Stability, Performance... communication

[Danny_Mertens]

Hi, I really really love my Homey and would be so happy if I could say it also loves me back, but to be honest I can’t say this is the case, because I don’t know if its only me, but its just not stable enough to trust completely.

Flows that worked without any problem for days, weeks just stop working without any reason that I can find, device battery is fine status updates in the app seem to be fine but still flows that worked great stop working?

Devices updates for days, weeks, and then without any changes just are not updated anymore?

Memory issues so we have to restart frequently sometimes daily, Zigbee range issues even with extenders…

So maybe it’s me but am I the only one with these issues, if I look in the different forums, communities then probably not?

No backup, restore option, really!? No native dashboard option? Yes thanks to great developers like @danee @Rocodamelshekima we have HomeyDash but to be honest this should be a native option in every professional domotica system!

So @WeeJeWel , @Athom I know your a small company and probably have a very long list of things to do, but could you please consider, like Apple did a couple of years ago, to dedicate more resources on fixing the stability, performance, more tools so we can easily review logs, and get better understanding about what’s wrong so we are able to pinpoint the issues and hopefully find (better) solutions.

For me this is much more important then adding new languages, or even features, because if the foundation is not stable it does not really matter to build a dream home on it, because you still would not be able to live in it.

Sorry if this sounds as nagging, but I really think this device is one of the best options and as complete as can be, but if I have to apology to my wife or family constantly why things don’t work then maybe I have to agree with her and think that maybe this is not making living, live better or smarter or helpful and I really don’t want to do this!

Thanks!

Kind regards,

Danny

[Danny_Mertens]

Well yes and no to be honest, I don’t really want to nag here, love this product and don’t want to see I go away because its just not reliable, I think it has great potential to bring domotica to the non tech people and thats in my opinion a good thing!

So hopefully Athom sees it as ‘‘A complaint is a gift’’ and comes with a good remediation plan, because I can understand that this will not be done in a day, week, but acknowledge of the issues and timeframe should be possible I think?

[Hugo]

I think you are right.
I’m also very satisfied whith my Homey but, i also have a problem with the fact that there is constantly new functionality to use but what gets broke stays broke.
Like for instance zigbee, it is not working correct and Homey does not change it.

[Jamie]

I have plenty of frustrations with Homey. But I guess for me the thing I have noticed the most is just how much has changed (and continues to change each month) for the better.

Go back 6 months ago, (off the top of my head) we had -

• a crappy mobile app
• desktop app which we recommended people ignore (and use chrome)
• no family invites
• no cameras
• a interface for flows which was not properly allow dragging and dropping.
• Apps couldn’t create notifications
• No German, no French, no Italian ()
• Needed an app for virtual buttons
• needed an app in order to restart homey
• No inbuilt google integration
• Hundreds of updates to apps such as Hue/Chrome/Etc

While it doesn’t feel like much is happening week to week, a lot has happened in the last 6 months. The only thing I miss from 6 months ago is the ability to reorder zones …

[rindler]

@Jamie

The only thing I miss from 6 months ago is the ability to reorder zones …

You can however do that by using empty rooms named by numbers. A workaround, but it’s working.

[Neuron44]

@Danny_Mertens

dedicate more resources on fixing the stability, performance, more tools so we can easily review logs

@Danny_Mertens

For me this is much more important then adding new languages, or even features

I think you hit a crucial point there. Imagine Athom adds support for Spanish (not sure if there is already support for it, didn’t check). This would nearly double their potential market, because there hunderds of millions of native Spanish speakers. This would translate to higher sales and therefore would mean Athom would have more resources to use.

So I understand you point and I also feel that stability and performance is very important (I haven’t really had a lot of problems so far, I must add. So I am satisfied with this), but one cannot be disconnected from the other.

And as Jamie states, a lot has been improved in the last months. However, it is easier to focus on things that don’t work yet, than celebrate things that have been fixed in the past. People rarely notice and acknowledge the latter. This is not a fault of you specifically, but this is just human nature.

[Jamie]

@Neuron44

I think you hit a crucial point there. Imagine Athom adds support for Spanish (not sure if there is already support for it, didn’t check). This would nearly double their potential market, because there hunderds of millions of native Spanish speakers. This would translate to higher sales and therefore would mean Athom would have more resources to use.

You raise a very interesting discussion point though, that being the random nature of the supported languages (location) rather then based on number of speakers :

1. Chinese ( 1,311 million)
2. Spanish (460 million)
3. English (379 million)
4. Hindi (341 million)
5. Arabic (319 million)

---

French, German, Italian are not even the top 15 of the list, Dutch ranks number 56.

