kinda a difficult question to answer fully for you, you’re trying to compare 2 different types of apples, and everyone has a different taste.

If you want it to keep it to just flows, then it depends, there is an ELSE feature, so if the trigger and condition are really simple, then you can put them both in 1 flow.
But most people seperate them as that gives them full control over the condition(s).
If you want to make it really fancy (and have scripting knowledge), then you could always fall back on HomeyScript, where you can be as creative as you want in Javascript.

As for support, that is for Homey hard to tell without knowing which brands you mean, every brand has to have its own app, this is for all protocols, so if your brand you already have, has no app (you can always search the appstore), then it will only have the very(!) basic on/off support.
Zigbee has recently been rewritten, and since then zigbee support has increased big time, Z-wave support is there for all (/most) big know brands in Europe and scandanavia.

3

This can help Homey vs Vera plus

4

That’s a commercial, not an independent comparison. It also doesn’t seem to be very up-to-date.

5

Flows are like if-and-then-else, if-and-and-then-else if-and-or-then-else, if-and-or-or-then-else, if-and-and-or-and-and-then-else and variations to that.
However, if-or-then is not possible.
Not sure how many And or Or you can add to a flow.
But, fresh from the community store, there is a flow editor extension which adds almost endless possibilities to flow creating.

6

Hai Kenneth,

Perhaps an important question is, can you develope Node.js/Javascript yourself?
If so, then Homey is extreemly versitile.
Writing your own app is very easy (if you’re a developer anyways) and you can combine it with HomeyScript.
So, Homey can be used very simplistic: IF-AND-THEN.
But you can combine it with extensive scripts through Apps or HomeyScript, giving you great flexability.
And a lott of people share there Scripts on the forum.

About Zigbee, i don’t know, i fortunantly don’t have any zigbee.
I have mostly ZWave. ZWave works very well with Homey, although i did build an extra antenna on Homey, which works very well. And if you include most devices unsecure, you can have a lott of devices with great stability. I have 65 devices, 40 unsecure 25 secure.
I have absolutely no lagg at all, it works very fast and responses well.

However, Homey does have a issue when trying to triggering flows synchron of each other (using delays). And since the If-THEN parts don’t give a great flexibility (in the THAN part its eather THEN or ELSE that gets executed), Meaning: you will have to rely on creating multiple flows, setting variables, using second-delayes to execute next flow and use the variable. This kind of flow structure can be “unstable” because there is no garantee that the flows gets executed in the right way, or you have to increase the delay to extreems.

I have about 500 flows (and the rest of my smart homey is in my personal/private apps).
And i have a lott of flows with 10 cards or more in them. And that works just fine.

But i also have a serie of 10 flows to close or open my curtains based on temperature, sun-position, time-of-day, etc.
Those flows look al kinda like this:
IF temperatureOutside>25
THEN
do something (like save temperatureOutside into variable for comparing in 10 minutes) and goto next flow.

Between the first flow and the 10th flow, there can be multiple seconds, sometimes upto 10 seconds.
This causes issues, since within those 10 seconds, a lott can happen…

So, to get to the point: Homey is very userfriendly and simplistic in use.
If you’re developer (or willing to learn), Homey can be used very advanced.
But understand that the Flows are executed asynchron, you cannot (normally) use responses from flows in any way, and thuse you need delays/timers or a lott of flows for advanced “programming” of your house.

N.b. Personally I wanted to reduce my flows and not have 3 flows for turning a light on dimmed, fully or not at all, so i wrote the H.O.O.P. app so you can write complete “scripts” in the floweditor. But i don’t wanna make this into a commercial :wink:

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7

OK, been some time since i posted this. Here is an update:

I will receive my first ever Homey Pro today. Looking forward to start using this controller and it feels kinda like a new start.

Any suggestions to which apps I must have? And which athom sites I should familiarise myself with (thinking of sites like my.homey.app and such).

Thanks in advance! And Yeay! :smiley:

/Kenneth

8

That’s a tough one, Kenneth. Were to start?
I’ll share my apps (it’s in Dutch though). I have a non-pro Homey running.

First, for the gear you already have, you’ll roughly need an app per brand.
Then it gets very personal. It is what you got used to, what you discover (or not).
It is a good idea to scroll through all of the app store from time to time.

Next to hardware, think also of apps like Spotify, weather, sun events, timer, email, web server, google stuff, advanced flow edit tools, bluetooth, (ONVIF) webcam, group, beacons, virtual devices. I also like Flow Notes

Links:

My apps of today

Screenshot_20210504-163010_Homey
Screenshot_20210504-163010_Homey1296×5932 573 KB

9

Thanks for the suggestions! This helps give me a brief start! Now I’m curious to see what I manage to do with all of this!

Hopefulle I will get a more reliable and faster system than today. Time will show! :slight_smile:

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