This is the forum archive of Homey. For more information about Homey, visit the Official Homey website.
The Homey Community has been moved to https://community.athom.com.
This forum is now read-only for archive purposes.
The Homey Community has been moved to https://community.athom.com.
This forum is now read-only for archive purposes.
Closed
Software status
Emile
Administrator, Athom
Read about Homey's software development progress in this thread.
We're mostly working on stabilizing Homey, by squashing bugs we find. Issues can be found here. From then on, we will introduce new features.
Software updates are released when we think they are ready to be released. First they'll have an 'experimental' status, and after some time when no large issues arise they will be promoted to the 'stable' status.
Every Friday a summary of that week will be posted here.
We're mostly working on stabilizing Homey, by squashing bugs we find. Issues can be found here. From then on, we will introduce new features.
Software updates are released when we think they are ready to be released. First they'll have an 'experimental' status, and after some time when no large issues arise they will be promoted to the 'stable' status.
Every Friday a summary of that week will be posted here.
This discussion has been closed.
Comments
We've shipped Homey v0.8.34 to the experimental channel! This update features some new features such as settings the speed of Homey's voice and a complete new mobile interface. Apps that use too much resources are now automatically killed. Also new is when talking to the smartphone app, Homey talks back through the app.
Next to that, a lot of bugs have been fixed. There's still an issue that Homey freezes randomly, but because this happens only once in a few days, it's really hard to debug. We're on it though!
The next update (0.8.35) will include at least folders for your Flows!
Z-Wave passed certification this week! We still think it's a little bit buggy however. We've decided to do a complete rewrite of the codebase, to get up to standards. This will take about one or two months, but we expect to have it rock solid then. Also the Z-Wave Apps API will be written at the same time, which will add device-specific customizability, like a Motion Sensor sensitivity slider, instead of alien looking parameters.
We're also super proud to announce that the iOS App has been released to the iTunes App Store! It's still in bèta, so make sure to report your issues in the iOS discussion topic. The android version 2 will be released within a few days as well!
A lot of Homey apps have been updated! To name a few: Mi-Light, Smartalarm, Heatmiser neo, Nefit Easy, LIFX, Smartwares, WoonVeilig and Philips Hue. We've got a new engineer in the team, Bas, that is working full-time to maintain our apps and create new ones.
Our speech servers have been updated to better parse numbers ('two hundred and fifteen' to 215) which makes it easier for developers to use this in their apps. Also some translations have been added. The microphone performance is still an ongoing track we're working hard on. At least in the smartphone apps it works great already!
In the upcoming weeks, we'll focus on Infrared, Bluetooth LE, 433 & 868 MHz FSK and core stability. Within two months we expect to have audio streaming to Sonos and other Bluetooth & Wi-Fi speakers working, with full playlist support! That's going to be amazing: a playlist can contain tracks from various apps, like Spotify, SoundCloud, YouTube etc.
Enjoy your weekends!
We've shipped Homey v0.8.35 to the experimental channel! This update mostly fixes issues that were found in the v0.8.34 update, such as mobile cards not appearing and apps crashing. As a bonus, Flows can now be sorted in folders.
The mobile app has been updated as well. Next to regular push notifications, a new `and` Flow card has been added, so you can now ask for confirmation on a smartphone for the Flow to proceed. Also a special push notification can be sent that will vibrate your Android smartphone a morse code!
Oh, and we've also added USB support to athom-cli for all you developers, to make testing a lot faster!
Enjoy your weekends!
This week consisted mostly of bugixes and improvements of our Homey apps. The mobile app is also getting Presence support, by combining Wi-Fi connectivity with Geofencing, to let Homey know when you're at home and when you're leaving.
We've also started working on the Notification Center. This will give useful information about what Homey is doing, and what has happened while you were away.
Our Homey desktop app for Windows and Mac OS X is also almost finished. This will get rid of the requirement to use Google Chrome. Many thanks to Matjaž Lipuš for wanting to freelance on this project for us!
Ah, and for the developers, you can now add a .homeyignore file to your projects, so you can skip files that Homey shouldn't need :-)
Enjoy your weekends!
This week was really a 'back-end' week. No fancy designs, just making Homey more stable! Today v0.8.36 is released that fixes some issues as well.
Homey has been translated to Dutch completely. The promised Z-Wave rewrite is making huge steps and is going faster than we expected.
For developers using Windows, an option has been added in the Developers settings panel to activate USB debugging.
