This is the forum archive of Homey. For more information about Homey, visit the Official Homey website.
The Homey Community has been moved to https://community.athom.com.
This forum is now read-only for archive purposes.
The Homey Community has been moved to https://community.athom.com.
This forum is now read-only for archive purposes.
Unboxing / First impression of Homey
rdomingo
Member
Today I finally got my hands on a homey.
I can't wait, zo I unboxed during my lunch break.
First impression of the hardware:
- bigger than expected, but certainly nice
- just a detail: led ring contains some rough edges, could have been more smoothly constructed
First installation attempt (failed):
- First I connected a headset to the audio jack so my colleges won't be distracted by homey's audio features
- But after powering it on the speaker of homey played announcement and audio isn't redirected to my headset.
- I see the wireless network named HomeySetup as expected
x My macbook pro can't connect to the wifi network of homey
x Even my samsung galaxy s6 can't connect to the wifi network of homey
- It played announcement out loud a couple of times during my connection attempts, so I had to stop trying
To bad the first time right (just plug and play). However homey looks like an apple product, at this point it certainly does not meet the expectations. But at this time this is no shame since software it's still not version 1.0.
Tonight I will do a second more thorough attempt, I even might startup my windows laptop to see if this laptop can connect.
Hopefully I will get the homey up and running by tonight...
Story will continue...
I can't wait, zo I unboxed during my lunch break.
First impression of the hardware:
- bigger than expected, but certainly nice
- just a detail: led ring contains some rough edges, could have been more smoothly constructed
First installation attempt (failed):
- First I connected a headset to the audio jack so my colleges won't be distracted by homey's audio features
- But after powering it on the speaker of homey played announcement and audio isn't redirected to my headset.
- I see the wireless network named HomeySetup as expected
x My macbook pro can't connect to the wifi network of homey
x Even my samsung galaxy s6 can't connect to the wifi network of homey
- It played announcement out loud a couple of times during my connection attempts, so I had to stop trying
To bad the first time right (just plug and play). However homey looks like an apple product, at this point it certainly does not meet the expectations. But at this time this is no shame since software it's still not version 1.0.
Tonight I will do a second more thorough attempt, I even might startup my windows laptop to see if this laptop can connect.
Hopefully I will get the homey up and running by tonight...
Story will continue...
Comments
Good luck!
When I see what they accomplished on such a short notice I am impressed !
But hen back to reality, my personal opinion/experience after using homey for a few hours. The long story:
(minor)
Installation is a bit odd and I didn't succeed first time. This is because I reloaded my browser because nothing seemed to be happening and when connecting to the HomeySetup wlan it couldn't resolve hostname.
This could be solved by showing the correct webpage when connecting to the HomeySetup wlan. When you first connect to a hotspot most of the times the browser is automatically redirected to the hotspot's webpage.
(minor)
I needed some online help to figure out how to start using speech commands. A bit more help info would have been nice.
(showstopper)
What really seems a showstopper to me are the limitations of the current flow editor.
It seems you can't use any more complex logic like if (switch is set to on OR mic hears text) and (windows are closed) then close the rolling shutter
Because speech recognition isn't that good. You need to be able to specify more triggers for same action. This way you can compensate incorrect recognized words.
If anyone can explain how to do this, please do so.
(showstopper)
When I this morning checked homey it seemed to have crash, no response at all. A few miniutes later I saw the led ring turn red and some other colors, after that no response at all, I couldn't even access the web interface.
(showstopper)
When homey is busy for example playing music or reading the news I can't figure out how to tell it to stop it's current action. Is there any way to tell it to just stop with what it is doing ?
(minor)
When homey is playing music it can't hear me anymore (even when volume is relative low), It can't recognize voice commands when music is playing.
I just ordered my first z-wave sensors and will give them a try in near future.
Story will continue ...
You have to follow the logic of programmers form Athom and not you're normal thinking.
This could indeed be a major problem in the future for selling the Homey. That would be very sat.
Or is there some way to do this I haven't seen at this time ?
At that point there already was a "working" prototype, so lets say the started 1-2014.
We are now "end" 9-2016 and so "almost" 3 years from the start of this journey.
Can't call that a "short notice" or periode of time.....
Seeying how "little" is working 100% and how much is not working..... its, after 3 years development, a bit ..... never mind I'm getting to negative again...
@rdomingo read around the forum a bit, don't use the forum search but Google, I'm sure a lot will be much clearer if you read into it a bit. (and you can also see some improvements that are announced by Athom for the retail experience)
[1]: in case of the 'OR', the workaround is to create 2 flows: one for "if (switch is ON) and (windows are closed) then (close the rolling shutter)" and one for "if (mic hears text) and (windows are closed) then (close the rolling shutter)"
[2]: workaround: give the 'stop' command on the speech-input web page: http://{homey-ip}/manager/speech-input/
That should work, even when Homey isn't actively listening to voice commands
Thank you
Seems after all when you spend some time using homey, most of logic I described can be done. Even in current flow editor.
Seems the showstoppers are decreasing :-)
you need to resize web browser to small width.
Have you checked if there is already an app for them?
Right now I am working on the zwave.me app for "Duwi" devices
and on an app for "vision security" devices.
All my z-wave devices needed to be reconfigured
(lucky me I only have one :-) )
And build-in voice commands stopped working.
Playing for a while is fun, but when you find out most of commands are failing it ain't that fun anymore. It's a nice toy but currently experimental and imho currently not suitable for real live home automation.
It isn't cool when me, wife or kids are talking to homey and even simples things aren't understood... It even started talking by itself at 4.15am in the morning...
So I returned the borrowed homey to it's owner and decided not to buy it at this time. I will wait till homey is grown up.
But as it took athom about 3 years to get here it is likely there will be some other device available before then. I'm really looking forward to google home, amazon echo or some other device to become available in europe and give it a try.
1 - I expected the dutch speech recognition to be beter. But currently it doesn't even understand light on / light of (lamp aan, lamp uit) The recognition is more likely to fail than to succeed
2 - there aren't many stable firmware releases so you have to use the experimental ones. Each time you may run into troubles as you might expect when using experimental software.
As you can read in the forum these problems have existed for some time and will continue to exist for some time.
Hence I feel it's a great cool gadget, I'm just saying it still has to grow up.
But when you see google home and amazon echo coming for below euro200 and do very great stuff. They have large companies and communities backing them up... just saying it will be very hard for athom homey to compete.
Hope u give the next thingie more then a week.
Devices are currently just to experimental for me (or not available).
But when I eventually buy one, I will stick to it.
And, like Toon currently does, it will slowly only support the certified devices.
Especially in the very beginning will only support a hand full of devices.
Plus they will never be as open as Homey is (devs can write apps, drivers and who knows what else the future brings like custom dashboard apps etc).
And today u say:
I think u better wait for a retail verion of no matter what device.