Lately I’ve noticed that new software features, such as the Ask a Question flow card, Sustained Values, Multi Select, and others, are not available on a Homey 2019. From a hardware perspective, there doesn’t seem to be a reason for this. Why have these updates been discontinued, and why am I essentially being forced to buy a new Homey in order to keep up with new functionality?
It seems to me that there are still plenty of satisfied Homey Pro 2019 users who must have noticed this as well, does anyone care?
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You aren’t forced to buy a new model.
Many ‘new’ features are based on fine working community apps.
Name a new feature, and I probably can provide for the community version, except for Thread/Matter (which is also hardware based)
I also have a Pro 2019 but I don’t see what new features I would use.
- RTSP streaming: might as well just open the Tapo mobile app for my cameras, since it also supports PTZ and external access
- Confirm card: don’t have a use for it, and even if I did, you can probably create something like that in MacroDroid or a simple Android app with FCM.
- Matter/Thread: are already unstable on Google Home (and most devices can’t even be found in the first place), so I’d stick with my ZigBee devices for as long as they keep working
- Sustained values: you can create something like that with Chronograph timers.
- Energy tab: might be useful is you have solar panels, but I don’t so it’s not useful for me.
The reason why Athom decided this is likely because they consider the Pro 2019 a “legacy” model which only gets bugfixes and security updates.
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Well, Thread is. Matter isn’t, and there’s not really a good reason why the older models can’t support it.
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I noticed the Matter Bridge app has "matter” selected at platformLocalRequiredFeatures, but I don’t see why (the app doesn’t use Homey’s native Matter feature). I did try installing it by removing it from the app.json, but my there’s not enough RAM for that.
In Homey’s core there’s a hard-coded whitelist of apps that are allowed to use more memory than other apps, and the Matter Bridge app is the only app on that list…
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I think we might be overlooking the obvious here. Athom is a business not a charity. They pay people money to develop these features and so they need that to earn revenue. Yes they could charge for the extra software features and they’ve done that before with Advanced Flows. But supporting new features on older hardware costs money and delivers a decreasing return over time. It’s a fairly standard business model.
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I tried to follow this thread Home Assistant Integration for Homey - Now Available! 🎉 with my Early 2019 but I failed already in step 1 “create a new api-key”.
Gemini explained me the possibility using a bearer token instead but this one changes when you log out and in again.
Nothing for my Early 2019.
You likely mean the local API keys feature? In that case, you should ask the developer to add cloud API support as well since that’s the only API that works with the Pro 2019
Buying a newer model would be a torture to setup all your devices again, but if you plan to have Homey in the future you should probably upgrade?
Not so fast… Ai doesn’t “know” everything!
You can still use the MQTT way, it works without any issue.
I use it for several years, and it works fine.
No API required.
Only setting it up takes some effort, therefore I created this tutorial:
https://community.homey.app/t/tutorial-pro-how-to-integrate-home-assistant-with-homey-pro-and-v-v/92641
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Thanks @Peter_Kawa for directing me to your tutorial.
I saw that you were mentioning this in @ifMike ‘s thread Homey integration for Home Assistant - Now Available! 🎉 - #52 by Peter_Kawa where it belongs to.
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No problem. Indeed yesterday I asked the dev to add this info, about Homey 2016-2019 models and the MQTT alternative, because of your remark. So thank you as well.
I think that Athom have been very customer focused since they still support Homey products that’s very old right now. I also think that it’s fair that old hardware doesn’t get all the new features, but are given an option to buy the updates. If I had a Homey 2019, €30 for Advanced Flow would be worth every cent.
Athom still gives you the features that you bought (and some more), a lot of tech companies will end their support a lot faster for older generation of their tech. Just look att Google that just kills functions or Spotify that killed the CarThing and made it into a brick, etc there’s a lot of examples.
Athom still let’s you use all the functions that your Homey had when you bought it. Totaly fair if you ask me.
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