A new mobile app version has been released for Android that introduces Presence detection, by combining your Wi-Fi network information and Geofencing together.
We've also taken the first steps for SSL on LAN, which will roll out next week. Your Homey will then be locally accessible by going to http://your_homey_id.homeylocal.com. Eventually, this will be used to add SSL encryption so even when you're in a trusted network, all communication is secure. Pretty cutting edge technology!
We've also played with Google's Speech API. It looks promising to increase the Text to Speech accuracy, but we have to perform more tests to be sure about that!
Enjoy your weekends!
Sorry for the delayed update! This week Homey v0.8.38 has been shipped to the experimental channel. So far it seems to run okay, so there's a big chance we'll promote it to the stable channel this week as well.
The Z-Wave is making a lot of progress, and we hope to be able to release it within a month. It's really juggling with time and priorities at the moment, just remember that we're working as hard as we can so get everything working great. In contrary to most companies, we will have a lot more manhours to spend when the Holidays begin, so expect a boost in development speed then.
Next week we will also look into Infrared and give it some love. Expect improvements there!
We've also updated our apps and added a few new ones. These are Osram Lightify, Aldi (Quigg) ,La Crosse, Smarter (Coffee & iKettle), Stocks, Blokker, Heatmiser Neo, LIFX and Milight.
Update v0.8.38 broke some of our apps with drivers because of an API change. We're working on fixing those next week.
Enjoy your weekends!
This week consisted mostly of small fixes here and there, making sure things work reliably beforing adding new features. The v0.8.39 update will be released next week, and that update will most likely be promoted to the Stable update channel as well.
Our update in v0.8.38 broke more apps than we'd expected. The developer documentation seemed not to be clear enough, which caused the broken apps in the first place, so that has been updated as well. Homey's API's are not planned to change much anymore, so this shouldn't happen often in the future.
Our apps have been updated. We've also finished work of a 433 MHz app generator, which basically automatically creates a 433 MHz app such as KlikAanKlikUit and Elro based on a configuration file. A lot of these apps are the same, so they also contain the same bugs. Updating them one by one is a mistake sensitive task, so this generator makes it a lot easier for us to keep high quality!
The smartphone app has been updated as well. iOS is a little bit behind, but Push notifications and Presence detection for iOS are on their way.
The microcontroller software has been updated internally to support FSK and GFKS modulations, next to ASK. A lot of 868 MHz device suse this frequency modulation to communicate back. This also means that work on the Arduino library for the Geek Backers has started. A blog article about how these modulations work will be published in the future as well, so that'll be a very interesting read :-)
The Z-Wave rewrite is at lightspeed and we expect to have it shipped within three to four weeks. Please let us know which Z-Wave devices you'd like to see supported first. Our planning is to support at least Fibaro and Aeotec. Luckily, creating an app will be very easy to you'll see them popping up in the App Store in no-time!
Enjoy your weekends!
Firmware 0.8.39 has been released to the experimental and stable channel. This release brings a few minor fixes, and is mainly intended to be pushed to stable. A few issues have been found already, but at some point we simply have to bring stable up to date as well. It's all still beta software while we're under v1.0.0 anyway :-)
Personally I want to explain why Homey is not as stable as we'd like it to be yet.
The problem we're experiencing the most now (and why things break so often) is that we're developing our software as fast as we can, and try to 'freeze' it, so it won't change in the future. While designing a complex product like Homey, we didn't know where we would end up, so we're kind of 'catching up' with our design choices that are now finalized. This means that some apps broke because we enforced these choices.
An example is that we've gained a lot of experience with making apps that work on 433 MHz, such as KlikAanKlikUit and Elro. There were a lot of these kind of apps though, and every one of them had their own flaws. Now that we've made all of them, we knew what we wanted, so now we've created a 'generator' that produces the same app multiple times, with their own branding and devices. The result is an incredibly more stable app, but the drawback is that your devices have to be re-added.
We try to limit these things that break so you won't even notice them, but sometimes it's simply not possible. Our vision is that while we're below version 1.0.0, these things can happen. It simply would take too much time to create scripts that migrate old data to new data. Time we'd much rather spend to create Homey stable.
We admit, sometimes we forget that experimental software isn't the only version out there. Yet it enables us to make huge steps (which are not always visible on the front-end, but are definitely there) because we can focus on what we think Homey should be at that moment. In the future, we are going to invest a lot more in careful testing. For now, this would only slow us down, so we've made the choice to break things here and there. So sorry for that, but it really is for the best :-)
Which brings us to the next item, what we've done last week!
