There are 2 apps for Homey. One with hue hub (Athom) and one without hue hub (community). Can anyone tell what the pros and cons? I know the pro for without is that it is without the hub, but the con is than that the updates for devices doesn’t work. And also a con with the hub is that I than have 2 zigbee networks. I have several aqara sensors and, as far as I know, they can’t be connected to the hue hub.
PS: I searched on this question but didn’t find anything.
The Pro for the one with the Hue hub is that it uses the Hue hub. Now before that response causes annoyance I have tried the Hue without hub briefly, was alright. Using the Hue hub has been my setup for some time and it works very fast, gives access to Hue hub features such as scenes that are easy to trigger in Homey. It’s fast and responsive
And if you use the Hue bridge, you always have a backup if Homey fails…
Very true and sometimes it is mor convenient to use the Hue phone app anyway
Homey has a limit of zigbee devices it can support.
My number of Hue bulbs exceeded that limit.
I used the Athom Philips Hue App, it caused a lot of issues crashing the Homey. Athom support are aware of the issue, and advise frequent App resets. I got down to restarting the app every 3 hours to avoid the crashes.
This issue does not impact all users, but some. It seems to be related to the number of Hue Hubs/devices.
I have installed the MQTT client, stopped using the Hue App and drive lights/motion sensors through MQTT/Node Red and Homey is much more stable and happy.
While doing this discovered zigbee2mqtt and been able to reduce the loading on Homey further by moving all the zigbee devices across, well all but 9 which will be moving across tomorrow.
So Homey is now unburdened and targeted at tasks it does exceptionally well and shares all the data and commands through MQTT.
Thx for the info.
Is that issue with the hue app with bridge or without that you have that issue?
To what do you connect your zigbee devices now and installed zigbee2mqtt?
I was using the Athom Philips Hue App on a Homey Pro 2019.
I do have a lot of Hue bulbs ~80 and ~20 motion sensors over two Hue Hubs.
I want to keep the Hue hubs and Motion Sensors so Lighting remains autonomous.
I use a Node Red Node to connect to the Hue Hubs and it is quick very very quick.
I have a Mac mini with the new M1 Apple silicon, moved 70TB of video/Music for the Plex library, put the Channel DVR for whole house TV and DVR on it, added Node Red, Mosquitto MQTT Broker, zigbee2MQTT and the Mac mini takes them all in its stride with very very low CPU and most important hardly any power at all, it is using 150w when under full load, which I have yet to experience and is actually using about 18w most of the time.
With the Homey MQTT Client everything that is connected to the Homey is available in Node Red through the MQTT Broker.
I am gobsmacked at how well zigbee2MQTT works - great visualisation of the zigbee network.
Adding devices is the simplest yet I have experienced in 20+ years of doing this. As soon as you introduce a new device ie power it up and zigbee2MQTT hoovers it up and configures it perfectly.
I deployed 20+ mains powered sockets around the house to get a good base in.
Then when you add battery devices you can choice which mains powered device it will sync and join with.
Once up and running, and the barrier here is getting it installed and running can get tricky if you are not used to command line installs.
But once installed it is all gui.
Anyway, for me, building all the home automation logic in Node Red and abstracting all the things under it, Homey through MQTT, Hue through NR Node, etc etc keeps it all very simple and allows for me to change what manages what device, I can cherry pick the best hub to control things, Indigo for some zwave stuff, Hubitat for other zwave devices, Hue for lighting and motion sensors, Homey for the Apps like Zappi, Victron, Eufy Security, Eufy Vacs etc etc and I can change the controller but the logic engine remains static.
My 5c worth - As far as I can determine the best of all worlds.
If I understand correctly, you are or plan to no longer use even the Philips Hue hub and connect everything to zigbee2mqtt. Which zigbee adapter are you using?
I also have Home Assistant running with mqtt broker and Homey is already connected to it.
No I really like having the Hue Hubs, literally keeps the lights on when all else fails 
One for downstairs one for upstairs.
I use a Hue Magic Node to control lights.
As the lights are mainly managed using Hue motion sensors I only use NR to control lights by exception, ie Goodnight routine, and a few other occasions.
If you still use the Hue hub what are you connecting to zigbee2mqtt? Do you only connect the Hue devices to the hue hub and everything else to zigbee2mqtt?
Yup, 99% of the lights are Hue, on a hub, one upstairs one for downstairs.
Motions sensors not involved in hue lighting are on zigbee2MQTT, all the motion sensors related to Hue lights remain on hue hubs.
I managed to get a whole pile of hue external Motion sensors for £15 each, so have loads and use them as outdoor triggers, in fridges, freezers whole house battery cab8net, sheds, drive etc.
This way if, and I have the Mac mini running zigbee2MQTT, MQTT Broker, node Red, running on a 20kWh failover battery.
NB, the battery charges at night during cheap rate, and discharges during day at peak. I have all critical equipment on the failover if the grid goes down.
Hi, I use HUE with hub but with this solution, Homey cannot detect energy consumption from light, instead of direct connection, without bridge, it’s working, do you have same issue ? Thanks
When using Hue WITH Bridge, if you tell Homey what each bulb uses individually, full power on and standby, Homey then estimates usage based on dim level. Works fine. It cannot detect but you can still get a reasonable estimate
