@homey staff ... is Homey dead? ☠️

As said before: It has been for well over a year. I looked back the release notes for as far as they go, but nothing really worth mentioning is in there. So maybe they secretly worked on something amazing, but it has not shown. And as for shared resources: the web app is showing the same “under construction” pages it has been for months.

If they have been using that year to build something nice for Homey Pro too, they haven’t been very agile about it, which could have helped them focus on the right things. So now they run the risk they are heading in a direction that is not in line with expectations, or loose customers. And they are loosing customers this way. Their secretiveness isn’t helping but hurting.

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Since I am NOT on stable but. I am on experimental, I do know that core is regularly updated. Lucky for people who like a stable environment core stays experimental until testing has been completed.

I think Athom not taking part in the open forum makes their problem bigger. Especially when you do things that aren’t visible from the outside, you need to communicate about it. Going silent makes it easy for rumors to start spreading. Communication (lack of) seems to be their Achilles heel.

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@nickevackerdag @Mojo @Edwin_D and others.

Pls tel that Athom directly,
never assume they will pick it up here!
(they might miss it in the mass daily messages.)

Athom can’t win either way. If they talk about things they are working on then everyone is saying when will it be ready and complain about it being late.
When they release things early and there’s problems, users complain about it not being ready.
As a few have said, they are busy working on new things but we can’t say what and have no idea when. But Homey is not dead by any means.

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Please read the application carefully, it is not just asking and then getting early access.
If you apply and are requested to join you sign a NDA and are also asked to install, test and give feedback on AATP Only Firmware’s and Mobile App versions,
You also sometimes get Early Access to Athom Homey Apps, and or WebApp functionality in return for your bug reporting and constructive feedback.

Athom keeps the the number of AATP members low and long time Inactive members are removed sometimes.

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You’re acting like Athom is the only company in the entire world that has to deal with that. In this day and age, it’s perfectly normal (or rather, it’s expected) for a company to openly discuss what they are working on, or at least to acknowledge that there are issues that they are trying to solve (most users will care much more about their issues or feature requests being acknowledged and not so much about exact timelines).

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Not at all. I agree it is a problem that many companies have to deal with.

I’m not convinced the majority of companies are so open. I agree there are some but from my experience it is a minority. Most companies don’t want to divulge their new features from a competitive point of view as they don’t want to loose their lead. I’m not suggesting Athom are keeping quite for that reason, but I have seen on here over the years the amount of stick they got when they were more open and misjudged time scales.

Fair enough. What I meant to say was companies that make a similar product. Homey is very much a community-driven product, and I find it very strange that Athom apparently doesn’t feel it’s part of that community by actively participating in it.

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About non-communication: I know Thread and Matter will not save the world from all interoperability issues. That’s what we all have Homey or Home Assistant for. But what is Athom going to do to support devices that are being sold right now, and more to come?

Are they secretly building it in to Homey Pro but not telling us because it will hurt their competitive edge? That makes no sense. Is the hardware even compatible? The zigbee chip is way old. Or are they building new hardware that is compatible and not telling us? Then Homey Pro is dead indeed. Or are they expecting other hubs to take care of it (that may make in the end make Homey obsolete, as Homey’s goal is no other bridges, and Homey does not have extension ports for USB dongles). Or are they just not doing anything about it because they have other priorities?

Home Assistant is giving workshops, explaining it will support it and building a new kit that has support out of the box. How is communicating that hurting them?

I remember when they still did that, where very open , constantly being reminded when something was delayed.

Although I could live with the delays as many others, but the number of users constantly asking and discussing that without having a complete picture and criticising their delays, decisions, choices grows and clearly communicating to early or to much info didn’t work for them. You know the Dutch expression ‘De beste stuurlui staan aan wal’ (Literally: “The best helmsmen stand ashore” )

But Easy saying, and easier complaining on Social Media while they are doing the best they can and are also protecting ideas they didn’t release yet.

I Expect they don’t want to do a small or half release now and have chosen to wait to release when it is finished according to their standards.

With so many vacancies I think there is no other risk than that they can’t develop and release faster.

And I think Homey has a strong community seeing the number of members that said they stoped with Homey in favor of other / more complex / more open solutions still return for some reason :wink:

Well, some guy on Youtube said Matter doesn’t work.

So here’s a novel solution for that problem: don’t set deadlines. That doesn’t mean issues and/or features cannot be discussed.

“Enschede of Utrecht”. It’s funny how Dutch companies, even relatively young ones, still adhere to 20th century company paradigms where workers can’t be trusted unless they work at an office every day.

Secretly persuading people to move to the blue side :stuck_out_tongue:

So Athom could say we do not believe it, and this is why. Or they can tell us what it can and cannot do and what that means for Homey. Now I just think they are ignoring the market they are supposedly catering to and/or have no clue. Or they are hoping it will silently blow over. They are supposed to help us consumers understand what it means for their product.

I can’t disagree with that. It would be nice if they spent a bit more time communicating with the community about problems that arise. They would probably find one post on here would prevent many questions to support and save their time in the long run.

no, more a kind of:
image

So what Paul Hibbert in my opinion tries to explain: @Edwin_D
How many device that support Matter do you already have and how many not supporting matter are you going to replace when one Controller or Bridge (doesn’t matter if that would be Homey ) would support it.

If matter is making integration between devices of different brands easier I think that is one for long term, Homey Pro is taking that place now for me.

Unless IKEA has an AATP like channel I am not interested in a “IKEA launches DIRIGERA – the Matter ready hub for smart products and a new IKEA Home smart app”
until it is actually in the store.

but a list of 59 devices that directly integrate with matter is impressive [1]

1) Read all footnotes.

Also great, the Impact of announcing a new product,
image

Yes, that would probably be the best thing to do.

I have paused my use of Homey, and might take it up again if bridge gets out of beta, so I don’t want it bad enough to post an issue ticket to them directly just for complaining. If they don’t care to read their own forums, I’m fine with that. :slightly_smiling_face:

Perfect, I can suggest everyone: stop complaining,

Status is here: (Yeah I know it is already 3 months old.)

and for new / un-acknowledged issues / bugs and constructive feedback:

Found an issue? Please report it here.

Then it is directly visible to the responsible support / developers and they don’t have to spit thru the unstructured Community forum.

Until then Live Happy and join the community for nice ideas

The question the video tries to answer is: is it going to be an improvement or solve interoperability issues all on it’s own. Most likely not.

But the question Homey users will have is: Will I be able to link those devices to Homey Pro/cloud and do I need extra hardware. Or will Athom force me to by Homey Pro 2 or whatever they will call it. What developers will want to know is: will the Homey firmware make my life easier or will all integrations need to reinvent the wheel. Or is is going to be impossible.

Right now I’ll settle for: does Athom even have a plan?

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That’s more than the number of Zigbee devices Homey can handle according to Athom, though.

Also, it’s not about having Matter support right now, it’s about thinking one year or so ahead. Even if Athom is working on Matter/Thread support, keeping quiet about it seems very silly to me, so I will just assume they aren’t working on it. And if that’s the case, given the current state of the hardware, that one year ahead will fly by very fast.