Some people experienced Wi-Fi connectivity issues. These have been found and solved, and we'll update the Wi-Fi Recovery software soon, which will feature those fixes, a better update downloader and language selection. It should feel more like an integrated whole.
The desktop app auto-updater has been fixed as well (just in time for this post!) so we can hopefully release that app next week. The Homey Desktop App will be our supported desktop client instead of Google Chrome.
The smartphone app has been updated as well. Android will be updated today and iOS is in review. Hopefully this will fix most of your issues.
Z-Wave is going steady just like last weeks. While contacting Z-Wave support, we found out that nobody on the market is doing what we have done, which is creating a generic module that enables any app to talk to every command class. We're kind of proud of that and can't wait to ship it :-) Also here, expect to re-add your devices when it's shipped.
Next on the planning is Bluetooth LE support, Music, Notifications and Flow improvements. More about those later!
Enjoy your weekends!
This week we've made a lot of progress with many back-end pieces. Z-Wave will be integrated in Homey next week, so you guys can expect the first Z-Wave apps within 2 to 3 weeks. First on will be Fibaro, then Aeotec, then... let us know!
We've also started with the Infrared rewrite. The software will be a lot better. Not only the interface, but also performance wise. The signals that Homey is currently emitting are not always optimized, let's say they're with an 'accent', so hard to decode by some devices. The new interface will also include the possibility of pasting Pronto HEX codes per key, and much better button learning. We've kind of underestimated how hard Infrared was, but now we're on top of it!
There was some talk about Infrared not reaching far enough due to a possible production error. We've looked into it and we have indeed found some Homeys where that might've occured. I'd like to ask you to await the update, see how good Infrared then works, and if problems persist, contact support.
The Athom Desktop app is also ready for first tests. Get it here and report any issues you might find here.
We've been working at 50% capacity for the last two months because some of our employees were wrapping up their studies (that happens when you have a startup). The year has end and except for Reinier, they're full-time available again to kick some ass! @joachim will work on a better App Store with a redesign, categories such as 'Popular' and 'Recently updated' and an improved submission process. @JeroenVollenbrock will for example focus on an addition for Homey Desktop so you can restore your own Homey by USB. @Reinier is almost done with the Arduino library for the Geek Backers.
Next week we'll also start with updating 433 MHz apps one by one, which should fix most problems. We're working hard to make Homey stable and this is one of those 'big ass' changes that will improve the experience enormously.
Also on the update track is Wi-Fi Setup v2, where Homey just instantly connects to your Wi-Fi and an improved Set-up process. Notifications will be added inbetween as well, so it's easier to see what actually happened.
Music support will also come before September, and from then on we will improve the Flow Editor with typed tokens (text, number, image, user etc.), global variables (e.g. time, current device values and your own variables) and sortable, sequential executing cards.
We still have a lot of work to do to make Homey what we'd like it to be. But we've also already done so much, and we still love to hear about how everyone uses their Homey! If you keep giving us time to improve Homey, we won't let you down in the future :-)
Enjoy your weekends!
Last week was a quite productive one. As some of you might have noticed, we're not so active anymore on the Forum and and Slack. This gives us more time and focus to continue development. At the moment we're working on Homey 0.9.0, a pretty large update that will feature the Z-Wave rewrite, fix a lot of issues for developers (such as custom mobile cards and capabilities) and some freezes.
After the 0.9.0 release Infrared is next to be released, as well as the Notification Center. The improved Wi-Fi Set-up will be released around that time as well.
Our 433 MHz apps have all been updated, and we're starting to roll them out one by one by, where the least used are updated first to prevent that a lot breaks at once. The Hema app is the first lucky one, so if you have Hema devices, please update and let us know if it works! Next up are Elro, Smartwares, Action and eventually KlikAanKlikUit.
Version 2 of the App Store is also getting pretty fancy. More to follow later!
The Arduino library for Geeks is almost finished and will be released next week. I've personally played with it and it's good fun!
We've also started looking for a 'Happiness Engineer', someone who can handle our support, community and testing. A lot of responses came our way and we've found someone perfect for the job. They will introduces themselves soon enough :-)
You might've noticed that we're taking our time to finish features. We've quite learned our lesson that shipping too soon does not always work in our favor. So while things might take a little bit longer, they should be a lot more stable in the future!
