Performance of Homey suitable with quite some devices, sensors, actors of different brands/technologies?

Hi all,

For some years now I’ve got a RPi (Domoticz, all rules programmed in LUA scripts) with below mentioned set-up. Adding the last items caused my RPi to freeze and nothing helped. Installing OpenHAB instead of Domoticz helped partly (at least it is up & running now). But a proper solution (performing controller) is needed.

Over the last years I was triggered by Homey several times but never dared to buy one. With my RPi being frozen I need another system. Of course I a looking again to Hopmey, also because of the possibility to connect some (cheaper) Aqara Zigbee items.

My question to you: does anybody have a comparable setup with a swift performance? I really appreciate an honest answer so I can determine if a Homey is the right controller for my setup. My main concern is the performance due to the (high) amount of items connected (and the number of apps I expect to use).

My expectations are I will be using 20-30 Homey apps.

Following is my current setup (all Z-Wave):

  • 25 Fibaro dimmers
  • 4 Fibaro power plugs
  • 1 GreenWave 6x power plug
  • 2x Fibaro motion sensors
  • 2x Fibaro smoke sensors
  • 2x Neo Coolcam motion sensors
  • 2x Neo Coolcam power plug
  • 1x Fibaro doorsensor

Not connected somewhere in a drawer (need to be connected):

  • 3x TKB power plugs
  • 4x Neo Coolcam door sensors
  • IP camera (connected to Synology NAS)

Future whishes:

  • Zigbee Aqara sensors and actors (door, motion, power plugs)
  • Sirene / alarm-light
  • UPS (of APC) connected, if possible

Thank you in advance for your reaction and with kind regards,
Erik

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Hi Erik, I have a similar setup/nr of devices. I do notice an increase of performance issues. However, to me they seem more related to the API between Homey and the vendor (i.e. Hue, Harmony, IFTT, Google Home). For the devices, it seems fairly stable. Not 100% though.

Frequently, on a nearly day level, I experience issues by giving a command through a trigger of these apps and not getting passed through or not handled. This has contributed to my disappointment to the Homey development team regarding their strategic view on Homey (but that’s an off topic).

Hope this helps.

Erik,

We seem to have a similar setup. In my case I use about 30 powered z-wave devices (mostly Fibaro, NEO and Aeotec) and about 15 Aqara zigbee + 15 Philips Hue zigbee devices. I have 28 Apps installed.

I am thinking of returning to Domoticz…running on my Synology NAS.

Initially I was very happy with Homey. The cross platform support, the open structure of the Apps developed by us, the end users. The eagerness of Athom the first year. Man, I even wrote 2 articles in Dutch computer magazines, rating Homey 4 out of 5 stars.

The last year has not been positive. Athom has decided to drop support for big screen development. Imagine porting your LUA script via your telephone screen!!
Athom also has dropped communication to a below par level.

From a hardware point of view, my setup is reasonably stable. I do have Homey reboot every day (via an App) which helps keeping it running. I will not upgrade to v2 because Apps I use are not running on v2 yet. This is a catch-22 situation. Some developers have stoped supporting their own Apps, or are not willing to port them to Homey v2. In the meanwhile I can’t update…

Bottomline; my setup is working and stable but not future proof.

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@Eternity Just to clarify, you never need to ever put code on or near a mobile phone. Coding, Running, Installing and Deploying are all 100% identical in v1 as they are in v2.

@blue-OX you only need one app per supplier ie. the demo of your current setup would require 3 apps, I don’t know what you mean by ‘swift performance’. But that IP cam in your draw wont be working for a little while. (after v2 is released).

You might want to check this out : 41% of surveyed users had 20-30 apps installed.

Yes, I am aware of that. I meant that creating complex flows on a phone seems a step back from the way I currently do it on a 27" 5120x2880 Mac screen.

Let’s plz keep that conversation for another topic?

Sorry @Rocodamelshekima
You are right!

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I have:

  • 30+ z-wave devices (fibaro, hank, nod-on, ID-lock, Philio, Telldus)
  • 60+ zigbee devices (xiaomi, ikea, philips hue, innr)
  • 10+ “internet devices” (HTTP, IFTTT, Neato, Twinkly)
  • 1 Bluetooth device (xiaomi)

In addition to this I have the following apps enabled:

Probably have some 100+ flows (more or less complicated).

Devices respond pretty snappily (1 second or so delay)
In the Web UI I have started to notice a slight lag.
The Android app is all but unusable as it does not cache anything and loads 10 devices or so “each time you scroll” so it takes 10-20 seconds to find a device (also it is very very buggy meaning you can not use it for much)
Google home integration is horrible (but thats is due to the Homey cloud) so 99% of all the interactions it responds with “homey did not respond”. The devices tend to work though so not that annoying.
I mainly use Homey for automation so limited “interaction” with it in a real-time sense but I would not even consider using “an app” to turn my lights on with Homey as it is horribly slow.

As said before (and I know that Homey moderators will dislike any criticism of athome).
Apart from things “working ok”, my experience with Homey is so-so, they rarely fix bugs and issues, never respond in issues or give any sort of “when it might be fixed”. There is no public road map, no feedback. And as someone mentioned many apps are abandon-ware (even Homeys own apps are)
There have been little in terms of new development in the last year (probably due to 2.0 work). They have two android apps which are both abandoned (now they start a new one, how long till it is abandoned remains to be seen).

