"My first time with Homey" (A love story)

Athomey

Let me tell everyone a little bit about my first experiences with a real life Homey. Just unpacked my Homey. Installed it. Experienced many very smart tinkerings by the Athom-team, kudos for those my tech-friends! 

Look-and-feel is very, very, very nice and polished. Better than the video's we all saw. Balanced, less-is-more, for first version very KISS, modern, comforting (!), like a warm bath!

Stability/usability Not there yet, but this is rapidly changing. Bugs encountered in the semi-wild are always very different than in the lab. Many (the so-called-expected-unexpected ;-) issues left and right, but a WONDERFUL responsive Athom-company, thinking along and fixing on the fly. 

I'm glad I spend the extra money to be first-batch-backer. I do think they still have a lot of work to do (they got lots of feedback from first-batch-backers, and will get so from every batch I imagine), but their speed and energy are amazing! And it's clear they spend a LOT of time in the product so far. They clearly are a bunch of perfectionists.

It strengthens my confidence even more that Homey will be the best Domotica product ever. I think this will be a solid replacement for my VeraEdge (and that's an unerstatement because Vera has SO MANY F****** WEIRD THINGS)...... Thank you Athom.

Questions about details to me are not going to be answered in these public forums, sorry. This because I'll be spending my energy and time in communicating directly with Athom where I have time left to spend on Homey, this will help further polish the product and shorten delivery times possibly.

Questions about experience, feel, progress  in general are no problem. I can imagine everyone is VERY curious and desire to know more details, get their own Homey, etc..  For those... Be patient my friends, and maybe find some comfort in this reading material: http://www.homeoint.org/morrell/buddhism/nonatt.htm   and   http://blavatskytheosophy.com/desire-the-cause-of-all-suffering/

Greetings & a big smile....   

BramSloot

You know what they say...Pic's or it didn't happen

Sommo

yeah! pic or video could be very nice! lucky you :P

mbalik79

Great story!  I wist both of you the best 

Ronneman

Very nice to see Athom is taking such good care of us 

MilanVanDenMuyzenberg

Thanks for sharing, though I'm missing vids/pics as well.

Takes away most of the optimism I had about Athom starting to ship Homeys "as fast as the manufacturer can supply" them, though. I hope I'll be proven wrong...

Athomey

BramSloot said:

You know what they say...Pic's or it didn't happen

So you try to trigger me into proving I've slept with Homey?  ;-)  Normally I don't kiss and tell. But I'll make an exception for you @BramSloot , but don't spread the picture! You never now nowadays, with this thing called Internet and such.  This was the start of the evening:



and it ended with a very content state of mind (for me at least, I'll ask Homey later how it was). Today I'm going to do a bigger set-up with 10+ devices and see how everything goes. If I find glitches, report them to Athom. Then later on scale up 20+ and so on.

Athomey

MilanVanDenMuyzenberg said:

Thanks for sharing, though I'm missing vids/pics as well.

Takes away most of the optimism I had about Athom starting to ship Homeys "as fast as the manufacturer can supply" them, though. I hope I'll be proven wrong...

Lack of pictures takes away your optimism? I can imagine, but if you look at the big picture, the speed of Athom is amazing, they are very agile. In the whole time perspective, a bunch of weeks extra or less every now and then is not a big issue. As long as they are fast, there is huge progress and they are immediately taking away any glitches the first batch backers find! I for one am confirmed in my confidence every time. :-) I love it when things go they way I want them to go. Happy customer here. :-)  So, now I'm going to do the 10+ devices setup, yesterday was only 3 devices and a few flows. Later more!

Athomey

For size comparison, a regular black cat, compared to Homey:

kasteleman

@Athomey thx for sharing! This gives me confidence i'm going to love and use my Homey as soon as it arrives. Ok, i'll have to wait some time, but hey its looks good!!!

Ronneman

Athomey said:

For size comparison, a regular black cat, compared to Homey:

I hope your cat doesn't start to play with Homey like a regular ball of cotton ;-)

Athomey

kasteleman said:

@Athomey thx for sharing! This gives me confidence i'm going to love and use my Homey as soon as it arrives. Ok, i'll have to wait some time, but hey its looks good!!!

You're welcome. But you didn't mention the cat, unlike Ronneman...  :-)

Arjan

Nice picture.

