Thanks for the continuous updates but what about the older big issues?

Mathijs

It's great to see new functionality being added all the time by Athom and 3rd party developers, but things got very quiet on the rather big issues that are still problematic for me and many others. Although some have seen improvements I think we can safely say that most have not.

Of course these issues are speech recognition and range of the radios. Personally I simply have not seen any improvements since I bought my Homey a year ago, even though updates promised significant improvements. 

As I have stated before, my believe is that the hardware is simply used optimally and no software tweaks will change that. If Athom would confirm that we could all move and and make decisions. For me it would probably mean it would be best to get another Zwave center for the main house automations and use Amazon Echo for speech. The Homey will be happy in our guest rooms to handle things there.

So two very basic question to Athom.

1. Is work being done on Speech recognition and can we expect to see significant and objectively measurable improvements in the next 6 months? I am not asking for advanced recognition like the bigger firms can do. Just being able to start a flow reliable would be enough for 90% of the people.
2. Is work being done on the function of the radios and can we expect to see significant and objectively measurable improvements in the next 6 months? Just the same range as a Kaku center or a Fibaru hub would be perfect. Right now they are not even in the same ball park.

I honestly would not mind hearing that this is technically not possible.  We will all know what we have to deal with and what to expect. Right now we are all in sort of a state of limbo with the promises on one hand and the reality on the other hand. 

My problem is not with the Homey but with the promises made. 

konradwalsh

I think this raises very reasonable questions @Emile

caseda

1: they are working constantly (on and off) on improving the speech on the back end. so will it get better? sure, over time

2: yeah sure the kaku center and fibaro center are better in their ballpark, but they don't have to listen to 6 other wireless protocols like homey does need to do
Or in the case for kaku, not even only to Kaku signals, but to all 433 mhz signals.
hope you know what FREQUENTIE INTERFERENCE means, if not, google it
will there be improvements? who know, probably not measurable in meters, but they did it once for 433 mhz not too long ago and increased it tremendously for a lot of people.

Comparing the 2 is like comparing a bicycle to a motorcycle, have the same ending in the name, but are by far the same in workings

rtna

This topic has already been discussed a lot, but I can totally find myself in the questions asked. The problem with homey is that it's actually a beta product while it's as a completely developed product in the store. That is not a problem for me, but for those who have expected a ready-to-use product it is. The software is still being developed, which is excellent, but is still not complete.

@caseda : If Homey wants to support 6 wireless protocols, make sure it works out of the box. It's the same as selling a car with adaptive cruise control wich does not work properly and then state that it's no wonder because it's extremely complex to keep distance from other cars. You can't be serious with that remark.

Speech recognition is a problem from day one. Sometimes it works, usually not and is totally unreliable and thus not usable. That's bad because it's being advertised as USP

Again: I'm a satisfied user but would not advise Homey for people who expect a ready-made product.

caseda

even the tesla autopilot didn't fully work properly from the start... so even YOU can't be serious with such a remark.
they are just trying to compare apples to carrots... which is IMPOSSIBLE

And homey has 8 protocols, just taking away the 2 they both use anyway (wifi and 433 (kaku) for kaku center and wifi and z-wave for the fibaro center)

but still. interference will always be there, even if there is a billion dollar company behind it, it's called physics, and unless we can find a way to not have physics... there will always be interference

and don't get me wrong... homey is far from finished. but trying to compare 2 products that only have to focus on 1 protocol, instead of 7 (leaving away the wifi) with a small team... athom is doing an awesome job on improving homey.
and if athom didn't make it available to the public... guess where the money needs to come from, and what you can't do, if you don't get any/low income

swttt

Just want to drop my 2 cents as well:

I do think that like Caseda said they did their best with 433 mhz and have to handle allot of interference. For some users it's working, for others less. (might be other signals around from neighbors etc that interfere as well, building materials...just google it ) Sure, if you buy a dedicated 433 "hub" the signal even should be better, if it's not you just bought crap. Nevertheless, 433 and IR(imho) stay the most unreliable protocols homey supports...nothing Athom can change about those. Z-wave and ZigBee are more reliable, since they create a mesh network to relay signals. Haven't seen allot of issues about that lately, just some users who expect that a battery powered device without a mesh works 15 meters away with walls in between.

