I know there are lots of threads out there now on bashing Homey and I agree with many of the sentiments - I have even been told off for getting carried away with the giving out… Yes, there are serious holes - there is no back up, no Google Home, no control over the app dashboard…
However, with the
new Flow Editor
A beautiful app
Developer Tools Site
Insights
I feel we now have a great package. Yes I want to see more. While I disagree with Athoms methods and lack of connection with us, they are started to complete the package.
So here’s hoping they continue innovating and brings us the last few promises
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Ok… I challenge everyone from here on…
Only post in this thread to share a positive note or message about homey
The only thing missing to be on the same functional level as 1.5.13: (but with a way more robust and flexibel base and betters apps)
Home/Away detection
For me it worked (and still works) 100% reliable on my 1.5.13 Homey but almost never (99%) detects when I come home on my V2 Homey, leaving home is detected as it should.
I agree on most points with you. If you could stack some Insights graphs that would make it quite complete for me. But I’m happier now with Homey since the new Flow Editor.
I am much happier about the experience overall as well. The flow editor is a great addition and all the hard community work with mqtt is really impressive.
I do however still miss some more dynamic device icons that shows metrics for a good overview. Similar to what smartthings has as well.
And I do miss a public issue tracker so it is easier to follow bugs, suggestions and ongoing work. But that isn´t really related to the product experience.
I am also verry happy with Homey. At this moment I wouldn’t know which domotica system is better as Homey. It is not perfect, with that I agree. But it is improving. At this point I miss some things, like a backup facility(as off v 2.1 that also will be available), a standard facility to restart some apps automatically(my Hue app sometimes needs to be restarted and Candy does not work anymore). But overall Homey works quite stable. I know that some devices do not work with Homey(anymore) but that is all in the game. Domotica is a market which is developing itself very fast, so at this point you can’t have it all. What I don’t like is how negative some comments are, and it seemes to me that this will discourage new buyers. I hope Homey has the ability to go international, the Homey community could benefit from that in the long term.
I do not fully agree here. For connectivity at least we went more than one move backwards. Just supporting Android and IPhone with Apps, but no Windows and Apple systems (or others with WWW access), is not the way to go or current state of the art. I don’t want to just use my mobile phone, I also want to just work from my computer and just check what the current state is. So, this got removed and I don’t know why. It would be simple (we saw it with flows.athom.com which is not more than a subset of the functions we had on my.athom.com) to allow device listening and state configuration via web.
If you recommend flows.athom.com as a great dupa new feature and it’s almost on a par with the flows feature of my.apps.com, then that’s very questionable for me
The topic is “Super happy with Homey v2”
The TS starts with
The rest is all stating what they are missing. We have special topics for all the things missing. What’s the fun of opening a topic to be “super happy” and then all saying what’s missing?
Give me a good reason to keep this topic open and i’ll think about it.
Wow, just closing a topic because the feedback is not positive enough is a very good way to handle it.
For me, I moved from FHEM (many years) to OpenHab (~1 year) to Domotics (still alive) and Fibaro (3 years till Nov '18) and work with Homey now. I learned to like the Homey platform because of the possibilities, the variety of interactions and the willingness of the community to help others.
But till now, I also loved the community because it was always open minded and helpful.
Closing unwanted feedback is not helpful for the whole platform. It would be great to use the community feedback and work on solutions. Don’t forget, that the device costs money and is not for free like others. If it is free, then missing stuff, development work… is agreeable, but if you spend 300 or 400 €, then this is not an argument anymore. It must work, it must have a future and the community must be listened…
To be honest, I have never experienced such an ignorant way of handling issues / missing stuff in other platforms…
Please be aware that “negative” feedback is always welcome, just not spread throughout the entire forums. Just like with any other topic, you want to keep it in line with the initial thought of it so people know what to expect. There are plenty of dedicated topics where you can share your critical notes as well so this is in no way a communistic approach, just a way to keep everything tidy :).
If you think posting this posts in the same topic also as in the other topic is fun then you got the wrong idea about me posting this. This post is about being super happy with Homey. What’s the fun of posting what you guys are missing in this topic while there is other topics about that? This is all for being off-topic. We like to keep the forums clean and readable for everyone.
Yes, I am happy with Homey.
It is a nice product where you can do all sorts of fun things with. I could not have thought of the things beforehand that I am doing now with Homey.
Nevertheless, the last years were also bumpy in terms of development. It is super difficult to put together a home automation system that can do all this and works smoothly and easily.
But on the other hand, it is also nice to see how it all plays out and is working better.
What I sometimes struggle with are the sometimes senseless rants. The moaning, the venting of frustrations, the lack of decorum even.
I would have liked it to be a bit more constructive and more thoughtful.
I am afraid that it is human nature to look at what is missing rather than what is there already. Up until yesterday the entire forums were spread with critics on a missing desktop management solution. now that that got published, it will probably switch to non-working presence (out of the box) or the good old z-wave/zigbee issues. Welcome to IT… where the majority of people tend to have a critical view on things (especially changes are hard to ever do good for the average IT guy/girl)
Homey walks the very very fine line between a device which can be used by the people yet give power and control to the users who require it.
A great example of this is the Home Automation, ie. flows. It is a simple yet powerful interface which anyone can use and requires no assumed knowledge or custom setup. And if thats not enough - there is always HomeyScript.
Is this unique? No. Is it possible to make everyone happy? No. But they try and they are doing a damn good job.
Just yesterday I installed a brand new weather app (darksky, made by Jeroen Somhorst). Install it and boom, you can use it. It reports the usual weather metrics and also solar power. I saw all sorts of possibilities to use that metric, for instance to try to make my solar collector more efficient by increasing/decreasing the pump volume according to the solar power (and the angle of the sun to the solar collectors)
This is what makes my tech heart go wild
And that my fellow home automation enthusiasts, is what in a nutshell, makes Homey so enjoyable for me. You read about a new app on the community forum (and I never heard about darksky before either!), install the app and use it. And there is always a new idea to use it…
Although I started a thread bashing my Homey, there are som positives that I would also like to mention:
I like Homey as a concept, and when it works, it works really well.
I was blown away by Xiaomi Aqara devices, both for agility, pricing and the possibilities that they give for automation.
I love it when chromecast works, and when i impress my friends with the Xioami door sensor that triggers a chromecast video on my TV, and all lights blink.
I like that it’s easy to set up and play around with.
I love that there’s an active community behind, who are fast to respond and help out.
I truly hope that Athom will keep the updates coming and increase functionality and stability of this device.
