Hi fellow community developers. I would like to start a discussion on something that has been on my mind for a while now.
Homey is a great product, and it’s still getting better even though the hardware hasn’t changed. Hard work from the Athom crew and the two founders is surely at the basis of the present success. But I’m also sure that the success wouldn’t have happened without the support of some enthusiasts who spend an enormous amount of their spare time to test software, give detailed feedback for debugging and improve usability, manage forums, and write community apps.
For me personally I spent an incredible amount of time on writing apps and test alpha/beta Homey firmware the past 2 years. And I understand that Athom needs to make clear business decisions that not always are in line with my personal preferences (just one example is my feature request for 2FA). But there have been times when I felt like an unpaid Athom employee. I have lot of fun building apps and being able to automate my house. But what recognition am I getting from Athom for all my efforts?
I cannot expect anything, and am not expecting anything. But here some ideas I have for Athom to show there appreciation for community developers, and enable us at the same time to help Athom. So this is a win-win situation:
Give huge discounts to developers that have released apps to buy a development/test Homey
Give away free (refurbished) Homeys to developers that have a large amount of app installs
Give huge discounts or free devices from the athom store
…
What do you think? Am I asking too much? Do you see anything else that Athom can do to show appreciation to the community developers?
First of all I as a non developer would like to express my gratitude en try to make donations to people who think of and build apps I love or didn’t think would be possible. Like Tado, telegram, heimdall, synology, Xiaomi zigbee, etc.
But the question here is what could Athom do. I think good documentation would be neccesary. A seperate support desk for developers. Maybe something like facetime/skype with Athom developers.
A time ago someone hosted montly developers meetings. Athom could be present here to help were possible. And if they don’t get organised anymore Athom could pick this up.
Maybe Athom could make a section on the blog were they visit/show developers and showcase their apps.
With just one app in the app store that is used by approx 100 users my contribution to the success of Homey is so small that I do not and can not expect any compensation for my work from Athom.
This having said testing my own app on experimental version 2 firmware is something I have to postpone due to the fact that I do not have access to a development Homey, so the idea of buying a 2nd Homey at a discounted price sound appealing to me.
Dito, nothing more frustrating than undocumented features or something not documented at all. Although I did consider getting a second Homey for development puposes because I do not plan to upgrade my own Homey any time soon. Getting a discount would of course be welcome in this case.
@Gruijter I do recognise the feeling you shared in this post…
As mentioned already, proper (up to date) development documentation is a must; including reference examples.
In addition, Athom will need to stick to their commitments (towards their community developers).
With the introduction of v2.0.0, Athom announced that shortly, the developers would receive a mail with information how to update their apps become fully functional in the new app / v2.0.0.
I still didn’t receive any mail / communication from Athom about these changes.
Athom to provide a development (refurbished) Homey with a reasonable discount for community developers (with X amount of apps / app install count), is for me a no-brainer.
To further support the community developers; I’m going to re-start an old topic: what about an app store where based on certain criteria, the users have to pay for the use of an app??
I tried to offer my services once, but unless I was willing to work fulltime, in Enschede, “in loondienst”, they weren’t interested. And those are three things that I’m not interested in.
Well i will defend them a little bit on one topic.
i understand the rush and focus om the mobile app and the lack of time for documentation.
For them to sell the new batch of homeys it seems to be waiting for the v2 and the app to go stable.
its a bad thing theres no documentation and them changing / breaking the stuff. but i do understand the stress of no income because sales has come to a stop and v2 / app has ther only focus.
that said who needs refurb discounts. i had great deals on homeys on markplaats . even as low as 180 euros. so when sales comes back watch marktplaats and you probably get a better discount there then you get from most companys on a demo/test set
sorry if there is tiktyfus in the text, this is a rush rush response like always
The problem for that is that Athom is actively marketing Homey as a platform that has “over 50,000 supported devices”, which means that they are (partly) basing the intrinsic worth of Homey on community apps.
However, that’s not stated as such (“over 50,000 supported devices, thanks in no small part to our active community of developers”), which means that people expect all those devices to be supported by Homey when they buy it.
Paid apps are simply not in Athom’s best interest. Keeping developers happy is, but they seem to be missing that point on a regular basis.
Isn’t that the reason why many companies have changed their business model, instead of selling just hardware they still sell hardware but make their money from selling services which uses their hardware. Example… sell a printer for 100 euro and sell cartrigdes for 25 euros which only lasts 500 pages…
Apple is also announcing their app store to have thousands of apps; but their users know that, despite they paid a substantial amount for their iPhone / iPad, that for some of them you will need to pay for it.