So all in all I would be cations about recommending homey, many devices I have bought required me to patch and re-build the apps them selves and some are flat out not supported by homey (meaning I had to toss them). And given that 2.0 is dropping support for any UI except android/IOS my guess is that I will probably switch to some other system in the next few months…
But all-in-all it kind of works (and it works more stable then my Domoticz setup I had before, but I have heard much good about hass)…

// Michael Medin

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Daar all,

Thank you for your quick and extensive responses. I really appreciate that and besides that it does help me :wink:

For the moment I think it is best -in my case/for me- to wait at least until some experiences/reviews for v2 are available… and still doubting for RPi with OpenHAB / HomeAssistant or the Fibaro Home Center.

In case anybody has extra input, please don’t hold back :wink:

With kind regards,
Erik

I’m running roughly 21 Philips Hue bulbs/sensors, 9 INNR bulbs, 2 Ikea bulbs, 14 Xiaomi Aqara devices, 10 Fibaro actuators/sensors, YouLess energy and water meter, 2 Somfy sun screen motors, 7 Click On Click Off actuators/sensors (433 MHz), and apps like device groups, sun events, Ubiquity (22 in total). I don’t have problems, performance is okay, no crashes/restarts needed. And with apps like Heimdall you get yourself a nice alarm app.

I have the following devices connected:

  • 3x Sonos
  • 1x Denon receiver
  • 25 Hue devices (Lights, strips, taps, motion sensor)
  • 2 Fibaro motion sensors and 1 power plug
  • 4 Neo coolcam door sensors
  • 1 Nest thermostat and 1 Protect
  • Nuki lock
  • Synology camera
  • 9 Somfy devices
  • Netatmo welcome camera
  • 1 Airconditioner
  • 1x Ziggo horizon settopbox
  • 1x LG Hombot vacuum cleaner
  • Some virtual devices/buttons

I use loads of flows based on movement, sunset, time, expected rain, webhooks and such.

I do sometimes notice that Homey begins to stutter when talking, but everything else still works perfectly. The lights in my closet and living room, for example, go on based on sensors, and that still happens within a second.
I am still running v1.5 of Homey software at home, because I depend on it so much and am affraid to already update… but I already updated at the office and I have no problems there. (Just have a KAKU doorbell, one Hue lightstrip, and a load of webhook flows there)

Hi all,

Thanks for your input so far. Sounds my setup would be able to respond with Homey… while I will probably have to accept some glitches. And maybe wait a few weeks after the new Homey devices are available again to look for experiences with the v2 in live situations ;-).

I appreciate your responses. It helps me choosing for Homey (or not) with my setup. At this moment, based on your reactions and my own view in the matter, I tend to change to Homey when the devices are in stock again.

With kind regards,
Erik

2 Likes

I have a relatively light setup

  • 10 Mcohome switches
  • 2 aeotec 6 in 1 sensors
  • 2 neo coolcam door sensors
  • Yale digital lock (zwave)
  • X2 broadlink RM Pro (wifi)

Others

  • 3 Google home mini
  • 2 chromecast
  • 1 dlink smart plug
  • 1 LG TV

Apps used

  • Homeydash
  • Aeotec
  • Betterlogic
  • Broadlink
  • Count down
  • Google chromecast
  • IFTTT
  • LG webos
  • MCHome zwave
  • neo coolcam
  • smart presence
  • virtual device
  • Yale digital lock

I just installed the Xiaomi zigbee app and was getting a warning I had too many apps and Homey “might be slow” warning.

DIsappointing. I don’t know how others can claim to have 40+ apps without homey grinding to a stop

And the earlier commenter was right at least prior to 2.0. It takes 2-3s to load up app screen . Too slow to use really.

Also Google assistant support is Homey is very bad… You have to say “Tell Homey…” or use routines but either way it is very slow 3-5s for response and you will occasionally hear error messages from homey (even if action is eventually done).

Other than that Homey is fine.

To be honest, the support here is excellent , but it is from dedicated community forum rather than athoms itself.

I do think v2.0 does fix a very big issue with the mobile app so that is a step forward. I’m neutral about losing desktop UI , I suspect is mostly the power users complaining. I am still on V1.5 and i do occasionally do flows using the Homey preview app and it’s not too horrible, and that is far worse than the 2.0 app.

My main gripe is Google assistant support… sigh

This is a warning but doesn’t necesarrly mean that Home is slow. And ofcourse Google home integration is slow. Because your command needs to go like this:

voice → google home → athom cloud → your homey → your device

That is way slower then just controlling it directly.

But when i tried with alexa it was far faster… So it’s not just simply the additional hop.

With Alexa and homey?

I can only advise you 1 thing. If you do decide to buy a Homey, get the Pro.
The normal one is, in my opinion, not powerful enough.
I don’t have a big setup, but I do have performance issues.
Speech has stuttered from day one here.
Device response on the other hand is mostly ok.

I’d get the Pro now if I had to choose…

Dear all,

Thank you all for your continuing reactions and providing me of input!

@Fire69: Without knowing I followed your advice / conclusion:
This Tuesday, just after it was announced, I pre-ordered the Homey Pro… assuming this wil work and perform well for me ;-).

With kind regards,
Erik

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Ah, because of the new replies I hadn’t noticed this was an old topic :smile:

Anyway, glad to help and I hope the Pro suits your needs! :wink:

Yes. I think is because Alexa and Homey has native support. While Homey doesn’t.