Enjoy your weekends!
The last five days have been very productive for us! We've made a lot of progress on the tasks we were working on. Next week a large update, Homey 0.9.0, is planned which will make Homey a lot more stable. Some freezes have been found and solved, others were most likely caused by a problem in Node.js, our programming language, runs on. So that's deep stuff! To ensure a better user experience, a patch has been applied in Homey 0.9.0 that if Homey crashes, it automatically restarts.
Some 433 MHz apps have been updated as well, and we haven't heard of a single bug so far, so those seem to be very stable as well. Feels pretty good :-)
The Z-Wave rewrite is finished and integrated in Homey! See for yourself how smooth it is:
Every Z-Wave device will now require support from an app, or it will be added as a 'Basic' device. This might seem like a lot of work, but we found that adding support for a single Z-Wave device takes about 15 to 30 minutes. So I hope that the community can help us out here! We will let you know when the documentation is ready and we've uploaded the Fibaro app to Github.
Version 0.9.0 will also feature better support for custom capabilities, and their mobile components. All developers that submitted an app can expect an e-mail with the changes outlined. This is also planned for the future to give all developers some time to update their apps.
To give an overview, at the moment we're working on the following:
- App Store v2
- Bluetooth LE
- Recovery from the Homey desktop app
- Infrared v2
- Official IFTTT App
- Music & Playlists, HTTP + Bluetooth audio
- Notifications
- Wi-Fi Recovery v2
- Improved Speech to Text
- Update the Developers documentation
- And ofcourse bugfixes!
So we really have our hands full for the following months :-) And we've got a lot of ideas for the future, such as Webcam support and maybe even something with a dashboard...Enjoy your weekends!
I'll start with the bad news: no update this week. Then on to the good news: the update is delayed because it fixes a Homey freeze caused by a dependency we used in both Z-Wave and MicroController communication. The library in the end was too unstable so we've decided to write our own.
Then why the delay, you ask? Because our own implementation fixes all issues, even speeds up Homey's communication a lot, but requires somewhat more work to implement. We've got it working, but that was too late for this Friday. So while this weekend you're better off going outside because of the weather (and catch some Pokémon maybe) the forecast for next weekend is 99% chance of update! ;-)
So apart from these fixes, last week we've continued to work on the several projects I've listed last week. Development is going pretty fast recently, because now Homey is all 'thought-out', it's less of an explorative (and slow) process, and more of a 'just build what we designed'. So you can still expect a lot of updates the upcoming time.
We've also released the Arduino library for all the geek backers! There's a catch though: you need Homey v0.9. Whoops, sorry!
Most of our 433 MHz apps have also been updated for improved stability: Hema, Elro, Blokker, Smartwares and KlikAanKlikUit. Up next are Action, Flamingo and HomeEasy.
I also want to share that we're extremely proud that we've reachted a milestone last week.There have been more than 100 unique apps submitted to the App Store! It's getting pretty slow, because we didn't think it would go that fast. Version two of the App Store is getting pretty sexy as well. And a huge, huge thanks to all the developers who have created one or more Homey apps so far!
Next week will be a more exciting one, so stay tuned and enjoy your weekends!
Whoo! Today we have released Homey 0.9.1 to the experimental channel! This update brings a lot of big changes, such as a brand new Z-Wave base, many stability improvements, and many API's for developers have been finalized.
The coming weeks some things might break because of these stabilized API's. Luckily it's for the best, because after that we don't intend to touch them again :-) It took some time for us to get right, as it's a pretty explorative process, but it feels good, mostly due to your feedback!
Now that Homey 0.9.1 is released, every Geek user should also check out the Arduino library to create your own devices that Talk with Homey. Share what you've made with us!
Enjoy playing with this update, and stay tuned for the next update, with greatly improved Infrared support!
We're getting there :-)
Enjoy your weekends!
What a week! Homey v0.9.1 has been received very well, so we're really glad that our hard work has paid off! :-)
Homey v0.9.2 has been released today as well, which fixes a few smaller bugs, and adds more possibilities for developers.
From now on we'll focus on Homey v0.10.0 which will include the promised Infrared upgrade. Bluetooth Low Energy will be added in the update thereafter, and from then on Notification Center and Music.
I also want to give a huge shoutout to our community! Last week a lot of first Z-Wave Apps were released, and during development we got a lot of feedback, code contributions and even some snacks delivered! So thank you all so much for that, it really boosts our morale and work quality!
