I’ve been using Homey for a while, and one thing that keeps frustrating me is the Zigbee experience. Before buying Homey, I expected Zigbee to work better than open-source solutions like Zigbee2MQTT, but that hasn’t been my experience.
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Adding multiple Zigbee devices is unnecessarily painful
This is my biggest issue.
For example, I have eight Zigbee downlights in one room. To put them into pairing mode, I have to toggle the power five times. All eight lights enter pairing mode at the same time, but Homey only adds one device instead of discovering and adding all of them like Zigbee2MQTT does.
That leaves two options: spend a long time repeating the pairing process until all eight devices are added, or use a ladder to reset each light individually by disconnecting its power, which is inconvenient and not particularly safe. -
Discovered Zigbee nodes cannot be added from Developer Tools
If I open the Developer Tools web app and go to the Zigbee page after pairing, I can see the newly discovered Zigbee nodes.
However, there is no way to add them. I can run Interview, Ping, and other actions, but the device never becomes available in Homey because it never receives a Device ID.
If the Zigbee coordinator already detects the node, there should be a way to complete the adoption from there. -
No migration between apps
If a device was added using one community app, there is no way to transfer it to another app.For example, I use
com.tuya.zigbeefor many Tuya devices. If I want to switch those same devices tocom.dlnraja.tuya.zigbee, I have to delete every device and pair everything again.There should be a way to reassign an existing Zigbee node to another compatible driver without re-pairing the entire network.
I’d love to see improvements such as:
- Batch pairing for multiple devices that enter pairing mode at the same time.
- An option to adopt discovered Zigbee nodes directly from Developer Tools.
- The ability to reassign an existing Zigbee node to another compatible app or driver without re-pairing.
