I’ve been using Homey Pro for a while now, and while I love the ecosystem, creating advanced automations is becoming increasingly frustrating and messy.
Homey was born to make smart homes simpler, but right now, programming complex logic feels completely counterintuitive. For example, right now I’m trying to set up a smart irrigation Flow, and it’s turning into an absolute nightmare.
To make it work efficiently, I need to combine a dozen variables:
It needs to check if the weather is cloudy or sunny.
The temperature must not be higher than a certain threshold.
The humidity must be within a specific range.
It shouldn’t have rained for a certain number of hours.
And finally, the trigger should only fire if my solar panels reach a specific power production to power the water pump.
Trying to stack all these nested “AND/OR” conditions, logic tokens, and delays in the standard Flow builder is incredibly overwhelming and nearly impossible to keep clean. It completely defeats the purpose of having an intuitive hub.
With AI advancing so rapidly, are there any plans to integrate a Generative AI Flow Builder?
Imagine just typing what you want in plain text: “Run the irrigation pump only if it hasn’t rained in the last 24 hours, the humidity is low, the weather is cloudy, and solar production is above 2kW.” — and having Homey map out the logic cards automatically.
This would be a massive game-changer, especially for managing complex real-world setups like solar energy and garden automation.
Is Athom working on any AI integration for Flows, or does anyone have a clean workaround for handling this level of complex logic without losing their mind?
I just wonder: if something is to complex to formulate and/or understand, how would you instruct AI in such a way you can verify AI has built what you want.
Or are you saying that graphical programming is more work than using (natural) programming languages?
I’m saying that it’s a mess, at least for me, to make an automation like this.. I would have to waste a lot of my time.. instead with chatgpt it took me 10 minutes
You can put the cards all in one line, or use basic flows:
WHEN event has occurred
AND condition 1
AND condition 2
AND confition 3
THEN action 1
THEN action 2
THEN action 3 with a delay of 27 minutes
THEN action 4
It will store the variables for you as events or flags and it will drastically simplify how you build automations after they’re all set up and working well for you
It’s the best utility app out there for Homey IMHO
You can get close to your ideal. But it requires a step up in learning curve.
There are two more ways depending on your Homey or programming skills. Both require you to connect to Homey from your computer with an LLM, Claude is best. Claude can use the standard API (meaning not necessarily the MCP which has too many limitations) to change flows or scripts. You can tell the LLM in plain English what you want your automation to do.
Changing flows: set multiple conditions, verify logic, etc. With your requirements your flows will become complex and hard to verify. The LLM will be limited to the data (weather, solar power) you have in Homey. You’ll need a sharp analytical mind to decipher the flows.
Scripts: you can call a script from a flow to do the heavy lifting. LLMs are very good in creating scripts and changing or analysing them for you. You’ll still need your programming mind to tell the LLM exactly what you want, but you do not need to know the exact programming language as long as you test a lot.
In both of the above cases, the logic becomes almost a black box. Like your wish: just tell it what to do and the flow or script will run it. It remains critical you have a good insight in the instructions you give and the amount of testing you do (every condition requires testing).
One last thought: start simple and reduce or separate your requirements. Eg.
Drop solar power. No need to wait for solar power for the 10 minutes a water pump needs to run. You don’t want to water a garden during high sun anyway
Keep track of rain history in a separate flow and set a variable for use here.
PS I just saw you already work with script. So you’re good to go. I don’t think your dream of less complexity/more open ended programming is far away. But if you want precise outcomes, the current smart home is already pretty crazy good. And lets you spend many hours learning and playing…