Personally I'll be leaving for a two-week holiday, so these updates will be missing for just two weeks. Most of our guys (and as of next week even a girl!) will continue working to keep delivering the best product ever!
Enjoy your weekends!
It's good to be back! The guys at Athom who weren't on holiday did a terrific job keeping the development steady on track and communicating with you guys. Now that the holidays are over we're back with full force!
Today Homey v0.9.3 has been released, which is a small bugfix release. In the meantime we've been working on a larger update, 0.10, which will among other things bring back Infrared (and how!). This release is scheduled to hit the stable channel when it's stable as well. The estimated timeline for release is within two weeks. But as always, it's only done when it's done!
A lot of progress has been made with Homey Music, where you can manage your playlists from various music sources, and play to various speakers, such as Sonos. It's really going to be a big thing.
The most other things we're working on are mostly 'under the hood', by making Homey more stable, faster, cleaner and reducing the amount of bugs. We've noticed, and we can even monitor, that the amount of crashes are reduced to a minimal lately, and I'm really proud of those results. It's not yet time to call Homey a v1.0.0 product yet, but it's getting close!
To wrap up, in the upcoming two months you can expect Infrared, Music, Bluetooth LE, Notifications and a lot of small improvements!
Enjoy your weekends!
Last week was a pretty boring one. We have focused mostly on stability and back-end rewrites. Unfortunately I cannot share any good looking screenshots, because it's all rather technical, but I'll summarise what we've achieved:
Refactored most of Homey's core
Development of the core has already started two years ago, so it's a pretty big codebase. And with all of these projects, over time things get messy. Additionally our programming platform, Node.js, has evolved a lot since then as well. So the core has been refactored to support the latest features, and it's a lot easier for us to maintain now. Summarized: a faster Homey, and faster development.
Kernel upgrade
We've upgraded the Linux kernel to 4.7, and are currently running tests to make sure it's stable. This solves some very hard problems, such as Wi-Fi issues and brings major performance improvements as well!
Apps, apps, apps
Many of our apps have been updated. Granted, there are still some bugs, but give us some credit. We're already supporting over 200 devices from our apps alone!
Bluetooth Low Energy
We've found an issue in the Linux bluetooth driver that some devices don't disconnect, so we're working on a fix. Apart from this hickup it's working beautifully :-)
Infrared
The new Infrared driver is finished, and we're testing it internally. With a little bit of luck it's in the next update!
433 & 868 Mhz
There's a bug that Homey sometimes does not receive signals. With the upcoming update that should be resolved.
We found that it's incredibly hard to support all these sub-gigahertz devices, because they're usually cheap and their frequency differs a lot. If you're interested in the technology behind it, read our blog post Making RF work – 433 and 868 MHz on Homey.
Music
Almost done, just needs a fancy front-end and some apps. Give or take a few weeks! It's gonna be really cool.
App Store
It's fast. It's beautiful. It's organized. For users, it's going to be very easy to find new, trending or specific apps, and for developers there will be a major improved submission process with a timeline, the possibility to have a conversation, submit newer revisions, view your history and more!
We're working harder than ever before and the upcoming time will bring a lot of new things to play with. In the meantime, thanks for being an amazing community! ❤
Enjoy your weekends!
This week has been a really productive one! We've found the new kernel to be stable, even more stable than the current one. Homey's core rewrite is as good as done, and Infrared has been proven a pretty big success. Not all remotes are working 100% yet, but that will improve over time while we fill our database. We've made sure the software on Homey is rock solid, so you can literally see your devices being added overnight.
We've had some internal discussions about our update policy. In the past we had a 'release fast release often' update cycle, which was very good for us during that period where many bugs were found in short time. Now that Homey is getting more stable, it makes more sense for us to move to a cycle where we release an update every few weeks. This enables us to take on larger projects, test more thoroughly and generally be less stressed about releasing.
I understand that this might not be for everyone, but I promise you that these updated may be slower, relatively speaking they contain more new features and bugfixes, because we're wasting less time with the overhead of releasing an update. I think we're growing up as a company as well :-)
The next update, Homey 0.10.0, expected next week, will contain the new Linux Kernel, Homey Core v2 and Infrared. It's a lot more stable, insanely faster and many, many bugs will be fixed. It's the biggest update we've ever done, so be prepared!
Enjoy your weekends!
