My first (and second) experience using Homey Pro

Questions & Help
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TL;DR: I’m about to return my Homey Pro and would actually really like for someone to tell me that I’m either wrong or had an abnormal experience. So, this is not a rant, but more like a “please tell me I’m wrong, so I won’t return the Homey and go back to my HomeKit-platform”…

I think it’s fair to ask the following question: when investing in a Homey to solve a problem, how many NEW problems should the user accept by doing this?

Last week, I bought a Homey Pro because I’ve had Philips Hue for many years and recently got the Tado X radiator devices and wanted to try out the “smart home thing” - especially because I wanted to add other brands (Aqara, Shelly etc.) into ONE platform, specifically to add a humidity controlled air humidifier.

Honestly, it has been much more frustrating and time-consuming than I had ever imagined, even though I’m a “tech geek” and have even been working in IT support for many, many years.

First impression: WOW, the Homey Pro is a lot of money just to add this functionality so I took it as a sign that it was really good and I’m normally always going for the better/premium products because value is more important to me than “bang for the buck”. The installation / initial setup was flawless and it was very easy to find inspiration from tonnes of YouTube videos and this forum :pray:

Then …

  1. “Oh you bought this device? Well, it can’t connect to the Homey.”
  2. “Oh you want to move this from Hue to Homey? Well, then you will not be getting all these features that you’re used to.”
  3. “Oh right, Aqara did promise Matter for this device but …”
  4. “Oh you want super simple things, like gradually fading out lights? Well, then you have to do an advanced flow (that you, by the way, cannot maintain on anything else than your computer and you have to add 200 steps with “-2% decrease” to run through”
  5. “Oh you want to add a mood? Well, then you can only do it on your smartphone - not on the computer!”
  6. “Oh, yeah - dashboard is SUPERCOOL - but you want it on the computer as well? Nah, can’t do!”
  7. “Did you buy a Wiz motion sensor? Yeah, MOST of their products will go right into the Homey Pro but not this one”
  8. “You have the Hue Tap button? Right, but you see, out of all of Hue buttons/dimmers, THAT specific device can’t be used in Homey!”

To me, it seems like it’s 20% better features than my existing Apple HomeKit, but at an extra 80% work and a lot of money spent and, unfortunately, that it’s quite a “lottery” when buying new devices - if you’re lucky, they work as they say, but probably not.

So yesterday, I decided to return the unit and just go back to Homekit, but just before shipping the box, I thought “this can’t be real - I must have misunderstood something” so I set it up again. Then…

  1. Couldn’t add my Aqara FP2 again, even though I did exactly the same as yesterday, where it worked (after a lot of fiddling). Resetting everything didn’t help either.
  2. Wanted to add my Philips Hue back in - removed it from Hue Bridge and now Homey only sees around 50% of the bulbs even though I’ve done all types of resets of the bulbs.
  3. I wanted to setup a Hue Dimmer for my kids bedroom and normally, top button switches light on/off and bottom button cycles through different scenes/moods but even after asking AI and sifting through YouTube, I didn’t find a solution for this after spending 4 hours.

And again, I’m highly motivated for this and have been “nerding” with IT and gadgets for 20 years and even to me, this is just WAY to time-consuming and frustrating. The Tado app, Hue app etc. are just so much more “plug and play” and you don’t have to spend hours figuring out if a given device will even connect to the Homey.

Seriously, I’ve spent time from 5am today until now (11:30) trying to get things to work. On top of many, many hours Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday as well, even though I only have a total of around 50 devices (Hue, Sonos, Tado, Wiz and Aqara)?!?!

My overall impression is, that Homey Pro is not for people, that just want things to work “out of the box” but instead have it as a hobby / lifestyle, tinkering with devices all the time, finetuning, “geeking out” and spending 3 hours figuring out why the lights turn off even though the motion sensor says “there are people in this room for sure!”.

To me, unfortunately, this is an unexpected let-down, especially at this price point and maturity of the product. As a “newbie” in terms of Thread and Matter, is seems to be a major let-down for now.

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To be honest I think you jumped in with two feet forward and expect everything to work at once and that turned out to be a disappointment.
You are right, Homey Pro is not plug-and-play and needs some tinkering before you get it working. But it is so much better than Homekit.
Also you focus on Thread and Matter and both these are still a work in progress. It is currently not what it was promised to be, but that is not Homey’s fault.
What product is plug-and-play for home automation and “just works”? I don’t know. I haven’t found it yet. Home automation is still far from that point because all of the different options and protocols.
In my opinion the Homey option is the one that comes closest, because of its capability to join all of those protocols together.

