Indeed, or in a simple post here with Q and A
Thanks for the feedback! It was our first try with this new look and feel. We got so many questions beforehand that we could barely fit all in the 1 hour timeframe.
Which questions do you feel still needs some answers? Really curious to hear!
@Doekse for example many of the points raised in this great post weren’t addressed:
e.g. exclude devices from Alexa, built in weather flows, virtual zones, reorder zones, hideable devices, map view (which I really hope you are planning for the dashboard), templated settings, etc.
Or this about zigbee groups support:
Also there is a lot of questions in this thread which are very technical / developer oriented, and maybe are a bit much for the video AMA format. Therefore I get that you can’t answer every single question or forum post, but maybe similar to this AMA there should be a written Q&A in the forum from time to time (e.g. once a month?) which specifically addresses some of the technical / developer questions.
The community of developers is a huge part of what makes the Homey ecosystem so great and I think it’s not to much of an ask to have a bit more of a dialog between them and Athom to continue building great things together.
Hi @Doekse,
Thank you for yesterday’s YouTube Live video. You did a great job for your first time as a moderator.
It was very interesting to learn some information about Athom and Homey that only insiders know. Emile and Stefan’s thoughts/reflections on various functions were also very interesting.
As a long-time user, however, I would like us users to be involved in some of the planned functions. For example, Emile mentioned that he or Athom doesn’t want user-defined roles/permissions to be done by selecting/deselecting all devices. I know Stefan also pointed out the problem with these devices within flows, but this is just an example.
Assuming that it would be technically possible, why don’t we vote on whether selecting/deselecting all devices is okay for us users or not?
Of course, there doesn’t have to be a voting for everything. Just a suggestion.
I assume that everyone would like to have their submitted question(s) answered…
There aren’t that many of them. Some questions are duplicate, other questions are so specific, e.g. about problems with a certain device, that the support or the app developer would have to answer them.
I hope that many more questions will be answered.
Thanks for the feedback! I’ll probably be making more appearances, so it’s great to hear that I did a good job.
I generally like the voting system you’re mentioning. However, we need to keep in mind that this forum consists of Homey enthusiasts who think like enthusiasts. We also need to consider the perspective of the general consumer who is just looking for a nice and user-friendly smart home platform. Using a voting system might result in some biased answers.
I however also think that asking for feedback now and then will never hurt!
Thank you very much! I’ll take these questions and go through them with some colleagues to see which ones we can answer.
I can already answer @TedTolboom 's question: Last Friday one of the colleagues showed Zigbee Groups working on Homey during our ‘Hacky Friday’ as a proof of concept, so it’s definitely something that’s on our radar. However, we’ve already got most of what the Zigbee Groups have to offer built into Homey, so it would be a ‘nice to have’.
We would also need to look at a nice way to implement this functionality. Will it work based on all the Zigbee devices in a room, like IKEA does? Or would a user create these groups themselves?
Curious to hear what you guys think about this!
Homey still has problems sending commands to multiple devices at the same time (see this question). Since this issue has existed for many years now, we can only assume that it’s not fixable in software, so this is where proper Zigbee group support comes in.
The problem with the voting system is correct so far, if the voting would be done in the forum. But you can carry out a voting by email, then all users would be taken into account
I like in general the session, well done. Yet, I would expect more transparency on experienced issues.
Eg. as pointed out :
Even the local access issue has been well covered but not sure it answered users questions.
Little bit disappointed about no plans for Homey 2023 Ultra Pro 2nd edition …
Btw, I’m really positively surprised on “plans” aka kind of “roadmaps” sharing, even no ETA but really this this change !
AI summary …
New Functionalities and Plans:
- Device Grouping: Homey will soon support grouping multiple devices, like bulbs in a single fixture, for more streamlined control.
- Advanced Flows: Enhancements to advanced flows continue, but no potential of future mobile access.
- Dashboards: Homey is developing a new dashboard feature to provide comprehensive and customizable views of home systems.
- Tuya Integration: Integration with Tuya is nearing completion, bringing a wide range of devices to Homey. Available on GitHUB already as Athom open sourced it
- Camera Feeds: Homey is working on live video feeds for security cameras, addressing technical and political challenges.
User Questions:
- Local Connectivity Issues:
- Recent outage revealed a bug where local access was affected due to weather data fetching issues. This has been fixed, ensuring that local functionality remains robust even when the cloud is down.
- Bluetooth Support:
- Future updates will extend Bluetooth range using Homey Bridge as an antenna.
- Guest Permissions:
- Enhanced guest permissions for more granular control are a complex UX challenge but are under consideration, until then, educate your users.
- Matter Standard:
- Homey is integrating the Matter standard while maintaining its app-based approach for enhanced device capabilities.
- AI-Driven Automation:
- AI-driven energy management and automation features are considered a potential future development, contingent on technology advancements. (kind of wish if I understood it right)
Feel free to correct if this summary is not right
update changed the Advanced flow info
I don’t agree to the " most of what the Zigbee Groups have to offer built into Homey, so it would be a ‘nice to have ’."
It is a must have, which is offered by any 50 euro (zigbee) hubs
Like more users reported in this topic alone, switching on all lights in a room will still send a sequential amount of (zigbee) commands to the devices, which will result in a noticeable delay between devices.
