Hi all. I’ve connected a generic device, which is a z-wave dimmer. It’s very similar in to Fibaro and one of the white label devices you can get your hands on Alibaba.
The issue, after I’ve successfully paired the device to Homey:
the dimmer is added with a message there’s no app/ driver found (nevermind, I’m fine with a basic device)
there’s no dimmer slider or any other control in the homey app to set the dimmer level
I can still dim from the lights switch, no issue here.
Surely Home should be able to add the basic features of devices, how can I get the slider?
I am trying out Homey and I’m coming from the Domoticz where this dimming feature is working right away. Domoticz is getting all the controls for dimmer including the dimmer level in %
The Homey philosophy is you need an App for it to function optimal.
so what you see is correct with the current implementation that a basic device only has On-Off functionality.
Maybe if you know some info on the device you can contact one of the many developers to create a brand specific App for it or maybe add it to an existing App for generic devices like the someZwave
Thanks for the reply.
Does this mean homey won’t support any advanced features of smart devices, except turning on/off?
It seem rather limiting if you have to find developers just to be able to use another device from ali express : )
And use the search in the top right hand corner you will be able to find hundreds of supported devices, alternatively you can look directly at the apps here :
As @Dijker said, Homey follows Android’s principal of “There’s an app for that”
Yes, it’s very limiting especially since zwave is an open standard and has a specific ‘Dimmer’ Device Class integrated in that protocol.
Athom however, apparently doesn’t deem it necessary to just provide base functionality that the z-wave protocol supports. They prefer all vendors to have their own app with the same base functionality.
A nice detail: They are actually in violation of the z-wave standard as the z-wave standard dictates that they ‘MUST’ support certain features as a Minimal Control Functionality for a device type. (which for a dimmer, is power off, power on and a ‘level’)
(page 9 of the document I linked above)
It would be nice if Homey would at least support the base-functions of all device classes (like being able to dim all dimmers, but may not necessarily support the secondary stuff like reading the power-usage for example), like the standard dictates, but maybe they’ll put that in the v2.0 version,
The only “basic” controls the z-wave alliance makes you have is to be able to use the “COMMAND_CLASS_BASIC” with on/off capabilities.
Dimming is not part of that, even though BASIC does support dimming, it is not part of the so called “needed standard”
If you think else is the case, please don’t just say it, come with some proof that they need that.
(PS: athom would have lost their certificate long time ago if that was the case, as the alliance was way more strict a few years ago.)
Having an app for every brand is way more efficient as it will takes a lot less space in homey itself, especially if you think how far homey can reach each device in terms of settings/parameters (each with an explanation what it does without having to look at the manual, or search on the internet), special parts of certain devices that are really specific (the fibaro binary sensor is a good example).
You can’t do that with a just “standard implementation” (they have tried that a few years ago though, it didn’t work…)
The entire specification is public, so not really sure where you would stop, you want just dimming, but then some also would want the temperature measurement, as that is also “just basic”, but then i also want that with … etc.
All the document states is what homey should be able to control, and that is all command classes available, it just needs an app for it
Hi, thank you for your reply.
I wasn’t just saying it, it’s there in the document I linked to. Chapter 3.1.1.2. Also, there are only about 35 generic devices classes (of which a fair amount don’t have any minimal requirements) so it shouldn’t be too much of a hassle to get those supported in a generic way. (The table of minimal requirements starts on the page after that chapter)
A device can of course have multiple device classes, so that’s just adding up the basic capabilities.
Also, I’m not saying that having apps is a bad idea, as some products have very specific features, but it would be nice if the standard product types would have a proper minimal support (like the stuff in the document I linked to)
Well, I am a fairly critical user, and if I had known how limiting Homey was up front (mostly the limitations to only ‘If this (and/or this) than that flows’ and I am also very sceptical to the ‘app-only’ approach from v2 on (I seriously hope that it turns out well), I would have purchased a pi a few antenna’s for the same amount of money and buy a more flexible system.
I did however pay 300 euros for Homey as a commercial consumer-based product, so that does give me the right to be critical of course. Currently it does what it has to, albeit a bit cumbersome if you want to do slightly more exotic things.
That said. The latest update really improved my overal view of the product. In my house it seems to respond faster on 433, Zigbee and Z-wave, so I’m happyer now
But just for some added information, it is not hard at all now with the meshdriver to add a new driver to an existing app, or create an entire new app for z-wave.
You only need minimal coding skills, mostly it is some copy pasting skills.
I had a Chinese Zigbee Power Plug arrive yesterday (Feibit) and created an my first Zigbee app last night, took about 15 minutes, enter the productId/ManufactureId/deviceId into a supplied template and a single line of code.
this.registerCapability('onoff', 'genOnOff');
Perhaps I was just lucky, @anon8748058 if you try and do something yourself and find yourself stuck, you will find people around here very helpful.
