I have been using Fibaro Home Center 3 for a couple of years, but this hub is not stable enough for my use and it is not possible to add enough devices and scenes to this device.
So, by searching on the web I found that Homey will introduce a new Athom Homey Pro (2023) during the first quarter of this year and it looks interesting. But, I need some information about this hub before I buy it:
-How many Z-Wave devices can be controlled?
-How many ZigBee devices can be controlled?
-How many devices in total can be controlled?
-How many scenes can be set up?
What I am looking for is a hub that can control a minimum of 250 different devices and at least 100 scenes - and the hub must be stable.
Aside from the new Homey not yet being available (so all we can do is guess), even the current Homey should be able to handle 250 different devices. The main limiting factor is not so much the number of devices but the actual workload (how often device states change and need to be changed, number of flows, what those flows actually do, etc). No one can give you a definitive answer about that because itās unique to your situation.
Also, what exactly do you mean by scenes? Per device? Per group of devices? Zigbee scenes?
Impossible to comment on, since the new Pro isnāt available yet.
What I wrote in the meantime:
Hereās all ins and outs:
In case of Z-wave & Zigbee:
I havenāt read about any real life tests with Homey 2023, so thereās no real life numbers yet, I think. Athom didnāt publish numbers about this yet.
In theory it would be the z-wave max for one controller = 232 devices.
We all hope it is more than the Homey models up 'til now, which is the adviced 30 to 40, with an exceptional reported 50 to 60 nodes.
The 2023 zigbee chip is different than the āoldā one.
In theory unlimited, but remember switching many devices, which use the same radio technology, at once, can be limited to a certain number, which depends on your setup, networks and radio signals.
This also has to be tested in real life situations first.
Unlimited in theory.
That should be possible.
About stability: thereās no customer real life experience yet, but I expect it to be pretty stable, combined with the ethernet connection.
It depends on what the owner is (not) up to, the combined brands and radioĀ“s, how the flows (what you call scenes) are designed.
Athom is pretty active in solving issues for the current Homey, and (free) firmware updates are still published every now and then, and sometimes even extra features.
Conclusion: take the āriskā, or just wait for a few months, until users have published their experiences and issues with the 2023 model.
At the moment I am working with a combination of Homey and Home Assistant.
Home Assistant is mainly used to import various entities into Homey. Furthermore, the Conbee 2 stick works as another device and pumps about 100 Zigbee devices into Homey.
All in all, Homey has to manage almost 300 devices/entities and execute almost 650 flows.
Since the new Homey is more powerful and has more memory, the numbers you are aiming for should not be a problem.
We will see how stable the new Homey is as soon as the first devices are in operation.
I mentioned āscenesā as this is what it is called by Fibaro. I guess it is the same as āflowsā in Homey. I was thinking of a group of devices that have dependencies set up - resulting in some kind of action. E.g. the heating of the living room starts if the temperature is below XĀ°C, in a given time window, and without the heat pump working.
Fibaro uses confusing terminology: what you are describing are automations, which indeed is the same as flows in Homey (in most home automation systems, scenes are āstored devices statesā, either for a single device or a group of devices, which you can later recall; Homey doesnāt have this feature out of the box).
Besides standard functionality, thereās an app (or similar apps) for many things.
Like storing and recalling states of āzonesā (all things you gather, like rooms). Then you can call saved states for work light, evening light, movie light, including the music or TV set, thermostat, whatever you paired with Homey.
It is not the only way, it is also possible to create those states/scenes using flows.
It looks like the Homey system is very flexible and I must admit that I regret not starting to use this system instead of the Fibaro system. I have spent countless hours keeping the Fibaro system up and running over the last couple of years, and now I am fed up with all this work as it crashed completely on December 23. I am really looking forward to starting using something that is working as announced and is stable.
