Final thoughts before buying

sorenml

Hello,

I currently do not own a homey but I am very close to buy one. My current setup is with home assistant, but I have some challenges with some of my z-wave devices and I do not like that I have to restart everything most of the time I modify the configuration. 

I  just have a few questions I would like to have clearified before buying: 

1: Backup
Is it possible to do a back-up in case anything goes wrong?

2: Apple HomeKit and the “unofficial” api
It seems like there are currently no support for HomeKit, e.g. through homebridge, but this is something I could properly contribute to myself. My question for this is regarding the “unofficial” api people are talking about. Is it possible to get device types and is it possible to listen for changes, e.g. through a stream instead of having to ask homey for device status all the time?

3: MQTT Support for pushing all changes
Lets say that you want to do some logging og analytics next to homey or maybe even some AI that does behavioral learning, how do I then get all the state changes? In Home Assistant the simplest way was to push everything over MQTT but is there a similar way in Homey? 
 
Best Regards
Søren

swttt

Hi Soren,

I'll try to answer your questions:

1. A real back-up is not possible (yet). There are apps that can back-up your flows etc, but the devices when you backed-up had different ids. So you still need to switch every unlinked card in your flows. It's said that they still want to add a way to create back-ups, but it's complicated because of the different protocols etc.

2. For now there is an undocumented REST api. This one can be used to control devices (turn on/off etc.) . Listening for changes can be done trough socket.io . 

3. The same answer as 2. you can use socket.io to listen to all kinds of changes (settings change, devices states and i even think flow triggers)

i lack the time to create a homebridge plugin, but do know allot about the undocumented API. Plus there is an API SDK coming "Soon". (probably version 2.0.0, together with the api keys)
If you need any help using the rest api you can contact me on slack.

jorden

The "unofficial Homekit"-support is something I am also really interested in. I have tried some stuff to convert the Homebridge functionality to Homey-language, but sadly there are some executables that don't run on Homey. So therefor, currently you would need another device (like a Raspberry pi) to run that and convert the list of devices to Homebridge-like-devices. It could work, but only with a second device.... unless Athom makes it available.

I am sure it is possible to do, but it is not easy.

swttt

@jorden
Tried a lib that i found on NPM yesterday, but since i use a macbook and the security part gets build on my mac on npm install, i get invalid ELF headers on running it on homey.

This lib uses the original HAP service, like Apple now opened up for own use. Maybe if someone is able to build it on ARM (isn't homey ARM?) that might work.

jorden

@swttt I think that even when built on ARM you won't be able to run it, as Homey won't allow you to do so. Not 100% sure though.

swttt

@jorden
if i understand the docs correctly the original HAP/HAS uses just a http server with some encryption. Had a http server functioning on homey without issues before.

sorenml

swttt said:

Hi Soren,

I'll try to answer your questions:

1. A real back-up is not possible (yet). There are apps that can back-up your flows etc, but the devices when you backed-up had different ids. So you still need to switch every unlinked card in your flows. It's said that they still want to add a way to create back-ups, but it's complicated because of the different protocols etc.

2. For now there is an undocumented REST api. This one can be used to control devices (turn on/off etc.) . Listening for changes can be done trough socket.io . 

3. The same answer as 2. you can use socket.io to listen to all kinds of changes (settings change, devices states and i even think flow triggers)

i lack the time to create a homebridge plugin, but do know allot about the undocumented API. Plus there is an API SDK coming "Soon". (probably version 2.0.0, together with the api keys)
If you need any help using the rest api you can contact me on slack.

Thank you very much for the response, I think this will be sufficient enough info for me to try out the Homey in the near future. I will properly just write my own homebridge plugin, which I can run on my Raspberry. That is of course in case nothing is available yet at that point <span></span> But it is nice to hear that I can get aid if I have questions to the API and that it is possible with socket.io.

/Søren

swttt

After your homekit questions i did some digging into Homekit since its open now. Found a node lib that isn't compatible now with the current homey nodejs version, but will be once it gets upgraded. As far as i can see, this should be able to work

@jorden got past the invalid ELF headers, then past the invalid ELF class...so i got it compiled correctly now. BUT some modules depend on higher node versions. Noticed i need to compile it on the same nodejs version as homey is on, and thats just impossible right now