Secondly, Zigbee Groups allow for a similar direct communication between wall controller and a group of lights (without delays, similar to Z-wave direct association).
This is for me the reason to have my private Zigbee network managed by Zigbee2MQTT.
The actual implementation is fairly simple but group definition has to be done on Homey level… and group / cluster allocation has to be done on device level.
It does not make sense to do this on all devices in a room… users want to have the freedom to define multiple groups within a single room.
Perhaps this is a fail on my part but that was not how I understood.
My Understanding
New Functionalities and Plans:
- Device Grouping:
- Homey will soon support grouping multiple devices, like bulbs in a single fixture, for more streamlined control.
But its unclear whether that is groups or zigbee groups as per the questions by the community.- But this not not the zigbee groups as per the community question and instead “device groups”
- Advanced Flows:
Enhancements to advanced flows continue, with potential future mobile access.- There are no plans at all the allow mobiles to use advance flows.
- Dashboards:
- Homey is developing a new dashboard feature to provide comprehensive and customizable views of home systems.
- (its really really cool)
- Tuya Integration:
- Integration with Tuya is nearing completion, bringing a wide range of devices to Homey. Available on GitHUB already as Athom open sourced it
- It needs the communities help because there are just so many devices
- Camera Feeds:
Homey is working on live video feeds for security cameras, addressing technical and political challenges.- Homey is not working on allowing developers to have a live video capability, not because its hard but because there is no use-case for it.
- If they can convince the a number of large tech companies to give them direct access for their offical apps they let community developers also do it.
- “we are looking at live video feeds, we are just working out all the technical details and working with partners to get there. So no hard timelines”
User Questions:
- Local Connectivity Issues:
- Recent outage revealed a bug where local access was affected due to weather data fetching issues. This has been fixed, ensuring that local functionality remains robust even when the cloud is down.
- You require cloud access in order to set up a homey - and if homey has access to the cloud it will try and refresh the security keys.
- BUT if there is not net access keys will not be rotated.
- There are no plans at this time to add local auth/auth as they feel like they have really gotten the best of both worlds with the current implementation*
- Bluetooth Support:
- Future updates will extend Bluetooth range using Homey Bridge as an [remote] antenna.
- Where the antenna with the highest signal will always be used.
- Its unclear if homey will periodically check to see if the strongest signal has changed or anything like that
- There was no discussion regarding the issues in the Homey Pro bluetooth.
- Guest Permissions:
- Enhanced guest permissions for more granular control are a complex UX challenge
- There are no plans at this time to add it, currently they suggest you educate your users.
- Matter Standard:
- Homey is integrating the Matter standard while maintaining its app-based approach for enhanced device capabilities.
- Recently released the matter driver but this only allows new icons and install instructions.
- extending matter capabilities will be required at some point, much the same way we do with zigbee
- AI-Driven Automation:
AI-driven energy management and automation features are considered a potential future development, contingent on technology advancements. (kind of wish if I understood it right)- AI is cool but no plans at this time to do anything with it,
- if something is ever done in the future then it would be suggestion based.
- If money was no object and Stefan could do anything - he would do something with energy management - but it is super complicated and hard so nothing in the works for this.
- It would be cool do control your smart home via chatgbt, so you could do so in a more natural way - but we cant currently do that locally and we cant charge users for each request so its not something thats practical at this time.
-
Icons and Capabilities
They agree they are overdue for a refresh and to be extended. -
Future Sessions
They may consider doing public brown bags in the future on things they are working on, with a focus on the process rather then just the outcome. -
Homey Ultra Pro Max Extreme?
There are no plans for a Homey Ultra Pro Max Extreme™but both the hardware and software will continue to evolve and improve.
I could have completely missed the point though - I was on the train.
Just a small correction, as mentioned in the AMA we are looking at live video feeds, we are just working out all the technical details and working with partners to get there. So no hard timelines
In terms of grouping, this won’t be Zigbee grouping, as we’re working with more devices than just Zigbee.
Great to hear the that native grouping of devices will be added, I know that Homey Bridge users in particular are constantly asking for this feature.
But as @TedTolboom mentioned, the community question was around zigbee groups?
And the answer is here
I understand that people in the forums are a subset of the “all” users,
users who have a very particular set of skills, skills they have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you.
But perhaps voting could be used to determine which questions will be answered? Even Barack Obama answered the community questions when president.
Reordering of devices (and zones)
Hiding of Devices (and zones)
Bluetooth Dropouts on Homey Pro
Still would love to know if there is any development in getting to use Homey Bridge as a satellite for HP23, @Doekse.
So, to build a second Zigbee and evt Z-Wave network that is connecten by LAN to my Homey.
Would be a great addition to add my basement (which is connected by lan to my apartment a few stories higher) to my Homey.
@Doekse
I think most developers would love to have a more direct contact to Athom for development questions (asking for special use cases, give feedback, give feature requests, discuss some SDK details or enhancements with Athom devs).
So eomething like the old HP23 thread only for developers, if you want based on app or install counts.
I had already made some suggestions from a developer’s perspective. Especially the pair view like devie detail page would be nice to add custom details like list or other details.
I think the biggest problem would be a style guide to keep a general look &feel.
Can you explain what “partners” have to do with video streaming?