Please move this if I have chosen the wrong category.
I just registered today because I’ve been reaching my limits with Home Assistant for about three months now. Background: I had added HA (MacMini 2014 via VM) because I wanted to control my three Marstek Venus E storage units and Shelly Pro 3EM intelligently, keyword zero feed-in. Unfortunately, this didn’t work out after countless attempts with Marstek Support and HA, so I decided to go for a Marstek Smartmeter. So far so good, I’ve put my heart and soul into HA. First things first: I am not a programmer! Anyway, I ventured into automations, which work quite well, and also into the main topic of building dashboards. And this is where I despair. ChatGpt, YT, FB, all kinds of social media, and I just can’t build dashboards to suit my needs. I know that HA takes a lot of time, but when you’ve invested, I don’t know, 50-60 hours and still haven’t gotten anywhere, it’s frustrating.
So I wondered if it would be easier to build dashboards with Homey? And automations, of course. My requirements:
Dashboard 1, 14”: Date, 3-day calendar preview, rubbish collection calendar, status of 2 cars (open/closed + fuel level), garage open/closed, shutters open/closed
Dashboard 2, 10”: In the kitchen, this should mainly be a media player where I can switch ‘quickly’ between player such as Denon Player, Yamaha Player, etc. I would also like to be able to select the music source, such as Spotify playlists, radio, Mixcloud (similar to Soundcloud).
Can I build special dashboards with Homey? Fully Kiosk Pro is installed on each of the tablets. Is Homey fundamentally the right solution for me? Thanks!
Yes, you can create dashboards with Homey. These work based on columns, where you can view specific columns based on the size of your screen, and swipe to reveal more columns.
You can also create very granular automations with Advanced Flows (only available in the web app).
I would recommend checking out Homey SHS if you want to try it out, you get a 30 day free trial. During this trial you get access to all Homey features
Next to Self-Hosted Homey, Homey has Homey Cloud available as well, no hardware needed, no installation needed.
Homey cloud has the dashboards option as well, but it’ll lack community built widgets.
Homey dash impressions:
Ah, I understood you were asking if Homey is for you.
I just tried to show the pro’s and cons, from my pov.
Homey has no “build me a dashboard” function like HA for instance.
Yesterday, I installed Homey SHS on my VM (Macmini). Everything worked fine so far. Now I asked myself the question: Does Homey retrieve all data from the individual providers (Meross, Eufy, Nuki, Govee, etc.) from the cloud? I don’t have a bridge yet. It doesn’t retrieve anything locally, right?
I know from HA that the sensors arrive from the cloud of the respective device with a very significant delay, meaning that sometimes the temperature display is still from, for example, 30 minutes ago.
It depends on the type of device. All ZigBee, Z-Wave, RF, IR and BLE devices work locally (you need a Homey Bridge with SHS for these device types). The WiFi connected devices can also be local, but it depends on how the app implements it.
When you want to check the communication protocol, you can do so by hovering over the device in the App Store page on https://homey.app/
If this is consistent across all brands, there’s something wrong. Other than perhaps a specific integration that is severely rate-limited by the brand itself, even cloud-based devices should update within a reasonable amount of time (seconds, not minutes).
Perhaps i have a very special case with Meross. Whether Meross Cloud IoT or Meross LAN: it can take over 30 minutes for some sensors to update, in Home Assistant
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