I got my new Homey and I am not happy about it

Hello everyone

Probably not that many people being sad when opening the postal package and finding a new Homey inside. Brings me to an alternative to the title:

Don’t be stupid - make the God damn back up.
(sorry for the click-baity title)

I wanted to make this as a friendly reminder to back up your Homey if you are not doing it already.

Briefly put: I got my homey, two years of automation and semi-advanced “programming” through its GUI (unable to advanced script), hundreds of flows, no back up, what could go wrong, moved Homey to a different socket, never booted again. Desperation, contact dealer, hope for it to be repaired (still think it was posible, but probably expensive), waited almost two months, got my hopes up due to the waiting, only to receive the package and find:

Bitter sweet feeling seeing this. But at least, it can’t get worse. Oh wait - it does! I went through all 5 stages of grief, decided to do the best out of it, learn from my mistakes, and take the back up this time, rewrite everything, document the architecture, maybe even put my marriage on the line and learn to script, and elegantly limit the use of GUI for running multiple flows instead where loops should be used, and finally document everything in some form for others to use. I’ve always wanted to share my flows and ideas - never had the time. That brought me here. So now I’ll make time.

I connected Homey yesterday, connected all devices as well (5-6h, working at 30%, drinking wine as well). Now, weekend at the parent’s, wanted to get at automation. Homey is offline. And online. And toggling it. Looses connection to cloud all the time.

Doing this enough so, that I cannot make the flows remotely. It’s on the same spot as the old one. Now, I’ve seen this one Keep losing Wifi? “ Homey is offline” and it said old hardware may have some issues regarding the connection.

[Here would be a prnt-scr of the Experiments menu, showing a microphone option. Can’t put more than one pic in the first post ever]

A mic? This is an older version isn’t it? FuuuuuaaaAAAA!!

I have to look into it when I get home. Local connection is without the problems. I don’t know if installing the mesh would fix this as the router is on the other side of the apt. The old one worked from that spot. We’ll see. I am getting tired, man.

Plus side is if I get it working it has NFC, and i have some ideas for that as well.

Thanks for reading my self-therapeutic post and remember kids - do the god damn back up!

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I do not think (and hope) you got an old one. I do have the mic option but it does not do anything.
Early 2019 seems to be the latest.

But yes. Backups ! Backups! Backups! as for al IT stuff.


Yeah…

Oh, we have the new one alright, but as far as I know, the hardware is getting updates as well as the time passes. New Homey Not Responding to Any Speech - #2 by bvdbos
My previous Homey did not have NFC reader nor the microphone. And if I get this one working, ie. stable connection to cloud - I think I have a few ideas to use those as triggers, mainly arming the flows for exiting the house.

Why do you think this one has NFC ?

What type does the more - settings - general screen show?
Was it s Pro you had an issue with or a 1 core model that you returned?

It says Homey pro unreachable, Connecting… Then counting - even goes to -5s (that was a new one)

But when it comes to its sences for a few minutes it says:

The reason I think it has NFC is that it is an option as a trigger in flows. I can’t remember I had that before… I am 90% sure that I didn’t have the microphone option in experiments before.

I had the Pro version before, and the box says I received the Pro now as well, as does the settings screen.

What I think had happened is that its currently shortage of Homeys, so they’ve sent something they had in inventory. It feels a bit smoother than the last one as well on touch. But that could just be the dust on the previous one :grinning: I miss it so much. sound of tears dropping It feels like a 18. century home right now

My best guess is a configuration bit flipped, making Homey Firmware (there is only one) think it has a NFC and Mic installed.
but without the NFC Chip and antenna and a Microphone installed I expect it isn’t going to function.

Officially there have never been Homey Earley 2019 or Homey Pro’s with an NFC / Mic.

Hmm… So you’re saying that the light in the end of my tunnel is a train?

But, yeah, it seems they’ve discont’ed it back in 2018.
I’ll see when I get home. Had some hopes up to use my gym nfc tag from the key ring when exiting the house. Or talk to Homey directly, since Google tends to be slow sometimes.

Despite the microphone that is still under experiments,
it is discontinued since some time

o, and btw that was for a reason it is discontinued…

You are absolutely right!

I’ve tested it though :grin:
Hooked ON, and yelled “OK Homey!” at it a few times. I’ve gotten as much response from it, as from my 2 years old while she’s destroying things around the house.

Tried NFC as well. Sounds good, doesn’t work.

Finally, some good news as well - I’ve got a stable connection to the cloud! That one was the most important. Now, many flows need to be made, again. Starting from the tabula rasa.

Athom cofirmed to me in chat.

… found that the way we determine whether a Homey has a mic is flawed, besides that the stt servers are already down for quite a while, the next Homey update will therefore remove all mic related functionality. I’ll also take a look at NFC, thanks!

Looks the NFC and Mic detection share some code…
So if you see it fixed in one of the updates you already know.

Strange that it hasn’t been done already.
But anyway - cool they’re fixing it!

I’m curious if anyone has managed to upgrade/restore their Homey by restoring a backup and how well it worked! I have a OG homey and been looking at a Pro, but I’m curious as to how it reconnects to all the devices using the backup/restore and also if the devices do not restore what is the point as I will have 100’s flows with invalid flowcards I’d need to repair. I use the backup option (for the reasons stated by OP) but wonder how useful it would be when it comes to a restore.

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And I should point out, by restore I mean restore to a new device, rather than the original device the backup was made from.

I wanted to do my automations in a new way then i did before.
So i bought a second hand as extra.
I used a 2018 version at first and bought a 2019 as second.
Then restored the second with th backup.
It worked like my older one.
I deleted my old flows and made the new flows on my ‘new’ Homey.
When i was done i restored my old Homey with the backup of the new one.
Then sold the new one.
So yes restoring from backup works.

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Good to know! Thanks :blush:

Ther are several topics about that and I collected the most important info