Oh, and by the way. If you connect your Hue devices to Homey using the Hue app and not bind them directly to Homey everything is supported. Even the Hue tap button.

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It is clearly not a consumer product, but just a part of your house automation system. And you are the system integrator. And commercials don’t tell you anything about requirements, and specifications are not always clear.
So for me it is a hobby, and when I switch off Homey, everything works fine, without the automation :wink: of course.
However for me it was the fastest path to monitor a complex heat pomp system and log all kinds of variables. Detecting several issues in the design of the supplier.

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Kenneth, Bummer to hear that you found your first experience with Homey below par. I have a Homey from the moment they started (first an early 2016 and later a 2023) and I have been overall very satisfied, although that does not mean that it has alway been without issues.

I installed devices in my house in 2016 and created flow for those devices in 2016 that are still running today without ever having the need to repair or modify them. Even the migration from my 2016 to my 2023 was relatively easy.

Homey supports a huge amount of devices, but there are many more devices out there, So just as you probably did with Homekit you should check if it works with Homey before buying new equipment. Homey was built to support most protocols (zwave, zigbee, tread, matter, 433mhz infrared…) and allows you to build a stand alone smart home. It is therefore more expensive than systems that only support wifi / cloud option like Homekit, Alexa and Google home. Simply because it has more chips, antennas and compute power. Also Homeys business model is to sell you a product once and then keep you happy for free for many year. Where some of the earlier mentioned products have a different business model of getting you into their ecosystem and collecting you data for selling adds. Or like with some other smarthome products, sell you the device at cost price and charge you a monthly fee. I have zwave switch modules behind every power switch in my house and I can assure you that that was far more expensive than the Homey. Also I paid more money to get my 5 Airconditioning units smart than what I paid for homey. So costs are relative. Still given the fact that you most likely have no zwave and will not be the most demanding user I would probably advise you to buy a homey mini in stead of a pro it that is already available in your country.

ik reponse to your points:

  1. There are so many product out their that even Homey cannot support them all. I would advice you th check the homey best buy guides and also when you bought a device check the forum because sometimes devices are support under a dffrent (country specific) name, work with the tuya app or work as a generic device.
  2. Homey supports Hue in two ways. The recommended option is via the hue bridge (similar to how homekit supports it). For the nerds they also supported a second way, by adding all the devices directly. But it is advertised on all forums and even in the app itself that you would loose functionality that way.
  3. Yes, unfortunately some smart home vendors keep changing their API’s of suddenly decide to no longer support some functionality. Homey may not yet have the status of e.g. homekit makin vendors a bit less carefull in offending Homey users. However you see that vendoer are really strating to take Homey serious.
  4. I fully agree with you that fading lights (and music for that matter, say everything whit a long press) should be made easier than it is right now. However, you can do it with normal flows and certainly you do not need 200 steps. I suggest you get tips from the forum. Also if they are e.g. the hue lights, let hue do it.
  5. I never use moods, so I cannot comment on this. However, note that homey was built ‘mobile first’ and that only some functions for power users are done from the PC because a mobile screen is simply too small.
  6. I would also like dashboards to be supported on more devices, not per se my pc, but more my Google hubs, smart mirrors, raspberry pies etc. However, that is the issue how many platforms are you willing to support. Dashboards are still very new (3 months) so with a bit of luck they will push a browser based version in the future. But again here: mobile first is their motto.
  7. and 8. Again check if they are made for homey before you buy. I have the similar issues also on homekit and google (I have no alexa) where a lot of device do not work although the secific vendor does support the platform.

I hope you find your mojo, wether that is with Homey or back with Homekit.

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Thank you! :pray: Much appreciated info!

I decided to keep the Homey Pro because, as you also mention, I might have been overly enthusiastic and/or maybe a bit naive in my approach because I took it for granted, that “smart devices” could be added. I had no idea that a lot of even new devices, doesn’t necessarily fit in - like, I bought the Aqara FP2 without realizing that it didn’t work with Homey. I simply hadn’t crossed my mind, that there would be so many differences / difficulties to take into consideration. Like I think most people would expect all streaming platforms to be running on the same media player, like Apple TV - you would not expect to have to buy a separate device for Netflix or missing out on 20% of the content from Disney Plus if you have a Chromecast instead of an Apple TV.

Now, with that realization, I can handpick the devices by that (so I swapped the FP2 for a Sonoff and that one worked with no hassle what so ever).

Also, my original understanding that “Homey Pro will eliminate the use of proprietary bridges” is maybe true to some extent, but now that I know that - in some cases - keeping the given bridge (like Hue), can actually be a better solution, I will just to that, of course.

