The End

Off-Topic
1

I really really really wanted to like Homey Pro.

I love the flow system. It is, by far, the best version out there for creating automations/flows. It is intuitive and fun to create flows.

But, the downsides have come back.

The first time I gave up, and went back to Home Assistant, was because of the Countdown app apparently. I was using it to create fun countdowns, that triggered lights for a countdown that the lights were going to shut off in a bathroom. It was fun, having lights change colors to red before shutting off. But, it apparently caused the Homey Pro to need to be restarted daily, if not multiple times daily.

I was struggling with Home Assistant’s bulky automation system, I even attempted to use their Code Thread or whatever it was called, but just wasn’t the same. So I gave Homey Pro another chance last Fall.

Everything looked to be going well after I removed Countdown. But, over Spring and Summer, I had a couple minor at first issues come up. I would be sleeping, and have my night time flow set to disable the flow that triggered lights, but at some point during the night, it would reactivate, turning my lights on full strength. I would push night time again, and that would work, for maybe 2 minutes, and then it would come back on, lighting my room at full strength for 2 minutes. It would do this maybe once a month. Okay, I can deal with that, I forgot what I would do to fix it. Then the restart issue came back. I tried different cables, different outlets, and I was back to restarting multiple times a week. Last week, I was actually on the fence about getting the new Portal coming out in January. Well, this morning, I noticed that my morning light routine only started the first two parts, and stopped, and none of my other flows are working. None. I rebooted my Homey Pro several times, and no connection could be made on my computer to it and no flows working.

A smart home hub HAS to work. It cannot fail repeatedly. I don’t have crazy flows any more, because they seemed to cause issues. I went with very basic ones. Motion detected, turn on a light. Inactive for set time, dim, and then short time later shut off. Open a door, door sensor turns on light, shut down, turns off light. Homey has a fun flow system to play with, but if it cannot work reliably with basic setups, and fun setups cause issues, it is no longer a smart home hub that I can recommend, and will no longer use.

I really really really really want to love Homey Pro. It made smart home automations fun. Theme music when entering a room. Countdown lights. But, I need reliability with my smart home hub.

2

That’s sounds like a very unfortunate experience.

Not sure whether you still want to consider the following:

  • You might want to give the Chronograph app a chance as a timer-app. I have been using it for over two years and it did not miss a beat.
  • Did you reach out to Athom (via Support | Homey) on the restart issue? Maybe they are able to investigate what might be causing that behavior.

Were you able to find any pointers on why a disabled flow gets re-enables seemingly by itself? Maybe that is also something Athom could look into. That is not the expected behavior of course.

3

Hi
I can very well feel with you and am myself step by step migrating to Home Assistant. Just because things work there or at least get fixed at the speed of light, compared to Homey´s long standing issues that will probably never be adressed. Athom seems to be to busy developing and marketing useless gadget witch cords hangimg from their back :partying_face:

In the meantime there is a realy fine graphical flow editor in Home Assistant (C.A.F.E) and with a little help from AI all the YAML stuff looses its horror.

4

I’ve reached out to them in the past on other issues, and never gotten anywhere. I also note that things are snappier on Home Assistant vs Homey Pro. I walk into the hallway, it is instant on with Home Assistant. Homey Pro, the same room last week, pauses for a second or two, sometimes until I’m almost to end of the first part of the hallway, before it turns on the lights. I’m running Philips Hue lights with the hub, and they’re just instant on Home Assistant, while Homey isn’t.

5

I have that installed, I realized. I need to look it over. I think I tried it previously, but I had issues with it, and that’s why I tried Homey Pro again last Fall.