Replace the cat's collar with a NFC tag. Create a flow ,if cat's NFC tag is  close to Homey, play the sound of a barking dog... This all to prevent that the cat think Homey is a toy.

MilanVanDenMuyzenberg

Athomey said:

MilanVanDenMuyzenberg said:

Thanks for sharing, though I'm missing vids/pics as well.

Takes away most of the optimism I had about Athom starting to ship Homeys "as fast as the manufacturer can supply" them, though. I hope I'll be proven wrong...

Lack of pictures takes away your optimism?

No, obviously not, it's your story as a whole. If all risk needs to be mitigated before shipment (and reading your email there is quite some polishing up required), then it'll probably take some more time before larger quantities are shipped. But then again, maybe I am wrong.

kasteleman

Athomey said:

kasteleman said:

@Athomey thx for sharing! This gives me confidence i'm going to love and use my Homey as soon as it arrives. Ok, i'll have to wait some time, but hey its looks good!!!

You're welcome. But you didn't mention the cat, unlike Ronneman...  :-)

Was writing message as you posted the picture! Nice contrast of colours... 
hmmm, z-wave ...... Fibaro......

RobertLijkendijk

What is the brand of the cat, and which protocol it uses to communicate?? Haven't seen it on the compatibility list I think.

djesko

Athomey said:

For size comparison, a regular black cat, compared to Homey:

HP 120 w charger on the table ?     thanks for the pics 

Athomey

MilanVanDenMuyzenberg said:

No, obviously not, it's your story as a whole. If all risk needs to be mitigated before shipment (and reading your email there is quite some polishing up required), then it'll probably take some more time before larger quantities are shipped. But then again, maybe I am wrong.

Ah my story as a whole. I'm curious though why? Cause I say there are still things to fix? It's always like that. Maybe I can easy your mind. Let me tell you a story from my perspective as a fellow backer (though you might be right to say stories are just talk) . I'm talking from the sideline/outside of Athom, but this I think I can give fair judgement.

I'm CTO of a succesful technical company developing, delivering hard- and software myself, and know how tricky it is. We have hundreds of clients, and thousands of end users of our app products. Every time you think something is finished and polished, and you scale up by shipping it to a wider audience, you WILL find new bugs. This is nothing to worry about, this is normal. We've had products running on 1000 devices and number 1001 and 1227 find all new kinds of problems. The smaller the scale (and first batch of Athom is very small), the more glitches you find.

The only thing that matters, is if the company in question can DEAL with the feedback they get and get rid of the glitches found. Athom is very capable, and those people are really smart. I talked to them on a number of occasions, and now I'm also close to them and they show this again and again. I'm convinced, but hey, I'm experiencing it first hand and you haven't experienced this detailed response from Athom. They are doing very well for first test-batch. And speed, nothing to complain: 2 updates/day.

But now back to scaling up in my house. I'm trying to get VeraEdge to release a few of my devices, but it refuses and crashes and reboots... (for comparison by the way, installing new firmware + rebooting Homey until it responds again, is 3x faster than only rebooting a VeraEdge! Very, very nice!)... also, so far stability on Homey seems better than a regular should-be-stabilized-product as VeraEdge... (Of which I'm sick of, and my girlfriend also.)  No random reboots so far, no lock-ups, no need to pull the plug.  Again, happy customer here. 

If you have more overal/general questions, let me know. Detailled, not so much. Too time consuming. :-)

Athomey

As asked: Brand of the cat is Europese Korthaar, as far as the protocol, haven't been able to pair him up with Homey...yet. I think Emile said it's not compatible with cats, and I have to write an app for that myself.

About the adaptor, close, nice try, but it's a 195 watt Dell adaptor. :-))

MilanVanDenMuyzenberg

Well, we can shake hands, I am CTO in a company of which the description is quite similar to yours  . As such, I fully understand your story; nothing new. What is key is how Athom will react to issues that currently arise. Anything can happen. If Athom feels confident that HW is okay and all it takes is regular updates of SW to satisfy customers, than shipment might continue. If people start panicking, remaining shipments may be delayed for an undefined period of time.

