Yale Assure Lever Lock + Other Missing Devices

Devices
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I just jumped on the Homey Ban wagon because I thought this would be much like Make.com. However, for my home smart automation, I am quickly finding that many of the sponsors, such as Yale, have not updated their applications for over a year.

I am facing the following uphill battle straight out of the gates and could use some advice on how hard it is to get custom drivers created for the following:

  1. I have a few Yale Assure Lever locks (Z-wave Model), but none work with Homey; however, they work with Smart Things. Is there another driver that will work?

  2. My Schlage Connect (Zwave) connected and deleted all of my codes. Ironically I can set the code length, however, I cannot input/manage any passwords. Any advice on this?

  3. I have multiple Zooz switches. It seems only the 800 and 700 versions work; none of the older ones will!

  4. BlueAir air purifiers are none of the most popular models that work with Homey.

  5. GE plugs and many of the switches do not work.

  6. The NEST Protect Smoke Alarms do not work, which is odd as I show the thermostats work.

  7. Ring Motion Sensors do not work

  8. Tuya aka Smart Life (Round Bulbs, Mini Socket Bulbs and the Door Handles) do not work.

  9. Unifi - nothing shows up

  10. Kasa - Motion Sensors only work if you first install them from their app, and I am not sure how they will operate if the network goes down.

The list goes on and on. I understand why Homey’s cost is so high; without a monthly fee, this small company would go under compared to companies like Samsung. I was hoping for a better solution than SmartThings, considering that SmartThings lost all of my devices due to a bug! Any help or feedback would be greatly appreciated!

2

Athom, Homey’s maker, is owned by LG.

1 Like
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@robertklep, thanks for getting me up to speed on this.

From a firmware/driver perspective, should development be community-driven, vendor or Homey driven?

For example:

  1. There is no way to manage lock and guest codes.

  2. Yale essentially has the full Asure lineup missing or not working correctly; they haven’t touched the app since 2022.

The list goes on and on, which is mindboggling, as this could be a fantastic solution.

Do you know how the solution would be if my network went down and a third party hosted the driver? For example, my Kasa Motion Switches are supported within the Kasa App and not natively from Homey. If the network goes down, will the switches still work locally?

4

“It depends”.

The app store page for your app shows (towards the bottom of the page) how to contact the developer. There are about 6 Yale apps so I don’t know which one you use.

Also, the “official” badge that some apps have doesn’t necessarily mean the brand was involved in any way in the app development.

I don’t know how Kasa device access is implemented. If it depends on a cloud service, it’ll obviously start working when your network goes down.

5

Hello Mike,

And why should that be an issue? A lock is a lock, a very basic device, which, imho, doesn’t need to be updated every month.
And, as Robert stated already, there’s very few brands actually writing/contributing their own Homey apps.

It’s funny how some ex-Home Assistant users complain about “with H.A. there’s updates every hour, driving me nuts”, and on the other hand some Homey users & interested parties are complaining about apps not being updated for x months, saying “is it dead, is it abandoned?”
Just an observation here.

Yeah I’d avoid using Tuya Wifi devices (with Homey).
Tuya Zigbee should work, if supported by the app.

Nest Protect devices don’t work with the ‘official’ app, but they do work with the community app. Which is unfortunately temporary unavailable.

For the other issues, follow the support links mentioned @ homey.app store

6

@Peter_Kawa, thanks for your input!

I’ve been navigating the SmartThings ecosystem for some time, including the transition from Groovy to Edge/Lua. While Groovy had its quirks, it worked consistently. Fast forward to 2024, and a backend glitch wiped out most of my devices—a frustrating experience that pushed me to explore alternatives.

After researching, I was hopeful that Homey would be a promising solution. Its flexibility reminded me of Make.com, but I quickly discovered its biggest flaw:

Homey works best if you start with it as the foundation of your smart home ecosystem and build around it. However, if you’re trying to bring existing devices into Homey without checking compatibility first, you’re out of luck.

For example, I have $1,500 worth of Yale Assure locks that don’t work with Homey, even after trying every available app. This feels counterintuitive for a hub that’s marketed as a universal controller for various devices. If the hub can’t support a wide range of existing devices, the value proposition weakens significantly—especially when many of these devices already function with their own ecosystems.

To put it bluntly, spending $400 on a hub that controls a limited number of devices (often requiring cloud communication) feels like a step backward. One of the primary benefits of a locally-hosted hub is supposed to be local control and reduced reliance on the cloud. When that’s not consistently delivered, it makes me question the premium price tag.

Don’t get me wrong—I can see Homey’s potential, and it feels like a platform that could eventually become amazing, much like Tesla in its early days. But right now, it feels more suited to users who are just starting their smart home journey, not those with existing, diverse ecosystems.

Am I missing something? I’d love to hear your thoughts on how to maximize Homey’s value in a more complex setup.

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Homey has historically been very EU-centric, and it lacks support for a lot of brands that are used more in the Americas.

Athom (the maker of Homey) has mostly relied on community developers to implement support for devices and brands, and I think Athom’s wishful thinking was that after introducing Homey to the Americas either brands themselves or community members would fill in the gaps, like what happened when Homey was first introduced 8 years ago.

Fast forward to today, and Homey is being marketed as a device that supports all of your devices, and that’s why people buy the device. They’re not looking to develop apps for it so they can control their devices, and brands typically have their own ecosystems that they prioritise.

Which leaves a lot of people disappointed and moving (back) to platforms that perhaps don’t look as great, but have been available to people from around the world for much longer and therefore support many more devices.