my first homey

phil_s

hmmm, should i cancel my pre-order and buy a vera plus? or do i believe in athom and wait....

i am struggling

DaneeDeKruyff

phil_s said:

hmmm, should i cancel my pre-order and buy a vera plus? or do i believe in athom and wait....

i am struggling

That depends on your expectations. Do not expect that you can simply press the add button and connect -a- zwave device. Some may work, most won't. Do not expect to use a iPhone or Windows app, it doen't exist. Do not expect to add -a- IR remote, some work, most won't. Don not, in short term, expect it to automate your life with it.
Do you want it because you like to experiment and see it's potential in the long term, don't cancel and play with it just for the fun of it.

Bumblez

Also, it depends on how much you're in a hurry to have it all working. If you give it a couple of months, I'm sure Homey can come a long way. Me, I'm hoping that Homey can be a relevant part of my home automation flows by the end of the year. And I very much believe that's  possible, both from the side of Athom as from the community contributions.
But if you're expecting to have your household up and running with Homey before the end of this month, then that's just not going to happen...

phil_s

oh i can wait a littlebit longer.
 i order in december 2015, so there is a delay until now. but i would wait further few month (i think 2-3 month).
and then it don't have to be 100 percent perfect.

but Philips Hue, z-wave fire sensors, windows sensors and motion sensors have to be workable.
(sorry for my bad english by the way)

all other things then can wait longer....

 

DaneeDeKruyff

Philips hue 'works' you can switch lights, not scenes nor groups.
Zwave fire sensor (smoke?) well, don't rely on homey to extend the use of them right now. Window/door and motion sensors are hit and miss. I can succesfully add my Aeotec multi sensors while others can't. Does all the functionality of the sensor work? No, but I managed to get movement, temperature and lumenance working, so they're usable for now. Adding Aeotec Smart Switches does work, but no usefull functionality is available and it crashes zwave a lot.

Rocodamelshe

phil_s said:

(sorry for my bad english by the way)


 

Don't be, nothing wrong with doing ur best and u manage very well!!

phil_s

Thank you @Rocodamelshe and @DaneeDeKruyff   I think i will be patient a wait for my homey ;-)

Rocodamelshe

Very good!

phil_s

   

tunf

Another week has passed and finnaly i've got a litle bit of time more to play with homey. As there is a update i will try to get z-wave back to work again. in the mean time my battery's are in to add all door sensors and push switches (all z-wave).

To update my homey i selected to use experimental updates but nothing happend. I then unselected the automaticallyl update switch, moved to other settings page, switched it back in and it started to download and install 0.8.30 lets see if the z-wave devices will work after the update or that i need to do more.

In the mean time i visited the new website, the page of supported devices is a bit disapointing as there is no list by type or a full list. You need to do a search and that better can be spot on or it is not returning what you are looking for. Also no option to add a device that you think works with homey and want to submit, that could be a nice feature.

Download ring of blue is done, in dutch a notification not to turn of homey due to a update, ring went to purple and now we wait while i manually make me a cup of coffee.

tunf

It just finished updating so that is about 10/15 minutes (including boot).
What i didn't tell you all is that my 2 kids almost (pfffff) rolled the homey over like a ball, i was just in time.

After the update and boot the z-wave devices are all still in error : transmit_c_something i cannot read.
Ook erg vervelend is dat je nu niet kunt zien welk device het is. De error staat op de plaats waar normaal de omschrijving staat. Dit is met dit kleine aantal nu nog geen probleem maar is wel vervelend en ik zou graag zien dat dit eronder komt of als hover over als je erop staat met een fout teken op het icoon oid.

Herstarten z-wave radio helpt helaas ook niets. Bij insight ook niets te zien van rookmelders of andere z-wave apparaten.

tunf

Just played with audio, flow test starts playing music, no way of killing it. Beside that i created a flow where if mic hears muziek ask (tekst) afspelen en then play muziek. While i did this i used the text tag and homey asks me wat wordt het weer, i think this is why i cannot use the wheather app. Still figuring out the questions as i cannot find the output options, if answer is x do y and if the answer is z do nothing.

tunf

lots of falls positives after the update it keeps listning and think thinking it hears stuff. looking on the input there is nothing heard or strange words that haven't been said. It was great, with the latest update it is anoying.

tunf

reinstalled the hue app and again i can control some lightning. It seems to be an issue that there are non philips lights in the hue bridge. Dimmable led spots are not reacting or turn on or off while they shouldn't The color hue lamps reacts about 75 % of the time. When turning the lamps on they go to the last know setting of color and brightness.

