@Doekse If I were to start from scratch with Homey, can you clarify the following?
I’m thinking about picking up the Google TV streamer as that recently got an update for Thread 1.4. I’d prefer doing this cheaply to begin with to test.
If I set that up first. Factory reset Homey and go through the initial setup, is there any way to restore my flows after asking Homey Pro to join an existing Thread network or will restoring a cloud backup, just create a new Thread network.
Having to build my flows from scratch would take literally a couple of weeks, just to test if this potential solution of moving off Homey Pro’s internal Thread radio is actually worth it
But does it overwrite the separate Thread network that I just asked it to join?
If only Athom had built a seamless way to move over to Homey SHS like we asked them to do SEVEN MONTHS ago, then none of this would be confusing as hell.
When restoring a backup, Homey will always restore its previous Zigbee/Thread network. If you want Homey to join a different Thread network, you’ll need to set it up as a new device rather than restoring from a backup.
I can check internally whether there’s a way for us to support this in the future or work around this limitation, but since we would still be dealing with the channel issue I’m not sure.
Let me add my data point as well. I had many issues in the beginning as well, running several thread border routers on the same network (Homey Pro, Ikea Dirigera hub and several Apple TV’s and Homepods). Because I suspected that all those different TBRs were not working nicely together, I decided to change my network.
The Dirigera hub is now decommisioned (I only had it running for firmware updates). Apple TV’s and Homepods are on my main VLAN. Homey Pro is running on a separate VLAN that is now fully isolated from the main network (In the beginning all TBR devices were allowed to talk to each other, even across VLANs). The Homey Pro is the only TBR running on its VLAN.
I have 26 Matter devices and 15 Zigbee devices connected to the Homey Pro. Ever since I made the previous change the Matter network has been rock solid and it stayed that way when I upgraded to 13.3)
I don’t know, I only use Cloud and Zigbee devices. My Pro 2019 doesn’t support Matter natively either (only via additional bridges like Google Home). But I assume that you’ll need to remove and re-add your Thread devices to the new network (similar to Zigbee/Z-Wave) and then fix your Flows with the tool.
Just Homey Pro 2023 and 50 Thread devices. I don’t have any Zigbee devices connected to Homey, but I do have Zigbee devices on a Hue Bridge Pro (on CH25). Homey is on CH20.
Everything was stable and working flawlessly since September when I removed a BT Home Hub and made my GLiNet Flint 2 as the main router, removing the Home Hub entirely.
WiFi on CH1 and bandwidth set to 20mhz.
Other things to point out. Ram usage is at about 60% and storage at about 50%. I keep apps to a minimum.
As soon as v13.3 was released, devices drop off the mesh constantly and are painfully slow to respond when they do.
Just yesterday, I changed Homey Pro to just use Ethernet only on the recommendation of Athom support, but no improvement. However, this was only possible once I updated to the latest experimental update, because v13.3 broke the bluetooth paring for setup mode.
"BLE
Minor stability improvements.
Fixed an issue where a Homey Pro in setup mode wasn’t recognized by the Homey mobile app."
Seems quite a coincidence that this fix turned up in the changelog a few days after I reported the issue. How many other issues are there with v13.3 that they aren’t admitting?
I’m constantly told this is not a software issue, yet at the same time Athom are working on a firmware fix, which is meant to fix my “overloaded thread network”.
To me that sounds like an admission that Homey can’t handle this many devices, despite being advertised as a £400 professional smart home device.
In my setup, I’m not separating the two. Zigbee and Thread still run alongside eachother, my Homey simply isn’t the only Thread (Border) Router on that network.
I still hope that Athom finds a solution despite Homey’s rather questionable hardware design, although I have to admit that my expectations are now quite low.
In fact, I have already started a transition process, but it will take some time. I am currently replacing my Netgear switches with Omada switches and installing an Omada OC300 controller. Once everything is running reliably and properly configured, I will replace my Fritzbox with an Omada router. The final step will be replacing my ASUS access points with Omada access points.
Only after the entire wired network and Wi-Fi infrastructure have been modernised will I reassess Homey’s behaviour.
If the problems still persist after that, I will have eliminated practically every reasonable possibility that my network is responsible. At that point, I will seriously start looking at Home Assistant.
No, I just start. I just installed and configured the OC300. If all goes well I will replace an 8 Port Switch in my office today. The 28 Port Switch for my basement will only be delivered next week. And the 16 Port Switch for my living room needs some drilling work. I already saw the app, but I will install it only after the hardware is done. Thanks for the hint.
FYI - There is an option to export and import flows. One by one. Though not entirely what you want, it’s still better than starting from scratch.
I like your implied idea of a selective restore: restore only or a selection of flows, variables, devices, apps, etc. @Doekse: would that be something for your development team to consider?
I think that’s not possible to build easily. There’s a lot to consider: if you restore only specific devices, you’ll also need to restore only specific Flows for that device, and then only specific variables and specific Flow Folders for those Flows, and if those use Flow cards from other, unselected apps, those will be broken, etc. I think it would be very hard to build something like that. When you just restore everything, you know that everything will be transferred so there aren’t any missing parts
Could you go into the Thread settings on your Android phone? Should be a section within the device/connectivity settings. It should also say what your preferred Thread Network is there.
I’ve forwarded the feedback about the missing Thread settings to the team, I believe it should show even if no Thread Border Routers were found.
Great, so the next step here for changing the preferred Thread network on Android, involves wiping the google play cache, which in turn will wipe EVERYTHING from my google wallet
That includes payment cards and any store cards, tickets etc
How the hell did Athom come to the conclusion that this is the optimum way to migrate Thread from one instance of Homey to another
Just utterly baffling and appalling customer experience
Clearly this was the solution that meant the smallest amount of development time, with the most onus on the consumer to figure it out