[Neuron44]

@Jamie

You raise a very interesting discussion point though, that being the random nature of the supported languages (location) rather then based on number of speakers :

I think their choices do not only depend on the number of (native) speakers, but also on the potential market. I can imagine that the market of Hindi-speakers is less appealing due to their geographical location and maybe they are less technology-oriented than the French, Germans, Italians and Dutch.

For Athom it was probably very easy to sell their products via MediaMarkt in Germany and other countries, but therefore they would require support for the German language.

@Jamie

Dutch ranks number 56

This probably has more to do with the origin of the product

[Jamie]

Given that the original post doesn’t have a single idea or suggestion, (read more here)

I am going to be moving it to the Off-topic forum, if someone would like to make a new ‘suggestion’ for adding Spanish, that would be useful.

[Danny_Mertens]

Hi @Jamie, I completely agree with your reply and I’m also very happy to see these updates, but for me it’s still building a dream house on a unstable foundation and for me this is not really the best way to go.
But believe me I know for sure that the people at Athom also are not happy with this situation and it’s also not realistic to think that things will now completely change, will be fixed in the coming weeks because of my forum post, but if I read the different messages on Slack, community, social media then the feeling is now with a lot of people that Athom doesn’t care, and I don’t think, want to believe that this is true!

So with my post I only hope that they start communicating more about this and hopefully can share a timeframe, remediation plan for this. I really think that this is needed because I already had 4 messages this week from ex homey users with the same issues and based on the non communication, care from Athom did not believe anymore that the things will be fixed, I don’t want to believe this and still think that this is the best controller on the market but at the moment I also can’t recommend this to my family or friends, and to be honest that’s not a good feeling!

So I hope the people at homey see this post as “a complaint is a gift” because that’s the only reason I posted this!

Thanks!

[BadUncleJessy]

I also ordered the Zipato before I ordered homey. I sent the Zipato back because the quality of the display was VERY poor.

I was trying to automate everything in my house with homey, but I have absolutely horrific zwave reception even when there is no wall between homey and the device. I never used the experimental firmware since my homey was in a “production” environment where I can’t risk it not working properly. I also had tried resetting the device multiple times but to no avail.

I think people with apartments or really small homes have no problems. Once you have a house with multiple floors and a basement you would start seeing communication problems.

[DaneedeKruyff]

I’m very happy for you that you have no z-wave problems, but stating others must have a faulty unit because you have no problems isn’t very helpfull. Especially when you have one of the first homeys and lived through the different itterations of the z-wave implementation you must know your statement is nonsense.

[Jumanji]

I tend to agree with Danny regarding stability. I’ve experienced most of the issues you list in the original post.
While it’s getting better gradually, the device (at least v 1) is far from stable to be considered a consumer grade product. Most of us are happy to tinker with it but we are enthusiasts. I came to a conclusion that you need at least some degree in computing to configure the smart home to operate effectively. And this is when it works stably which it can’t, at least for more than a week in a row.
It’s still a long road ahead, perhaps several iterations of HW and SW to achieve stability you can rely upon for month and years without glitches.

[Neuron44]

So an update on the whole ‘whichlanguagedoesHomeyaddandwhyisitnotbasedonthenumberofnativespeakers’-discussion:

[PetervdK]

Where can i find that discussion? Must have missed that i suppose…

[Neuron44]

Here:

@Neuron44

I think you hit a crucial point there. Imagine Athom adds support for Spanish (not sure if there is already support for it, didn’t check). This would nearly double their potential market, because there hunderds of millions of native Spanish speakers. This would translate to higher sales and therefore would mean Athom would have more resources to use.

@Jamie

You raise a very interesting discussion point though, that being the random nature of the supported languages (location) rather then based on number of speakers :

1. Chinese ( 1,311 million)
2. Spanish (460 million)
3. English (379 million)
4. Hindi (341 million)
5. Arabic (319 million)

[PetervdK]

Duh, i really missed it. I must pay a visit to the local optician very soon i suppose…

[John_Morgan]

Danny_Mertens, sometimes it’s all about communication between front-end and back-end team, and software app’s integrity communications as well. Here is a great blog I found recently ( https://reinvently.com/blog/top-3-harsh-reasons-why-mobile-apps-fail/ ) where an author gathered all the information about harsh reasons how an app can fall after a start-up, of even before it.

[Arno_Z]

Realy feels like the frustation I had with Fibaro some years ago.
Now after few years of rubbish looking to switch to another platform, but reading these forums gives me flashbacks…

Cheerz anyway.

[Igy]

There is no system that is perfect on the market yet in this kind of price range. If yes, please let me know, I will go for it!
I had Fibaro HCL and HC2 before and I know what are you talking about. It seems that Fibaro has the same issues with HC3 again - a lot of bugs reported in forum. Talking about Homey, its working pretty stable, able to serve more automation that I was able to do with Fibaro! Yes, there are areas to be improved yet, but I do not regret switching from HC2 so far.