How much control is local from a Homey Pro or Self Hosted server?

Questions & Help
1

I have a homey pro and am thinking about using a homey bridge to extend some IR and RF remote control.

I am also thinking about swapping my parents from a home assistant install to a homey self hosted server and wanted to know a couple things.

I know homey pro will still run automations from local devices when internet connection is temporarily cut, but will it connect over my local network to the bridge or does the pro have to reach out to the internet and then back down to the bridge to control it?

Basically same question with the server. If internet is lost at my parents house, would the hosted server continue running local flows and will it connect to the bridge over local connection or does that also require internet access?

Sorry if this is a redundant post on the forum.

2

I will be testing that soon, SHS with some additional Tuya and Alexa stuff.

I do know that if you want to access the web interface locally, (using the server ip address:4389) then you must have a local user account to log into. Just add yourself as a User.

3

Thanks for doing the testing on that.

The occasion that our internet connection goes out is not very often that I probably wont need to access the web interface while the WAN connection is down.

But the big thing question is that in these outage situations, does the local server maintain the connection to a local bridge or does the bridge only negotiate its connection to the pro or SHS only through the cloud?

4

All of the Flows will still run, but they can only control devices which use a local communication protocol (LAN, ZigBee, Z-Wave, RF or IR). The cloud-connected devices won’t work when the internet is down.

Homey Bridge will still work, but does need internet for the initial booting process. As long as you don’t unplug it while the internet is down, it shouldn’t be an issue.

5

ok. so once it authenticates on boot, homey pro and homey bridge communicate through the local network and not through their cloud? That is great news.

Almost everything i have is locally controlled through, zigbee, zwave, and local wifi api.

But if the device turns off, while internet it out, it won’t communicate until internet is resumed and it can authenticate? That feels like a design flaw.

6

This is because the Bridge makes a secured connection to your Homey Pro, it needs to get the time from the internet (NTP) and it needs DNS (it uses the homeylocal.com DDNS service).

7

is that the same behavior for the homey pro and the homey pro mini? or will flows still run, but local interface and app doesn’t function until internet is restore?

I can test the homey pro when I get home to my setup. But I would be curious about the pro mini since it is almost the same price point as the SHS and bridge. As if flows run like that, I would be more inclined to get their hardware than do the SHS and bridge route.

8

On Homey Pro, it will still work even without internet. The Bridge is simply a ZigBee/ZWave router, the Homey Pro itself is the coordinator. With the Pro Mini, Z-Wave, BLE, Infrared or RF do require internet on the first boot of the Bridge. With the regular Homey Pro, this is not needed.

9

I want to thank you for your fast responses. I have just a few more questions.

If internet is lost and the mini stays on, it should still run flows? or does it’s ability to run flows stop when the internet connection does? It looks like the website lists mostly the same hardware specs for both the pro and the pro mini but the mini not having ble, rf, or ir. So i would think that it would operate in a similar manner to the plain pro.

10

If the Mini stays powered, it can still run the Flows with LAN and ZigBee. As long as the Bridge also stays powered, Z-Wave, RF, BLE and IR will also stay working.

11

Hmm. Ok thanks. I will have some decisions to make as to if I’m going to do a shs+bridge or the mini for my parents and add a bridge later.

Thanks again for all of your information and knowledge.

1 Like
12

Well, lately a lot of us have discovered what problems an outage of Athoms servers can cause:
https://community.homey.app/t/incident-service-degraded-integrations-and-api-20260124t10h30-cet-was-homey-cloud-is-down/

Also, Athom choose to never explain what happened there…

13

yeah, I’m not super pleased with how reliant homey appears to be to it’s cloud for some things that don’t really need to be cloud reliant. but that is not terribly relevant to this particular post.

Or that a some of first party apps developed by athom are cloud based when they have a public api that competitors like home assistant have local setup. For example TP-Link Kasa devices. but hey, i got my homey pro for cheap so i guess i can’t be too mad.