First experience with Homey

melvin86k

hi ,

Just received my homey Yesterday . Having mixed feeling about this device .

For starters , i love the idea of adding Third Party products via adding of apps , and the ease of using the flow . Aesthetic design i give a 10/10 .

But it it not without flaws , the voice recognition system is somewhat fustrating , most of the time , Homey either cant unsertdand what im saying or does nothing by spinnig white led followed by rainbow , mostly the latter . Voice command being the main incentive for my purchase of Homey is letting me down .

IR to TV is ok , but i would hoped for a GUI on the homey app that mimic an actual remote , rather than having to say "homey , volume up , homey TV on , Homey change channel "

IR control to my panasonic inverter aircon wun work at all , any experts here manage to figure out an alternative to get air-con working?

Personnally Homey has got a very strong hardware , but software/app support still requires significant amount of effort from everyone .

KoenMartens

About your " a GUI on the homey app that mimic an actual remote", you can combine HomeyDash with VirtualDevices to do pretty much just that. Make a flow that if a VirtualDevice is 'pressed', an action happens (i.e. turning up the volume). Then place the VirtualDevices you want on HomeyDash and you're there.
You can even skip HomeyDash and just add a certain 'room' with each of these VirtualDevices, so you can assess them from the official Homey app.

HomeyDash: https://apps.athom.com/app/com.swttt.homeydash
VirtualDevices: https://apps.athom.com/app/com.arjankranenburg.virtual

dENNtoet

I agree with the voice recognition being bad, that's why I purchased Alexa to do the voice handling for Homey. This works PERFECT.

rtna

dENNtoet said:

I agree with the voice recognition being bad, that's why I purchased Alexa to do the voice handling for Homey. This works PERFECT.

I am interrested in what you exactly achieved and how you did that.

JaapPelt

melvin86k said:

hi ,

Just received my homey Yesterday . Having mixed feeling about this device .

...

First of all: Welcome!

Nice summary. I hope this helps other people in making their choice as well.

It is my personal experience that the software is very powerful is once you get the hang of it. It took a while for me to embrace some of the apps such as better logic and I still have not fully embraced the tags functionality.  It is difficult to offer all the functionality in a nice and intuitive way, so there is a bit of a learning curve and room to grow. 
I'm not much of a forum person, but I enjoy keeping in tough with the Homey forum to read about new development and try them out myself. 

melvin86k

KoenMartens said:

About your " a GUI on the homey app that mimic an actual remote", you can combine HomeyDash with VirtualDevices to do pretty much just that. Make a flow that if a VirtualDevice is 'pressed', an action happens (i.e. turning up the volume). Then place the VirtualDevices you want on HomeyDash and you're there.
You can even skip HomeyDash and just add a certain 'room' with each of these VirtualDevices, so you can assess them from the official Homey app.

HomeyDash: https://apps.athom.com/app/com.swttt.homeydash
VirtualDevices: https://apps.athom.com/app/com.arjankranenburg.virtual

I did though of that as well , at current stage the main limitation is Virtual Device , which only a on/off virtual switch is possible thus may not be the best solution for a scenario like linking a volume up/down flow .

anne

For the volume button you can use a Better Logic (virtual) dimmer. If you create a Better Logic number variable that can hold the volume value, you can change the variable with the virtual dimmer. The Better Logic 'a variable has changed' trigger card can be used to trigger the flow that adjusts the volume. <span></span>

melvin86k

anne said:

For the volume button you can use a Better Logic (virtual) dimmer. If you create a Better Logic number variable that can hold the volume value, you can change the variable with the virtual dimmer. The Better Logic 'a variable has changed' trigger card can be used to trigger the flow that adjusts the volume. <span></span>

Thanks @anne , tried out your method . It works !!

dENNtoet

@rtna well there is a skill on Alexa for Homey (for some use cases I use IFTTT because of the trigger words). 
If you use the Alexa skill you have to say:

Alexa, tell/ask Homey to   ---->  (trigger in your Homey flow)  ----> Homey does his thing

So in my case I have a flow in Homey with a voice command trigger: "turn on tv"
What I say to Alexa is: 

Alexa, tell Homey to turn on the tv

Another use case with IFTTT I have to say to Alexa: Alexa, trigger dinner time 

Alexa will then look for the IFTTT skill on the web and fire it off and because Homey integrates with IFTTT it will fire off a flow. 

If you want some screenies just let me know in a DM.