Ouch! We didn't make our own deadline to ship Homey 0.10 this week. Next week must definitely be doable, we're currently making the last adjustments before it can be shipped to experimental! Let's just say that timelines our not what we're best at ;-)
Actually, that's all there is to say for this week. We've simply worked very hard on rather standard things. I guess not every week can be that interesting, haha.
So for now, enjoy your weekends!
Update time! Homey v0.10.0 has been released to the experimental channel and is ready to be installed on your Homey! It brings major changes such as a brand new Homey Core, an updated Linux kernel with performance and Wi-Fi improvements, Infrared, Notifications and many, many, many smaller fixes.
As you can imagine we're very excited to release the update, and also a little bit scared because so much has changed. So it probably wont be 100% bugfree, but with the work we did, we can fix those bugs much faster, so everything will eventually be alright :-)
Please note that Infrared will automatically improve over time. If your remote cannot be found, just let us know! We're on top of making our database as complete as can be.
When we feel it's stable enough, we'll push it to the stable channel as well. Then finally everyone can enjoy all that Homey has to offer by now!
The App Store is also nearing completion. See below a part of the App submission!
Next up are some Z-Wave improvements, an updated Wi-Fi Recovery, BLE support and Music!
We'd also like to thank @bvdbos for sending us cupcakes to celebrate Homey v0.10.0! Om nom nom nom.
Enjoy your weekends!
Our week started a little bumpy with pretty much bugs in Homey v0.10.0. Luckily we expected some things to break (as this tends to happen when 80% of the code is rewritten ;-) ) so we were quick to fix almost all issues! The effort we put in this core rewrite really showed to be a great choice, as can be seen from the development speed of our fixes.
The update with the mentioned fixes (v0.10.1) has been released yesterday to the experimental channel. It will also be released to the stable channel beginning next week. This gets everyone up to date with the latest and greatest Homey features!
In the meantime, we will continue development of some fixes, especially Z-Wave will get some attention. Bluetooth LE is finished and we're working on the first app (Playbulb), so that can be expected soon as well!
We also hope to release the new App Store at the end of next week. It's going to be very sexy and much more user friendly :-)
I'd like to thank our community for helping us fixing all bugs in Homey 0.10 so fast. Without you we couldn't have done it!
Enjoy your weekends!
Two Homey software updates last week, an update to My Athom, we've shipped all remaining pre-orders and put Homey v0.10.3 to the stable channel. That was quite a week :-) As to everyone who was unable to log-in for a certain period, we're sorry!
Next week we're planning to release the new App Store and Homey v0.10.4 with mostly Z-Wave and other minor fixes.
We've also found that some users had trouble connecting Homey to their Wi-Fi network, so we've started working on a completely new Homey Setup that must make the setup process up to our standards. It fixes the bug where connecting didn't always work, includes a language selection that also downloads the right voice and offers our Athom Desktop app for download.
We have the feeling (and our feeling is of course supported by data) that Homey is getting really stable. It has takes a lot of work, and boy did we underestimate how hard it is to make a product like Homey, where so much comes together! But the finish line to Homey v1.0.0 is in sight, so stay with us for the last few steps!
Enjoy your weekends!
Last week we've shipped Homey v0.10.5 which is a bugfix release to the experimental channel. We have a few more (smaller) fixes ready for a next update, and Bluetooth LE support & APIs planned for next week!
And we have more presents! The brand new App Store will also be released at the beginning of next week. Whoo!
In the meantime we're working on stabilizing Homey, Music and our Apps. We've passed the official IFTTT certification, so that app will be launched next week as well!
We've also started working on fixing many Homey Setup Wi-Fi issues, and in the process we've made it easier to use and simply more beautiful.
So we have a lot of new things ready for release. Keep tuned!
Enjoy your weekends!
Last week we've shipped Homey v0.10.7 which is a bugfix release to the experimental channel. This update will most likely be upgraded to stable next week. In the meantime we're working on fixing some bugs and new features.
In the meantime, we've also released the new App Store! Check it out at https://apps.athom.com.
It's so much faster, beautifully organized and the app submission process has been given a complete makeover!
Bluetooth LE is finished as well. We're running some performance tests this weekend, and if they don't surprise us the Bluetooth LE APIs will be shipped next week.
