And as a competitive product for Home Assistant. Lower the bar to enter the Homey ecosystem.
But the difference in availability in apps will be confusing for customers. But I don’t know what the “professionally developed”/“community developed” ratio of the 750+ apps is. So I cannot really guess the possible impact.
Hardly. SmartThings, possibly (which is actually transitioning the other way around, from cloud-based to local. They must know something that Athom doesn’t…).
I think there are obvious benefits, foremost an easy and quite cheap way to start your smart home. Don’t you see that?
But for the love of God, I can see that they should have handled other questions differently.
Thanks @robertklep for the link, but it wasn’t very clear from the Keynote.
A bit more clarity around for the existing user base during the keynote, wouldn’t have hurt.
And since I am here my 2 cents on today’s announcements:
Wow, I see many developers on other forums that really question the approach Athom are taking. I fear that we might lose some of them, for principal reasons…
Time will tell, but it would have been nice to get Emiles/Athom’s view on these decisions
Companies exist because they provide solutions for their customers problems.
Even better, the purchase of the bridge is only necessary once you need to access ZWave/Zigbee/433MHz/IR-stuff that isn’t handled through cloud services. I’m sure many already have some devices that can be controlled without the bridge, and then they can get a taste of what Homey is without spending anything more than a bit of time and effort to set up an account and try out a few flows.
Sure, it’s a tradeoff. For some it could be acceptable given the much lower cost, for others it’s a dealbreaker. I guess it depends on how extensively your home has been automated and how reliable your internet is.
But you don’t pay for the software if you run it locally (on your Homey/Homey Pro) so it’s a non issue (at least for now, you never know).
Yes, but not every product or service must solve the problems of every current customer, like you or me. If this suits someone else, someone who maybe doesn’t think it’s worth an up front investment of a Homey Pro, then it may be a solution to that customer’s problems.
There’s no way I would swap my Homey for Homey Cloud, but I can see the point in Athom broadening their offer, trying to get into different segments of the market. It may crash and burn and then we could potentially be left with a dead ecosystem and a useles white ball, so I hope they can make this work.
I see a lot of valid responses, on the one hand the subscription based approach makes a lot of sense. The best thing of my homey is the software (the zigbee/zwave are crap and don’t get me started on IR)
But what if I can combine the best things, homey’s software and a local device (home assistant/domoticz etc.)…
I have been using my Pro as a simple notification light for some time now, so i’m seriously contemplating of selling it and now I could move to the cloud and still have the software… Granted i’d rather see the issues fixed, but looking at Athom’s track record thats not going to happen anytime soon™
I’m not saying that that must be the case. I’m simply stating that the resources that are allocated to develop the Bridge could have been allocated differently. Like I said; this product provides the exact same solution to customers albeit with an extra dependency. So you have spent al this time, money and effort and in the very best scenario you solve the same ‘problem’ that you have been solving for the past several years but in a slightly (more difficult) different way. Apple has shown that the majority of customers are not interested in specs but just want stuf to work in a seamless effortless matter - and that is just not the case to put it mildly.
While I get your thought-train the “problem” they are trying to solve is cashflow, once that is sorted they willl (likely) turn their attention to the previous “problem” and hopefully use that new-found-wealth to address some of the shortcommings of the device/software
Yes, I can see that, but joining the race to the bottom is not the solution. As @robertklep has pointed out there is a problem with their business model. Bringing cheaper products to market will not solve the problem. A more mature app store for example in which subs/paid apps can provide cashflow for themselves and developers will help. Both in Athom’s P&L as well as making the platform more appealing for developers and manufacturers.
Same problem yes, but potentially for a new customer group.
Watched the Keynote, just for curiosity. My plan in the very near future is to get the Homey Pro (transitioning from a VERA EDGE). Maybe its just me, but I like my control hardware to have local control, not dependency on the “Cloud”. Maybe I misread it, but seems if the ISP or your local connection goes down so does your device control. Using Alexa a lot just for convenience with the VERA now, but I can still control locally if Alexa goes down. I’ll stick with the Homey Pro…
Local Wi-Fi & Device Discovery
Homey Bridge does not support local Wi-Fi connections, therefore mDNS, SSDP and MAC discovery are not supported.
So for the Homey bridge: No Shelly, no Broadlink, no Tasmota, no Modbus apps (SMA, Solaredge,…), No IP video, No Synology or NAS, No presence detection with wifi router, no Homeykit (?), Nuki direct, no SmartTVs,….
But Shelly is an ‘official developer app’ so it should be available in the cloud…
I think it uses mDNS
To simplify the user experience, custom app settings views are not supported on Homey Cloud.
Not even settings 
I think it will communicate through the Shelly API (on the Shelly servers)
No, A App needs to be from a Verified developer to be available on Homey Cloud, Not the other way around…