Thanks for your updates. Are your Fibaro devices up?...have a few of those myself .

jtebbens

"My preciousssss" it is looking good! Thanks for sharing, just ordered mine.  

phil_s

thank you  @Athomey for your report. i am glad that my choice for homey seems to be the right one :-)
also when i am reading this forum i can see how often @Emile and @Stefan and all the other from athom spent time to answer questions here. although they are working without sleeping to fix the bugs in homey. 

i have a good feeling with this product, with athom and the community. 

Athomey

@MilanVanDenMuyzenberg : [shaking hands]  Always nice to meet a fellow CTO. Your scepticism is recognized and appreciated! As you can see in my other posts, I've told Athom "talk in months or quarters, not in weeks". This is because of the same experiences that you recognized. But so far. Man ow man! And yes, I have a few Fibaro's connected to Homey and up-and-running. Pairing with Homey was MUCH easier than unparing in VeraEdge, which it refused, and crashed/restarted once during the process. I've given Athom a few tips for improvement, but so far so good!

@jtebbens : Man, you are creepy! :-)

@phil_s : Amen!

kasteleman

Ok, so you did not go for the upgradepath. Not much confidence in the Vera...... That must be a drastic contrast. Any duwi and/or greenwave device because of polling etc? How is pairing going? Need to be close to Homey or does not matter?

jtebbens

sorry @Athomey just that photo with your cat and the comment around it could use it as a toy to roll it around in your living room.  

Athomey

@kasteleman : No, no full/automatic controllerswitch. Also not 2 controllers at once. But step by step. (That's how I am.) Don't know duwi or greenwave. I have many kinds of Fibaro devices (25-35 dives I guess), a few EverSpring devices, a few Aeon devices (~7) and a few Chinese nameless stuff (~5), all zwave. I don't believe in 433MHz/kaku, etc.. On top of that I have many Hue's in my house (I think ~45), and Zipato (but don't like those). My target is to have them ALL in Homey, but step by step. I spend a lot of time talking with Athom about experience, not even stability/functionality. Pairing is going fine, fast clear. Some things are not clear to me immediately in Homey (for example I need a minute or a few to figure out how something works, after that I know it and it doesn't cost me lots of time), but I have close contact with Athom, and they are VERY receptive to these experiences and want to make it perfect and want to make it so people understand it in 5 seconds, not in 1-2 minutes, and they don't want that users have to ASK them how it works. So that's all nice and fine. Same for glitches/bugs, those get kicked to the right person immediately. Homey is not all smooth yet, but process with Athom to get Homey there is going smoothly by itself, and I have only been using Homey since last night. (!)  But be careful you all! Homey is addictive, very addictive! Even though it's not polished yet, it SO MUCH FUN to play around with, much more than VeraEdge (my only comparison), which is a horrible and slow nightmare!

@jtebbens : ;-) (((I'm just glad nobody responded to "I tried to pair my cat with Homey", cause that could have been interpreted horribly different than how I meant it.)))

jtebbens

@Athomey hm indeed that would be horrible. But I like that idea to put a NFC tag to the collar and Homey would bark upon reach  

Jacob

Hi Athomey, Thanks for the updates. I have an overloaded Vera3 with Z-Wave, 1-wire and smart meter. How do you go step by step? Include in Homey and exclude from Vera per device? In addition I have some ghost device in Vera and wonder what will happen if I try a controller shift.

Fire69

@athomey, have you tried some voice stuff already?  If so, what language?  

Emile

MilanVanDenMuyzenberg said:No, obviously not, it's your story as a whole. If all risk needs to be mitigated before shipment (and reading your email there is quite some polishing up required), then it'll probably take some more time before larger quantities are shipped. But then again, maybe I am wrong.

We expect the Geek Batch backers to be a little forgiving of bugs as well. They are geeks, after all ;-)

Athomey

Jacob said:

Hi Athomey, Thanks for the updates. I have an overloaded Vera3 with Z-Wave, 1-wire and smart meter. How do you go step by step? Include in Homey and exclude from Vera per device? In addition I have some ghost device in Vera and wonder what will happen if I try a controller shift.

Yes, I first exclude one or more devices from Vera (starting with the least critical in my house, and also least annoying to my girlfriend) and add them in Homey, and experiment with the right flows. My Vera is FULL of Ghost devices (buggy as HELL, and mind that it is a stable product supposedly!). According to Vera I have 17 smokedetectors in my house. I have ZERO connected smokedetectors. Dunno what would happen if you would do a controller shift.