Morning all, I have received my new Homey yesterday. I want to post my experience migrating from my 2019 Homey (all my devices, flows and apps) as I have been pushing out the decision ever since it was first announced.
My biggest fear where some of the less transparent smart home implementations, such as my sunscreens, or my skylight, don’t remember how I initially connected to homey. I feared I would lose, or struggle for a long time to get these back to work.
Surprise 1, my Homey arrived within a week. Surprise 2, it was extremely easy to migrate.
This post gives a good rundown and step by step approach. Something I did (and recommend) is creating screenshots of your flows and keep them (in powerpoint for example). Very easy to trace back what that one broken card was supposed to be again.
My conversion took 2 hours, including opening the box. Compatible applications will have their settings restored and after installation will automatically re-recognize devices. Only tinkering I had to do afterwards was where apps where replaced (like the sunscreens and my blink security camera’s) so do doublecheck if updated versions of your apps exist.
If you’re on the fence on whether you should… yes, you should.
Oke than another experience off the hew homey. I come from the 2019 version wich was completely full.
38 apps and lots off sensors ect. The migration was extremly easy when you read the installation help of athom correctly that is. I am not on wifi anymore so thats another improvement. Restoring the backup was easy and zwave installed strait away. 3 apps needed a test version as i had read before the installation. The only problem was the "when sun rises"card wich gives an error. Athom is working on that. The only problem is zigee related. All my aqara sensors (battery powered only) are falling out of the network daily. This is an app related issue i assume and not homey related. So exept for the zigbee part i am very happy. The speed off this thing is great! Normally restarting took 15 minutes now 3. So yes happy so far
When your battery powered aqara sensors drop out, what do you need to do to get them back in?
With the status for Zigbee being “Devices might suddenly leave the network”, it does not sound like the new Homey Pro is fully functional yet. Mine has been sitting on the shelf for a month, and I had hoped to migrate soon. If I have to re-connect battery powered Aqara sensors daily, it will continue to sit on the shelf.
However, since the migration process is so quick and easy, I will give it a go and see how it behaves with my devices. Maybe I am lucky and Zigbee devices stay online reasonably well. The Aqara sensors have not dropped out once with the old Homey Pro, since they were added, and that’s the expected baseline behavior.
That said, my old homey was running at full memory utilization and occasionally had delays in flows. As this was an occasional thing, I have not really noticed that being gone. I do think the connection from Homey to my sonos to play sounds has improved (which is great, as I use warning sounds if doors are opened to warn me of visitors when I’m working upstairs)
For me, having a backup (my old) Homey provides great comfort, as so much in my house is automated
I see. And that, unfortunately, involves fetching all sensors from their locations in various places in my house, some even glued to the wall so I have to drag Homey to the sensor instead - every day.
So that’s a ‘not ready for use’ in my book.
Sadly, my logging app of choice, Papertrails, also hasn’t been ported and I will have to modify every single flow, which is not fun, but doable, if only Zigbee worked properly and reliably.
Besides, repairing = re-adding the sensors, after migration, is time-consuming. One has to long-press the reset button multiple times before Homey detects the sensor.
No? Right click on a zigbee device and hit ‘repair’ should do (from info I’ve read;
Although it’s possible this only works to repair migrated zigbee devices from a Pro 201x ).
There’s scripts (w.i.p.) to automatically add log cards to certain flows, or all flows in one go, and to the card types of your likings (like trigger, conditional, action, and you can choose to add error cards).
There’s even a script to remove all flow cards from app X, like f.i. Papertrails
.
Hint:
Check this great info topic, it mentions replacement apps for instance:
Thanks! Sorry, didn’t mean to hihjack this thread with my experience. Except for the no-longer-supported PaperTrails, migration was pretty smooth. I was a little scared on first reboot with red triangles on every single of my devices, but most cleared up on second reboot. Only Zigbee devices from IKEA and Aqara neded repair. Which worked great for IKEA, but Aqara was more troublesome. It will be interesting to see of Aqara sensors leave the network daily as has been experienced.
I sat down on my regular computer, and replaced all the dead PaperTrails cards with Simple Log. It was pretty quick using mouse and full size keyboard. It wasn’t worth automating it for the one time effort, especially since the logging messages needed some maintenance anyway.
Hopefully Athom is able to make all Zigbee devices work as well as before. My Aqara sensors are new and important for my flows.
Since you talked about moving the sensors near Homey, or Homey near the sensors: that’s not something you should do with Aqara sensors. They need to be (re-)paired with both the sensor and Homey at their normal location.
I see. The in-app instructions for Aqara specifically says “Hold the unit in close proximity to the Homey”… And Homey simply appears to not find the sensor if one tries to repair or add new Aqara devices if in their intended location and not right next to Homey,
With the old Homey Pro, there were never any issues with my 4 Aqara sensors, some relatively far from Homey. They were all paired in close proximity as per the in-app instructions.
The sensors dropping out of the network is a symptom of them having been paired incorrectly (that is, not at their intended location), because they tend to stick to the device they paired through (either Homey directly, or a router device). If you then move them out of range of that device (or close to out of range) you’re going to have issues.
But I now see you also have IKEA devices, which are known to cause issues when Aqara devices are being routed over them in Homey networks.
It is unfortunate that the Aqara Homey app instructions say to place the sensor close to Homey for pairing when it is incorrect. It is also a problem that pairing is impossible when the sensors are in their intended location, somewhat far from Homey.
I had zero issues with Aqara on old Homey Pro. Not one problem in half a year. My only powered IKEA device that’s not connected to the IKEA Gateway, is a spare IKEA signal repeater that I connected to Homey directly. My other direct to Homey IKEA devices are all battery devices, My powered IKEA devices are connected to IKEA gateway. Perhaps the reason my Aqara devices worked exceptionally well was that I connected the signal repeater via the same close to Homey method as well, and they all get routed via the signal repeater that I subsequently installed on the same floor (basement) where the Aqara sensors are.
So to summarize: I have only one powered Zigbee device connected directly to Homey, an IKEA signal repeater. My other Zigbee devices are battery powered IKEA switches and buttons, and 4 Aqara temp sensors. I have a bunch of powered IKEA devices, but they’re on the IKEA gateway’s zigbee network.
With regards to new Homey Pro (2023): I have yet to complain about Aqara sensors leaving. I was just worried based on the experience described by @Frans_Keeman. I just migrated today, so we shall see. I will report back in 24-48 hours if they have left the network.
Ah okay, that’s beginning to sound like just a bad Zigbee network setup, where you rely on most devices being able to connect directly with Homey instead of through router devices. Which means that if your sensors are out of reach for Homey, you can’t pair them (and pairing them close to Homey will probably work, but once you move them they will again be out of reach or near the edge of your network and they will drop off when the wind is blowing from the wrong direction, so to speak).
The old Homey had a different antenna setup which is why it probably worked better, the new Homey is more susceptible to correct placement because it has its antennas towards the bottom of the device. Some people have had good results by placing Homey a bit more elevated, and especially without any large metal objects nearby.
But I would seriously suggest adding more router devices (almost all permanently powered Zigbee devices will act as such).
so I have to drag Homey to the sensor instead - every day.