Music is still a big project, but we hope to show some screenshots at the end of next week. And yes, when it ships, it will ship with a Sonos app :-)
The new Wi-Fi Recovery is almost finished, and so far we haven't seen any connection issue. This weekend an automated test will verify that Homey indeed can always succesfully connect to a Wi-Fi network by connecting and disconnecting over and over again, but we're confident we've finally fixed that issue once and for all :-)
Enjoy your weekends!
Yesterday Homey v0.10.7 has made it to the stable channel! We're mostly focusing on making Homey & apps more stable (hence the many minor updates) by mostly accounting for edge case scenarios.
Last week we've made an update to the Z-Wave region selector, updated the Philips Hue app, improved the App Store, finalized the new Wi-Fi Setup (passed all the tests we ran last weekend), worked on Bluetooth (still getting some random crashes after a long time unfortunately) and finished the back-end of Media.
Next week we'll work on Media, including Bluetooth speakers & Sonos support, resolving issues and of course all our apps (which are a lot by now). And some 'advanced' Flow Editor improvements as well :-)
I'd love to share some more 'exciting' progress, but some weeks are simply quite dull. So a big shoutout to you all for staying with us and making our work a lot of fun!
Enjoy your weekends!
We're on fire! Today Homey v0.10.9 has been released to the experimental channel featuring a few pretty neat new features, and many bugfixes. To quote some of you, "Homey is getting stable!". Thanks for the compliments, our team has worked very, very hard to get this far!
Bluetooth seems to become more stable over time. There's still a bug we're experiencing that a connection drops after about 6h of stresstesting, but we've pushed it so far that now actually our test devices crash earlier than Homey, so well.. that's good news!
Our planning is to fix some more bugs, release Homey v0.11.0 with the new Wi-Fi Recovery (and good news guys, you can then revert back to the Stable update channel!) and maybe (!) Bluetooth. Shortly after we'll release Homey v1.0.0, which marks a major milestone for us where we think Homey is good enough for production use. Of course there are still glitches and things can improve (e.g. 433 MHz range, trust me, we hear you) yet these can happen independently and will be introduced shortly afterwards.
I've got some sneak preview for y'all as well...
Enjoy your weekends!
Homey v1.0.0 is around the corner, which will be the next update we'll be shipping, and marks our first 'stable' update we've ever shipped. Exciting!
Last week we've also released an update to our App Store, which works now very well on mobile too.
Homey v1.0.0 will feature Notifications Management (disable certain notifications, or clear them all), a Notifications API for Apps, a shiny new Wi-Fi Recovery that (finally!) connects to all Wi-Fi networks and lets anyone revert to the stable channel and some smaller fixes. You might even see a few Bluetooth LE apps poppung up around the same time as well.
Apart from minor fixes, our Homey roadmap is as follows:
Of course we're not only working on Homey, but also on:
And of course our own apps! The official IFTTT integration is nearly done and will be released very soon™ as well. Additionally, we will also release a Facebook Messenger bot next week, so you can chat with your Homey!
And as a heads-up, tomorrow Saturday the 12th, we're having a Community Meetup at our office! If you can still make it, you're most welcome!
Enjoy your weekends!
Champagne! We've just released Homey v1.0.1 to the stable channel! This is our first stable release ever! We couldn't be more excited to have achieved this with all of you, our community! Thank you all so much!
Our brand new Homey Setup is also live, which should give zero trouble connecting to Wi-Fi and installing updates. Additionally the Homey Desktop application will be supported as of now as the default application to configure Homey with on Windows and Mac. Get it while its hot!
As of this Saturday, Homey can be bought in retail stores! For an overview of all our locations, scroll down on our website and have a look yourself!
Last Saturday we had our second community event! We had a great time, and we hope that all of the 47 (!) participants had as well! It was very heartwarming to hear your stories about how you use Homey, and we could share our experiences as well. The next meetup will definitely be on its way!
Next week IFTTT will officially become available, and some of our apps will receive updates as well. And you know from last week's update what's coming next, so stay tuned!
Enjoy your weekends!
As of last Saturday, Homey can be found in various retail locations in The Netherlands. Go out and find 'em!
Homey v1.0.2
We end this week with a release of Homey v1.0.2 to the experimental channel. If there are no new issues found, then expect it to hit stable next Monday!
IFTTT
Our official IFTTT channel has also been released today, so a whole new range of connections are available!
Messenger
Next week we'll also officially launch the Messenger integration, which is an 'Athom Labs' project. It allows you to talk to Homey using Facebook Messenger, which can be very convenient at times!
