Are you so disappointed with this platform that you want to switch to a hard to set up system like HA? Yes!
In stead of spending money on the new Homey Pro (which I would have if we still had the desktop / browser user interface) I bought a Celeron based NUC. It cost exactly the same. Actually a little less. And then with a Z-wave stick from Aeotec the cost is more or less the same.
I threw my favorite Linux distro on it (Ubuntu Mate) and installed Hass.io via Dockers. I know nothing about Dockers. I just followed a step by step guide and it went fine.
Is it easy to setup or difficult?
It is difficult to learn the YAML language. But I also clearly remember how much time I spent getting the flow approach into my head on Homey. It took weeks before I understood what the different things meant, and even longer to find the user contributed apps that were needed. I spent a week writing my own version of the Aeotec app to add a Z-wave very common Aeotec sensor. A contribution that Athom ignored for 6 months even though many needed it and when implemented it still did not work. Homey was not a smooth ride either and there are many things I wanted to do and could not. E.g. Google Home is still not supported so it works.
With Home Assistant there are two sides.
There is 1000s more help in the HA community. The moderators are not aggresive and unfriendly like they have been here - sorry to say that. The HA documentation is far from perfect but it is plenty in comparison with Homey. And the number of Youtube videos for HA is also a huge resource.
Setting up Philips Hue was simple. Press the button and it is discovered. Done!
Setting up Z-wave was a total pain Homey. I had so much trouble with discovery.
With Home Assistant it is even worse! Z-wave on HA is a pain in the ass. If you are not a geek like me and you have many Z-wave devices, I would at least try and see. Z-wave is complicated. Homey got a lot of this right. HA has not. Removing a Z-wave device and readding it and you cannot give it the same name unless you hack some xml files. And often when you restart HA Z-wave is not working at all until you restart again. Z-wave - not so good.
MQTT however is brilliant on HA. Once you get the hang of that and tinker around with the many cheap ESP8266 solutions the world is open to you.
With Homey - they had a student making the Homeduino project which is great. But since Athom has ignored it and never taken advantage of its potential. I implemented an NFC reader for my alarm system for Homey. I ported this over to Home Assistant changing it to MQTT. Easy as hell. No need to code and code. Just copy paste code from examples from other users that were easy to find.
And in the two weeks I have already created automations (flows) that are far more advanced and cool than I ever could in Homey.
I have ONE thing left on Homey. I have a Philips remote control that I have not paired with HA yet because it is another USB stick and integration to learn and I expect it to be a painful thing. So Homey is standing there. ⌠All devices deleted except one Zigbee remote. All flows deleted. All except a few that translate button presses from the Philips remote to MQTT (again a user contribution and not something Athom did). And it is only a matter of time - then I either take the time to integrate Zigbee on HA (I use Philips hue hub for all other Zigbee and will continue to as it works well), or⌠I replace the single Zigbee remote with a home brew ESP8266 thing or a Z-wave remote.
And then Homey will be smashed to pieces and I will make a Youtube video of it!
In summary⌠to Athom. You had so much potential. You dummed your product down and you failed! You never understood your customers. You had a niche. The geeks that want to tinker. Now you can compete with Samsung Smarthings and the other dummed down products where you will drown in the noise as they perform much better and support much more devices
