Home Pro 2023 is ... not the perfect device I hoped it would be

Did you look in the appstore? There are hundreds if not thousands of apps for devices that work with homey. And a little investigation before you buy a few hundred euro device is not a bad practice. Oh and about support, they have it and normally reply within a few hours in my case. And in the case of woonveilig for example, they’re stating that it can only arm/disarm your alarm so yeah that’s why you check the appstore before buying a device.

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One detail, from what I understand he uses Homey cloud, Glenn.
The Pro is probably what he means by “the really expensive model”:

Perhaps, but the title says “Home Pro 2023” so if it’s actually about the cloud version we’re dealing with some profound confusion.

@Hans_S this topic is about the Homey Pro (Early 2023) and there is only one model. If you expected it is about Homey App / subscription (cloud) that is another topic.

I share your frustration. The solution I found was to junk all the devices and first look in the homey apps for a device, some will give product numbers, others will leave you with a cartoon diagram of what the device looks like. For the identifiable devices it is an easy decision to buy, the others it is pot-luck if the app will support it.

Since then I have almost no issues. I also came to the conclusion that zigbee is the only stable technology.

I have a couple of z-wave thermostats that I haven’t junked (yet). Controlling the thermostats one at a time works reasonable stable, but running multiple adv flows to set temperatures is a nightmare. Range appeared to be one issue. Z-wave range extenders did nothing. I added two homey bridges as satelites to homey pro (2023) which was an improvement.

The bottom line is that the homey pro system is a fantastic concept, but you have to accept what it is not. (1) It is not a generic z-wave or zigbee hub center. It can only drive a specific set of devices for which there are official drivers (apps in homey lingo). In addition there are many great/fantastic “apps” developed by individuals at no cost to the users. Support for these apps are not the responsibility of Athom, so use at your own risk. (2) The z-wave radio in homey seems to be very weak compared to another system I used previously. (3) The cpu is limited, it is not a super computer, afterall it is only a raspberry pi, with added tech boards in a nice looking housing. So when developing adv flows you should sequence them to give the cpu time to deal with the load. It does a great job and its limitation is actually a plus in using very little power.

The great plus on homey pro is the adv flows, which includes an official app for virtual devices. These are super usefull and versatile, adding capabilities way beyond a card system in normal flows.

Is it worth the money? If I was asked that a few weeks ago, I would have given a negative answer. But since I bit the bullet and junked all my devices that didn’t talk to homey, and replaced with zigbee only (except the thermostats, yet) already identifiable in the homey app store, I am super happy, and yes it is worth the money. Just z-wave sucks big time.

Just on z-wave, at first glance it appears the technology is a mimic of the old rs-422(?) protocols, except it is now running on radio. 422 and likewise protocols were problematic from the get-go (1980s) and got worse as traffic increased.

So how much did it cost in total?

I’m also in this same boat. I’m going to try and erase homey and install home assistant on the hardware so I didn’t just totally light $400 on fire.

My conclusion on homey is it’s half baked software with grand claims it can support 50k devices but it’s really built on the backs of the community that they don’t even respond to…

Good luck, guess you could have developed it yourself than.

Maybe this is something for you
https://homey.app/nl-nl/careers/development/embedded-software-developer/

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Which app is that? Or do you mean the experimental VDs?

Perhaps some users dont know that developers use other ways of communicating with Athom than just this forum? Like slack, mailing and phoning…

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Another thread that has me concerned about investing over 430 US. Maybe I should just stay on HA?

It depends…do you have working ZWAVE, Zigbee, IR integrations and 433 based on HA (by purpose I excluded BLE ) ? If so, then there is no reason to go for Homey, but frankly, I doubt. In my case, primary control is with Homey, but I do have HA, also ioBroker and even Zigbee2MQTT. Each of the solution has it’s place, but Homey is in central of it. :wink:

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Definitely

You will be constantly updating Home Assistant (HA)… go get a coffee, come back and there is another update… go to bed, get up and there are three more updates… one doesn’t work, now your light(s) is broken… wait 2-3 weeks, fixed with another update… it is just constant. Round and round you go, what it breaks nobody knows.

I THOUGHT I would like FLOWS better than the scripting in HA (main reason I bought Homey) but now that I have had Homey for a few months, I can say for certainty that I liked the flexibility of the YAML better but that is just me.

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Never install .0 versions :man_shrugging:t3:

Funny, about Homey app updates I always read complaints like: “the app isn’t updated for a month now, is it abandoned”?

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Even still… same experience.

Can’t say that I’ve had the same experience in the many years that I’ve been running HA now. I typically update about once a month (the .2 or .3 release), and I’ve never had anything break that wasn’t specifically mentioned in the release notes.

Hi,

I am using Homey pro 2019 sice 12 months. Before I was using 5 RPi (Master and 4 slaves) with Domoticz. I really liked it but there was a lot of connection problems and there was problem with new devices (you need to search a lot of forums and try coding by yourself). I lost many hours to make it to work.

Homey is such a friendly hardware and software. I really love it for it simplicity, nice grafic design and easeness to connect new devices.

I have 60 Fibaro z-wave devices. 20 zigbee, 20 Wifi. I am using Tuya, Yale, Smart Things, Kodi, Eufy, Netatmo, LG, Switchbot, Qubino, Roborock, Xiaomi, IKEA, Philips and others. Everything works like a glance.

I also love advanced flows!

There are some drawbacks. For me the biggest is that some apps are stopping woroking and you doesn’t see that. There is no information form Homey that some app stopped working. This is annoying.
It is happening mostly when I restart my router. App in homey is working ok but devices connected to it aren’t (app doesn’t reconnect to this devices and I need to restart app).

Homey is also lacking of hiding some devices I don’t want to see in my rooms. Devices like IKEA switches etc.

Best regars

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FlowChecker might help you with that :slight_smile: Flow Checker App for Homey | Homey

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