You might start seeing more of these Labs projects in the future. Every last Friday of the month, we have a Hacky Friday at our office where every employee can try new ideas. And some of them we find cool or useful enough to be released!
Now that we've shipped v1.0.2, most blocking issues have been resvoled. This gives us more time to focus on new features such as Media and new Apps. Very exciting times are ahead!
Enjoy your weekends!
Last week was a week where we could work on polishing Homey, our apps and many cloud services. Homey v1.0.3 will be released today to our Developer Preview channel, and is a small bugfix release that mostly fixes a bug where the updater would give errors (and in some cases a purple ring) when there are many apps loaded.
Additonally Homey Media is getting very close to release as well, as you can see below:
I'll be honest, this isn't a week worth of exciting news, but those are usually best for our software :-)
Enjoy your weekends!
Last Wednesday we've upgraded Homey v1.0.3 to the stable channel, so every Homey can now enjoy the latest & greatest firmware. We have 1.0.4 planned for next week, which has some small bugfixes (Z-Wave and some smaller ones) and smaller features (Time & date 'between' Flow cards). From there we'll be finalizing Homey 1.1.0, which will include the long expected Media update.
Because last week was pretty boring, I'd rather take the chance to explain what the Media update will add to Homey.
Imagine a regular media player, e.g. Spotify, but now there are more than one music sources, such as SoundCloud, Tidal, YouTube etc. The playlists of your account on these sources can of course be played, but even better, you can create playlists on Homey that combine songs from various sources. So a 'Party' playlist can be a mix of hour-long SoundCloud DJ sets, some shorter songs and that special song only found on YouTube.
And it doesn't stop there! The music can play to external speakers using Homey's line-out, Bluetooth Audio or Wi-Fi speakers such as Sonos, Denon Heos etc. We are even working on a new Chromecast app, so music can be played to a Chromecast Audio - and even a Chromecast in the TV!
You could say we're doing with music what we did with devices. Connect everything regardless of the brand or protocol!
Enjoy your weekends!
P.S. Because I've felt that these posts aren't as filled as before, I've decided that from now on these software updates will only be posted once every two weeks. I think it will make them more interesting to read, and it will give me more spare time to write more in-depth blog posts about Homey's inner workings.
We've had two very rough weeks, where while we did a lot of work, at least half of our team has been sick at home! That's why the Media update didn't make it before Christmas, regardless how much we'd liked to have it ready. We expect to ship Homey v1.2.0 in January, which will include Media.
But don't worry, Homey v1.1.0 will be released next week with two very useful features. Read about them below!
Flow Tags
We're aware that creating Flows can sometimes be a little cumbersome, especially if you're used to another Home Automation system that's not so user friendly. That's why we have added 'Flow Tags'.
You already know a tag from the 'When' cards. They have some extra information about what just happened.
As of Homey v1.1.0, these tags are available throughout the Flow Editor. An example Tag would be 'Time', which can be dragged into the 'Say something' card. When this Flow runs, this Tag is replaced by the current value, so Homey will tell you the current time.
All of your device's properties, such as their On/Off state, Dim level, Battery level, current measured temperature etc. are automatically available as Tag as well. Let Homey tell you the current temperature, but only when it's below a certain value.
Tags can be dragged into textfields, sliders, checkbox or numeric fields as well. You could for example connect the outside light intensity (Lux) value to your curtain's position. So when it's getting darker, the curtain close according to the outside light, while your smart light bulbs turn on as well.
Tags are 'typed', which means they can either be a piece of text (string), a number, or a Yes/No value (boolean). Different types work with different input fields.
And best of all: apps can create their own Tags, for you to use. A weather app could expose the amount of rain at this moment, or a community favorite app like Better Logic can share its variables.
In the future, more type of tags will be added, such as Image. What we're working towards is a Flow, that when your doorbell is pressed, your Security camera creates a photo, send that to your smartphone or Chromecast (depending whether you're home or not), and opens the door when you confirm the notification.
Wallpapers
This has been more or less a side project, and luckily it took very little time to implement, but at Athom we really love it. Select a new wallpaper from a beautiful selection we've made, and Homey feels like new!
Functionality to upload your own wallpaper will probably come in the future. Because of our complicated Content-Delivery Network (CDN) to keep things fast, this was a little bit too much work. You'll probably agree we're having more pressing issues to handle ;-)
Enjoy your weekends, but mostly Christmas!