My original understanding was that Homey Pro was this big bucket, that I could fill my devices into and have just one platform for everything, is only possible if I choose the right devices and that seems to have been the mistake that gave me a lot of problems for the first 3-4 days.

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Hello Robert,

I have been posting about needing to dim with flows, but I have had no solutions, Can you perhaps help with where to get more information?

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Regarding dimming/fading of light and music I strongly recommend downloading the Homey app Chronograph. There you can configure timers/transitions etc, that can be activated in flows - and you can tie the light level (dim level) to the current transition state. I run my morning wakeup lights this was - very easy once you get the hang of it, and not that many steps in a flow.

I wish you the best of luck getting to know your Homey. I finally found mine a while back, after living with SmartThings for 10 years. Very happy I made the change!

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Thanks - I’ve been trying to make chronograph fade lights now, but how do I make it work?

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Here’s a way to do it:

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I know it is in Dutch but I guess the flows themselves are readable. It’s shown as an advanced flow but as you can see it’s actually a bunch of short flows that each could be written as a normal flow.

Important: 1 use the transition function in the chronograph app. 2 have a switch that supports the scenes ‘start long press’ and ‘stop long press’ and 3 a lamp that has a ‘dim to’ function.

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At least I found out that Dutch has some parallels to Danish - I could actually read and understand most of it without translation :smiley:

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Screenshot_20250302_095210_Homey
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Hello in my Homey with Hue there is a “duration” parameter on the action “Set the light to xx %”. This is used for transition without having tu use chronograph or something else. At least I guess because i did not really used it.

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The issue is that at the start of the long press you do not yet know at what value you want to end up. Typically you would like one flow triggered by start long press to start the function dim to 0 in 6 seconds. And a second flow triggered by end long press to stop the first flow (an hence, stop the dimming) however Homey does not have a function to stop a flow. Chronograph helps in this.

Other option (which I’ve never tested) could be to have the start flow just dim 5% relative and than call upon itself (dimming another 5% and another). and having the stop flow deactivate (meaning you cannot start that flow anymore) the start flow for 5 seconds. So the first flow can no longer restart itself.

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It"s not available for many other apps/lights unfortunately.

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Here is tip for you. I’ve used Honey for 8 yrs isch, and I have around 50 devices or more connected. And, stability could be a lot better, yes, but most of the time it works great. But many times it’s not Homey’s fault. Make sure to set up your Wifi environment correctly. Don’t put the homey to far away (this means, you need to check your building and materials to make good connection) Meny devices I use, use Zigbee, and I strongly recommend to set it on channel 20 or 21. And your 2.4Ghz Wifi on channel 1 - 10 with only 20Mhz bandwidth. This will make sure you have less interference between WiFi and devices. Bluetooth also interferes with Wifi/Zigbee etc. In my opinion the interferences is the most common problem wchich no devices can solve by them selves. It’s up to the owner of the system to optimize. In general. For me Homey has been a great system to keep cost for devices down and join the realm of a smart home. Thx! Best reg /Mats

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@Kenneth_WedMore_Lund

Happy to see, you decided to keep Homey. I was (or in fact still am) in your shoes: high expectations of wrangling complexity while being hypercompatible, some initial disappointment when digging into the details, but then also a lot of pleasant surprises about what’s possible. And the community is extremely helpful. :heart:

My main gripe at the moment are wall controllers, more specifically getting gradual dimming via long-press or knob rotation. Somebody on the forum mentioned it has to do with how Homey fires ZigBee commands. There are workarounds, but probably the easier route is to just use the proprietary bridge alongside Homey – but I haven’t tried it so far …

That being said not using too many different vendors is probably a good idea.

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@Kenneth_WedMore_Lund
I had done the same thing as you and bought an Aqara FP2 before realizing that it was incompatible with my ecosystem (in my case, openHAB)…

What I learned was that there is a way you can get it working through a translation layer. That is - you can run a docker image of HomeAssistant to talk to the FP2 over apple’s homekit. Then, you set up a rule in HomeAssistant to send MQTT messages. I’m not super familiar with the Homey stuff, but I imagine you can employ a similar technique here. Whether or not that’s worth it to you is up to you to decide… I just actually took my Aqara FP2 down and replaced it with an Apollo MSR2 which works fantastic for me.

I use e27 lamps with Tasmota firmware installed. You can get them from athom.tech also available on aliexpress. They are basically equivalent to the Cree brand ones, but without the proprietary app/cloud stuff. YMMV, but every single one I’ve gotten has been rock solid.

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