The official HA app (Home Assistant App for Homey | Homey) can only add entities which are part of a Home Assistant device. This is a major limitation.
“Devices are not really deeply integrated into HA and you should somewhat ignore them.
HA works on entities and there are very few device specific functions, and certainly none for custom devices, so grouping them in devices will make no real difference.”
Why is the Community HA app able to do this, and not the official app?
I think the official app is just very basic, so Athom can say “Yes, you can connect Homey with HA”.
‘Official’ here means nothing more than: made by Athom, or made by company X
The community app is made, and still being extended, by a smart Homey enthousiast developer, and together with ideas and requests by the app users, all kinds of neat features are implemented.
Official apps can also be created by private developers, such as some of @Adrian_Rockall apps. So I guess the main point is probably that the app is compatible with the Pro and the Bridge. All Bridge kompatible apps are tagged as Official.
If the information is incorrect, please correct me Adrian.
If you notice I have transferred some of my apps to another account that is not certified. I managed to sneak in as the developer of the Switchbot app when I transferred it to Switchbot (long story). I then made a few of my apps compatible with Homey, including Somfy, which has over 12000 users, so it was difficult for Athom to revoke the certification without upsetting a lot of Homey users. As a compromise, they asked me to make a separate account for all my apps that didn’t work with Homey. One advantage is I now get the PayPal link back for some of my apps as that is not displayed with official apps.
But generally, official apps are made by or on behalf of the device manufacturers.
Yeah, I’ve noticed, Dirk, but it’s quite exceptional, and I didn’t want things even more complicated.
Some devs even created a ‘company’ to be able to publish on Homey cloud, well Andy gave us an inside peek on that.
For example:
Shelly: Alltero Robitics (= Phuturist)
Sessy: Charged B.V. (= Robin Gruijter)
I didn’t quite understand it, sorry.
You have some official certified apps, where you are personal listed as a developer/creator (Somfy, Sofar, TP-Link). As far as I know, you have to pay an annual fee for this.
You have also some other apps where you were listed as a developer/creator in the past, but now you are “just” mentioned as contributor, f.e. for the Switchbot app. So has the Switchbot company officially taken over and is responsible for the app and you are continuing the development in the name of Switchbot?
The way you wrote it is a bit confusing for me. For me it sounds like, that Phuturist founded a company and named it Allterco Robotics.
I think that some developers have founded (or had to found?) their own company so that it is legal allowed to continue developing of the app on behalf of the company, like a freelancer. I guess that’s roughly what was meant, right?
It’s getting a bit OT here, but that’s also my fault, sorry!
@torarnv, use the community HA app and everything will be fine…
