Crownstone Smart Home Meetup - Homey

annevanrossum

Dear all,

We'd like to announce our Smart Home meetup for Friday, June 1st. Several people wanted to have Homey integration on our roadmap, so here we are!

The theme this evening is Homey. We've implemented noble / nodejs / javascript bindings. This means that it's possible to both address our API or directly communicate with the Crownstone network over BLE. We will be working the entire day on this theme, so feel free to also come in earlier that day as long as you bring a laptop!

For people who don't know Crownstone. We're integrating Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) tags into smart switches so you can use positioning information in combination with the usual smart plug/switch technology. Think of walking around at night with the lights only half dimmed because you don't want to completely wake up. Or walking out of the living room and having the television turned off automatically (say after half an hour). Indoor positioning also comes with complete new functions, such as getting a message that there is food saved in the fridge as soon as you enter the kitchen. Or blocking your banking app on your smartphone if you're not in the living room.

You can sign up at meetup (free, drinks/snacks are on us).

Cheers!

2Be

I am nog good when it comes to programming, but love to see this initiative. Looked at your product. When the app for Homey is released I will definitially order build in crown stones. 

Two great dutch products working together. 

annevanrossum

2Be said:

I am nog good when it comes to programming, but love to see this initiative. Looked at your product. When the app for Homey is released I will definitially order build in crown stones. 

Two great dutch products working together. 

Perfect!! Thanks for your kind words.

Aaron

It would be really nice to have Homey and Crownstone work together.

Sytze

I couldn't quickly find the answer on how Homey communicates with Crownstone (or how your own app communicates with the units for that matter). I assume it's through a web API? I like the product features compared to other built in switches, however I'd prefer Homey to communicate directly without the internet in between as it introduces a possible vulnerability.

Jaxc

Yes super, I love my crownstones even more when they talk with homey

annevanrossum

Sytze said:

I couldn't quickly find the answer on how Homey communicates with Crownstone (or how your own app communicates with the units for that matter). I assume it's through a web API? I like the product features compared to other built in switches, however I'd prefer Homey to communicate directly without the internet in between as it introduces a possible vulnerability.

Good question!!

We have implemented a nodejs-compatible library, see https://github.com/crownstone/bluenet-nodejs-lib. This means that if - and yes, they do ;-) - the Homey developers support apps that use noble (a nodejs server with BLE functionality) this directly works without any internet access (except for perhaps the first setup procedure). So this is NOT through the web API.

By the way, our app by default uses BLE to communicate to the Crownstones. We use a setup procedure where we store common information about the network so other users can be invited and the system is still accessible even if someone loses their smartphone (with the encryption keys on it). However, every individual switch command is directly over BLE and does not go to our servers. Moreover, even our cloud solution is open-source. If you like you can run it completely local or at another server online.

Sytze

Cool, thanks for the reply! I thought Homey didn't have Bluetooth enabled yet. Kudos for making it work!