And the matter of speech. In my opinion it improved allot since Robert his rewrite. Like switching lights directly and making the back-end smart enough to understand grammar. (The light in the fridge < Homey knows here that the fridge is a location) To be honest, i am not using homey his speech to text. but use an Echo for it. I agree the speech2text services should be improved, but for a small company like Athom it feels like this is the best you can get right now. Don't forget the data Amazon and Google has available for their speech2text. Not something you can compare.

Ofcourse they could use the google or amazon speech service, but they are way to expensive for a start-up like Athom. And even if they could manage to pay such a fee for our speech2text, this means that it really would improve. And allot of users are going to use speech directly on homey even more. And guess what, google and amazon charge per request

Mathijs

Swtt, I agree with most of what you say,  But I also think that we agree that the video's Athom still has on it's site show a version we as customers do not yet have (and as we both know, never will have). If Athom just tells us what the status is we can make our own decisions.  As said, just admitting that putting so many radios in one small box means that the range will suffer a lot will make it clear that we most likely have to live with what we got.

Caseda, I agree some users have reported big improvements, I even wrote that in my starting post, but let's not kid ourselves, I doubt there is one user that is happy with the speech and few with the range. As an engineer I am well aware of radio interference and always had my doubts about being able to have all these radios on one circuit board. The advertisements from Athom convinced me they had it cracked. It is possible, for starters you can disable the radios not being used and as far as I am aware they are all powered up all the time right now. Next interference is mainly an issue of transmission, not passive reception. where placement of the antennae is most vital. Easy to test, put your Homey on it's side and you will see 433 reception increase. The horizontal placement of all components makes it hard to give all antennae a free line of sight. Important for the very low powered signals.

The fact Athom is a small company does not give them the freedom to sell us products that simply do not live up to the claims. As I wanted to support Athom in it's development I bought one and kept on using it. I just think it is time that is became clear for all of us where the limits are. What we can expect.

Caseda and SWTT (whom I greatly respect for his app) paint a bleak prospect where not a lot of progress is to be expected. They probably know a lot better then I will ever do so I will accept their judgement and will have to select another system as the base for my home automation. 

I just wish Athom would be more open about these things. It's not too much to ask from all the people who supported them for so long. 

bvdbos

Well, I'm sufficiently happy with both speech and 433 though don't use reception a lot, more sending... In the evening my lights on 433 turn on, my lights on wifi turn on etc etc. When I go to bed I just say "Ok Homey, ik ga slapen", the television and computer-screens turns off and a few minutes later the lights turn off too.

In the morning I step into a warm living-room (well, in the winter it was managed with Homey and now it's warm already) while the radio (through IR) turned on, selected the right channel and set the right volume. When I leave for work I just say "Ok Homey, ik ga werken" and everything turns off. When I leave the house and devices are still turned on my phone asks me if I want to turn everything off.

There have been great improvements in speech-recognition, I can now say "volume radio up 12" or "volume radio up 2" etc and all that works... There have been great improvements in the flow-editor. There have been great improvements in 433, alarms etc etc.

I was wondering why Athom puts energy in the SDKv2 while there's lots of apps already (more then Athom anticipated 1.5 year ago) but actually the answer is simple: if developing apps becomes simpler there's less chance of memory-bugs so Homey becomes more stable.

BTW, the antennas for 433 and 868 are positioned vertically:
https://blog.athom.com/2016/04/17/a-technical-introduction-homey/

swttt

It's just so different per user. Everyone expects something else
Things homey does for me is possible with other platforms as well, but the community just keeps me here.
I am only using z-wave (that is working well tho) and zigbee at the moment.

But yeah, in general i am really happy with Homey. Speech in english wasn't a problem as well, and that runs trough Alexa now thats working awesome as well.