Recommended Period to auto reboot Homey?

Questions & Help
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21

Damn auto correct :slight_smile:

I am using the the Athom Philips Hue App, as my understanding that Homey May struggle with an extra 90 zigbee lightbulbs and 25 motion sensors.

So using Hue Hubs (2 of them, 1 for upstairs , the other for downstairs)

For clarity it is the Athom Philips Hue App that is causing issues (albeit substantially reduced after creating a Flow that restarts the Athom Philips Hue App every six hours on the advice of Homey Support. I have tried every 24 hrs, 12 hours and settled on six hours.

22

I’m using this one too: Athom Philips Hue App

23

I had Also trouble to have a stabil homey, but after changing power supply and upgrade the internet to a mesh with wifi 6, now fore 1,5 years no problems, only have to restart when homey software upgrade comes, but the last 2 upgrades, didnt have to restart😊

24

Good to hear.

My Homey is running on an Apple iPad 3a usb power and it is sitting 3ft from a UniFi Dream Machine.

So Homey should not have any trouble getting a Wi-Fi signal here.

The issue appears to be mostly related to the Hue App. :slight_smile:

25

Its not that Homey is getting signals from wifi that I ment, but that the home network could handle the traffic, and there where no delay, or lost communication, that make the homey unstabil.

I noticed Also that homey is more stabil when there Are no electronics around it, so I have places it atleast 4 meters away from wifi stations or anything that sends signals.

In the end I Also changed a lot of flows that startet every second or minutes, to other type of flows, so that it wouldnt be a problem with communication, because of to many commands at the same time.

All this worked fore me, before theese changes I had a Big stroggle with Homey, and wanted to put it in the trash, but now it works like a dream

26

Good to know, thank you for sharing :slight_smile:

I have a UniFi enterprise network, 8 managed switches and 3 APs, in a small house, everywhere gets a strong network signal :slight_smile: it was a Covid project ……

Not a network issue.

I have ~16 flows none of which is doing too much, I don’t want to add more to Homey’s loading.

It seems at the moment that to use Honey to its full potential I have to chose Homey or lighting/sensors but I can’t have both. To qualify this statement, if I continue to use Hue for 90 + lights and 25+ sensors + some switches (on 2 hubs) with Homey I have to live with Homey crippled with the Athom Philips Hue App.

So left with using Homey to manage the things it’s good at and manage Home Automation with something more reliable that can handle the Hue Hubs.

Because, for me, in my circumstance, cannot control lights, or work with the 25 Hue motion/luminance/temp sensors then it is of little value as a Home Automation.

Which is not overly bad, disappointing, but not too bad, I prefer using localised autonomous Hubs for managing key systems, Hue manages lights, Tado manages central heating, Sonoff EWeLink manages Hot Water.

All operate extremely well and reliably. I was hoping that I could use Homey as the Command & Control providing oversight and pulling all the elements together for Dashboards, graphing, detecting abnormalities in connected hubs, forcing reboots when required, and finally reporting.

But Homey, in my case, cannot fulfill that role so it is relegated to a supporting role and will focus on the things it does well, Victron, Zappi, Harvi, Shelly, Aqara Blinds.

I am ok with this, had I known I would be spending ~£400 and three months working this out I would not have spent the money, but I can’t return it now, so will get it working to the best of its ability.

There is a lot to like about the Homey, a great deal.

I love Advanced Flows, Insights, Energy tracking, the apps.

But the chaotic arrangement of functionality that requires device acrobatics switching between iOS Homey App, web interface on iOS then switch to a computer to review/edit advanced flows is wearing.

The way that you can build overlaying graphs, in one of the versions of Homey, I forget which one, iOS App, web interface or web app interface is great, but not persistent, so spend 20 mins creating the perfect graph to see how the house central heating is working, but be prepared to have rebuild it again next time you want to check it. As a Homey user you just stop doing that sort of thing or add in graphana. It’s a pity sooooooo close to being good enough out of the box.

Energy tracking is a fantastic idea, especially during a global energy crisis. But lacks the functionality to be really useful and ends up just being ignored while people run up Power By the Hour.

The addition of Athom Apps is great but their presence sucks the air out of community solutions, for example the Greenwave Athom App decimates the functionality of the Greenwave zwave sockets completely removing energy consumption tracking. The Athom Philips Hue app is good enough, but consumes cycles and memory to the detriment of Homey as a platform. There are more, the very presence of Athom Apps frequently weakens Homey to a ‘good enough’ philosophy away from ‘make it great’.