Today i will have a chat with my wife and kids if we will keep the homey and hope for better firmware soon or if we need to say goodby and sell all the stuff.
Not looking forward for this but a man got to protect himself of losing all the time to get this working or do nice stuff with the family.

Looks like the xbmc/kodi development. It was a hard way 10 years ago till now but nowdays everyone can use it and it is stable. It cost me to much time every week to watch live tv etc. Only the last 2 years it is stable enough. Not hoping that homey will take that long but out of the box it is currently not usable and some major settings as grouping and build in flows and commands are not available. Not even talking about the still not supported radio's (zigbee still not working, z-wave very unstable, no 433 scan/ for devices available, no bluetooth audio support) that are build in and are not working yet.

Also no option to go back in firmware versions (so use older one) is a major design fault in my opinion. An update is not always a better thing.

Robebar

I’m following this forum on a daily basis, and looking at all those comments where mostly I think let it go,   

But what I do not understand is that you willingly canceled your preorder to get a second hand homey to be at the beginning of this journey, knowing that it would have bugs and an ongoing development needed. All in the good spirit of helping Athom. Now you are considering to sell your Homey even before the (stable) pre orders are delivered because it’s not usable out of the box…

Also the comparison of a start-up as Athom with and open source project as Kodi/XBMC or even Apple or other multi nationals is something that make no sense.

And all those requests for additional requirements, new possibilities where 1000 people have multiple wishes, and disappointments as this is not implemented directly.  Hey I would like to have Homey tailored for my setup, but come on be realistic, some things cannot be implemented and some things will take time.

Last but not least, Everyone who decide to quit this journey is absolutely free to do so, but again I don’t understand that when they do this they will leave a negative vibe in the forum, some even try to convince others to do the same like a vengeance for not being served there wishes.

For me personally, and hopefully many more on this train receiving their “buggy” Homey is no issue, spending time and learning to work with it, and even refreshing on some development skills is what I’m looking forward to. And for the “out of the box” experience I will just use the 6 different apps on my phone to control them if needed.

 

MarcelTimmermans

It is really frustrating that there almost nothing is working. The only thing with me that is stable (more or less) is klikaanklikuit. But the rest (that I am using is useless). I am done trying as I get more and more frustrated. I spend again my whole weekend after the update and for me nothing was improved. So I will wait for a few weeks to have a more stable device. It is very hard to make a flow which is some times working sometimes not. The first important thing is a more stable homey with the apps from Athom that should work and a good voice recognition system. Unless this is not working it is very hard to beta test as it works some times and other times not. I really hope they will increase there programmers team and improve there internal test procedures for a new release.

There marketing is great. With that is nothing wrong! 

bvdbos

There's a lot of other ways to start flows (I have a kiku-remote which can send 20 different signals so 20 different flows to start...). Speech is the most difficult part, even for apple and google.. But speech works for me too...

tunf

@robebar , thanks for sharing your respons. To clear out, i was a big fan for this product and think i'm the only one on this forum sharing his full experiance from start till now. This is not only including the technical experiance but also what it means to my household.

As far as my information was on the time i decided to cancel my preorder. After that the homey arrived on another way. The reason i'm sharing my experiance as an out of the box way of approuch is to let you all know what i'm experiancing instead of all tech people that asume stuff or figure it out. I can only do this once, afterwards it is all based upon my knowledge.

Sure there are some personal requirements. But most are only to get even started to work with the product. If there is no possible way of saving flows and or devices and restore option, then testing is taking hours and recreating your config also. I think it is strange that after al the testing already done and apps created that this simple feature would already have been implemented.

The most strange thing is that the basic features are not working. Beside all my wishes, i can now controll my stuff better with the phone apps then i can with homey. The firmware is 0.8.x not 0.1.x so that is why i already put a lot of effort into my homey. Again, i'm on the forum a lot and cannot see more then 5 people share all there experiances.

I'm not on the payroll of athom so why even test all stuff, should we then leave no feedback and wait till everything comes ok? Then nowbody will ever enjoy homey because the don't get a real end user feedback.

The other reason why i started this journey is that it was / is about to be shipped large to all pre orders and retailers. I'm holding my hart to see all forum posts that will come if the basic features are not working. Sure if voice is the only issue lets go, but as mentioned, radio's are not working.

To the negative vibe; i really post a lot of positive stuff but now i've come to a point where i think there is work to do and that it doens't suit me then it is a negative vibe. If all employees at Athom are vollentiers then you are right, now it is a commercial product and company i think the can handle feedback, when nobody is leaving feedback or sharing his experiances anymore it is time to worry!

But if you want to get started with a buggy homey, please also share your experiances so we all can learn.