Good enough is a silent killer of great, and there in a nutshell is the weakness of a great platform, it is programmed to ‘good enough’ and has lost its ambition to be great.

There is promise in the new Homey Pro coming out next year, which so far does not claim to address the core issues above.

As I have said, I love Homey, I love the promise of Homey, but it’s constant pursuit of ‘good enough’ will be its downfall, at some point it needs to fix all the compromises because they add up.

27

I hear you, you seem to be an experienced and knowledgeable user, but you make so many points and conclusions it’s too much to reply to.

It seems to me you have a special case.

You are still using the wrong power supply. Homey also advised me at the time to not use an older Homey 1 original power cable since it’s too thin. Check your cable.

@Andreas_Harreschou makes a good point. In your flows, did you add delays to avoid too many commands being sent simultaneously? It helps to avoid flows sending a command to a number of devices at the same time (like All Off). You can make these flows with built-in delays of 1 sec or use the Group app with more refined delays.

There are many solutions to these issues.

How do you carry out your tests?
Which zwave devices? Too many different brands requires you to check if one is perhaps interfering with others.

Did you try to reduce the hue lights/bridges?
Disable most flows and test. Since you are using advanced flows there could be many issues related to simultaneous running with other flows.

Is your internet connection stable?

It took me years to discover both my internet lines (1 vdsl, 1 cable) had old (3-5 year) routers that BOTH caused irregular outages of 5-10s. The larger your network the more points you need to check. I sometimes wish I don’t have 2 POE switches and 5 unifi APs, a USG , etc all behind the providers router/bridge.

The more detail you provide the better. Start with flows.

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28

I think the issue was made clear early on: having 90 Hue devices is too much for Homey.

The Hue app is long known to have all kinds of issues (memory leaks, excessive bandwidth usage, slow responses) and Athom doesn’t seem to be able to fix them.

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Thanks I saw that. I could accept it but as a tinkerer I would not give up just like that. Not in my nature.

So why go on about so many things not related to Hue?

If flows can be fine tuned is there a chance it could help him?

If he would split his Hue devices over 3 instead of 2 bridges, would that help?

I understand the polling issue may not be prevented, but you never know with these things. There can be several mitigating factors that could make his problem more livable.

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Because it adds up.

The issue isn’t with the bridge, it’s with how Homey’s Hue app deals with Hue devices. Each device needs to be polled apparently, so the issue is with the total amount of devices, not the amount of bridges.

Or perhaps look at alternatives for Homey, if only for the Hue part. A NAS or old PC will happily run Home Assistant, which has no issues with that amount of Hue devices.

31

So…I have 45 devices on my hue bridge… there are no problems with athome software at all. As bridge is full I moved some sensors to the hue without a bridge app…also…no issues. Still have three sensors running on deconz.

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It’s ok guys, but thanks for your input, very much appreciated.

I will get some time over Christmas so will work this through.

I accept that 90 light hue bulbs and 25 hue sensors / 2 hue hubs is too much for Homey.

I’ll play with Hubitat/Homey/ Hue / Tado Hubs with a Node Red overlay, also want to have a play with Mqtt zigbee.

I’ll keep the Homey Athom Philips Hue App on the Homey and see if it stabilises, if it does, I’ll rethink it.

Thanks all, we can close this thread down now :slight_smile:

33

Still hard to accept that @robertklep is right. It sounds like @robertklep is not sure when he wrote “each device needs to be polled apparently”.

Even if so, its worth trying, since 90 light hue bulbs and 25 hue sensors is too much for 2 hue hubs as per Philips spec. It could be that 3 hubs would maintain a different load / timing each.

It’s a pity you do not further check this, because if your problem can be solved I guess this thread would help many. You will need that extra Philips hub anyway.

34

That’s because I don’t have any Hue devices and can’t speak first-hand, but I’m sure @Caseda’s statement about it is correct.

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35

Something I noticed in your story; Homey 3 feet away from an wifi access point. Did you lower the AP’s transmit power?
Wifi at 3 feet from an AP can be pretty overpowering and can cause retransmissions amongst others. Combine that with the polling and more specifically the ammount of data the hue app pulls in and it will put a significant load on Homey.

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36

I have been working this problem for several months now and really need to get key HA infrastructure stable in my new house.

The two hue hubs are working great and managing the day to day automated lighting and unlikely to be adding more sensors/ lights, so don’t see the need for another Hue Hub right now.

Will keep checking for updates to the Athom Philips Hue app and hope the issue gets resolved one day.

37

@Busta999

I understand your position, but no matter how much experts in the thread say (and they could be right), you conclude this by hearsay and assumptions.

You have not done enough to prove the issue you have is not related to other weaknesses in your set-up. They are pointed out above.

To remain pure, you can conclude that you have invested enough of your time in this, you still do not know for sure what the cause is of your problem and you will try to bypass it with another hub.

Best regards

38

Ok thank you for contribution.

To be a bit clearer, Homey Support, following an investigation, have identified my Homey is suffering a known issue with the Athom Philips Hue App where it will continue to consume over 80mb of RAM and continue consuming memory until it causes instability in Homey ultimately making it unreachable and required a hard reboot to restore basic function.

The recommendation by Homey support was to instigate a process that restarted the Athom Philips Hue App periodically.

After a few days of tuning I was able to identify an optimum restart period of 6 hours, just as the Athom Philips Hue App was reaching 40mb of RAM usage.

Not ideal as it makes automated actions dependent upon Hue sensors less than perfect.

So to be clearer, I have replaced the Athom supplied Power supply with a 3a psu, as it has been identified as likely contributing to networking instability.

I have moved the Homey closer and further away from the UniFi Dream Machine Enterprise Network router.

I have created a dedicated SSID, limiting it to just 2.4Ghz because the 5Ghz is considered to be destabilising to the Homey.

I have removed ZWave devices that were automatically enrolled using security, and re-added them using an App that for enrols them not using security.

I have then removed all zwave devices because it was suggested that zwave was causing issues.

I have kept the number of Flows (16) low because I was informed that Flows are a drain on the Homey.

I have removed a lot of Apps to reduce loading on Homey to improve stability and moved the functionality to other Home Automation hubs.

I had built both zwave and the zigbee networks exclusively with 20 mains powered devices each in order to build stable networks (zwave now run down).

I have not yet got to the point loading all then battery powered zigbee devices (well one battery powered zigbee switch because my better half wanted a switch)

So while you are absolutely entitled to state I have not tried hard enough, I am fairly convinced that I have expended more effort on Homey than I have on any other Home Automation controller without getting to a solid, reliable, working state.

Besides, I am comfortable with Athom Homey Support’s diagnosis that the Athom Philips Hue App has issues that cause Homey to become unstable and have no reason to doubt their assessment, but you are welcome to engage them direct and challenge their findings.

Having now said this, this is now closed.

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39

That is an interesting description of all you had to go through. It looks like you did more than you confirmed before and I appreciate your efforts. I understand you are done with this, so feel free not to answer.

For the benefit of others:

You can only make reliable conclusions with the basics right.

  1. Use a 3A power supply that is not a phone/apple battery charger. Ensure to test also the thick/well isolated and short power cable.

  2. Ensure that Homey was moved much further away than 3 feet from a 2.4GHz access point. (If you have your own managed network, you would know as no one else that there could be certain (WiFi) configuration settings leading to issues, but that’s for another day)

  3. Less than 50 Hue devices per Philips Hue bridge and in some cases 45. Even less if Philips Hue Bluetooth is used. 100+ Hue devices requires 3 bridges as per Philips Hue specifications. Adding Homey sync increases the load.

  4. Having potentially an issue with z-wave devices at the same time. Better test isolated. Various tips were provided in this thread.

  5. Qualify the flows that are used for the test:
    a. Disable all related flows and test with a simple flow. Even if there are “only” 16 flows, advanced flows can be huge.
    b. Sharing the flow here can be extremely useful. Human mistakes are common. For example to verify that small delays were built into the flows to avoid switching a number of devices simultaneously. Or build in a delay for a test after switching device states.

Any of the basics not confirmed could lead to the issue @Busta999 is having. No matter what Homey support say or despite the suggestions of highly appreciated contributors/experts like @Caseda or @robertklep who may still be right in the case of @Busta999 .

Homey is rock solid when treated well. I have no opinion on HA or other platforms, but this community deserves solutions for Homey and most members have no use for suggestions to move to or add another platform.

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40

We only have years of experience.

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