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.
Programming flows with iPad
dejongj
Member
Hi,
i just got my homey yesterday, and following an initial setup in my home office on my Mac i placed it downstairs in the lounge.
Later last night I had finally time to sit down, with a cup of tea and create some flows for my devices on my iPad Pro.
First surprise; there isn't an app for the iPad. Really?
Ok, let's use a browser then. So I found out the IP address and connected to it. It says browsers aren't supported and i need to use a desktop app.
I must admit that when I bought this I never checked. I think I always saw what looked like a browser interface.
I just wanted to check that I have not gone mad and simply made a newbie mistake. Can you create flows, devices etc via a web browser or only via a desktop computer?
i just got my homey yesterday, and following an initial setup in my home office on my Mac i placed it downstairs in the lounge.
Later last night I had finally time to sit down, with a cup of tea and create some flows for my devices on my iPad Pro.
First surprise; there isn't an app for the iPad. Really?
Ok, let's use a browser then. So I found out the IP address and connected to it. It says browsers aren't supported and i need to use a desktop app.
I must admit that when I bought this I never checked. I think I always saw what looked like a browser interface.
I just wanted to check that I have not gone mad and simply made a newbie mistake. Can you create flows, devices etc via a web browser or only via a desktop computer?
Comments
@Annemarie any view from Athom on this. I must admit I'm extremely surprised and disappoint if it true and I'm not doing something daft.
I know there's an issue with the flow-editor on touch-screens atm but that will be dealt with in the next FW-update (next week I presume).
Very strange in 2017.....Enough reason for me to immediately return it...
So it seems that everyone agrees, you can't use this from a tablet? This really should be spelled out at the point of sale and on the website. Most peculiar.
https://apps.athom.com/app/com.swttt.homeydash
But, to be clear, the website says you need chrome for connecting and Homey Desktop for usage:
https://www.athom.com/nl/ondersteuning/KB000001/
Also, the website says you need Homey Desktop or, if you can't run desktop, use Google Chrome:
https://www.athom.com/nl/ondersteuning/KB000040/
I think it says about the same on the box...
I appreciate the link to the dashboard, but it is rather pointless when I can't create flows in the first place isn't it
I'm actually surprised, surely I can't be the only one who doesn't have his computer in the lounge?
Besides selecting flows, there is also a big issue with scrolling, for example I can't get to the list of devices that are at the bottom when I finally do get to a flow screen. Do you know if that is included as well?
I am still not a fan of using the tablet but it works mucht better than the old interface on 1.2.
So for creating and setting everything up I still recommend to use a desktop but creating or modifying a flow from the tablet with touch works from 1.3
Sorry I have no iPad to test.
I just don't get why a desktop is required, it is 2017 what is it doing client side? It is so awkward to create in one room and then have to getup and go to another room to verify that it is doing what you want it to do. I really don't get who made such a design decision for this type of product.
You are right about controlling devices, but they are working on that. But flows is something you edit once, and allmost never touch again. This topic is feeling like a bash Athom topic, and creating a elephant from a mosquito
[Edit/ Sorry for the short answer, the tablet decided to remove the remaining 300 words before the post comment.... I will Retype ;-) ]
I guess You don't want to ;-) just some patience please...
The Dev Preveview (DP) is available on request/invitation for a few developers.
DP releases sometimes breaks functionality and is there to test Homey core and applications.
You have to be able to use a Desktop Apple or Linux to unbrick Homey is updates fail.
Changing from DP or Experimental to a stabler channel requires you to reset Homey and start over again.
Just wait for the Experimental or if you prefer the stable release, 1.3.0 has had approx. 5 DP releases and when all major bugs are fixed and no new nasty bugs are introduced the version will be available in Experiential. after that some ppl will find new bugs and when fixed it becomes stabel.
There is no real Release date communicated, just wait...
I expect it is all a matter of a couple of days or weeks ;-)
Thank you. Cool, I'm quite alright with Apple & Linux, use it for all our development work. I'll wait, but legally I only have a few days to decide whether to return or not. Athom is totally unresponsive to the questions, and my retailer is amazed as well.
There are here a lot of ppl on the forum/slack that have ideas how it would be better.
On Slack and Github I have seen a lot responses from Athom, sometimes just because they decided so or because of time and resources but also with good explanations.
But I would stay with Homey: I haven't seen an competitor with comparable specs (all radio's, open platform to develop, etc) Or maybe you can build something using an Pi, RFCOM, Alexa etc... but wil that have the interface you want?
A lot good suggestions from the community are already implemented or on their list.
Athom isn't that active on the Forum and the first community manager (Annemarie) just changed job/moved. The new Community manager just started and is already introduced on Slack.
For a developer it is open to develop your own apps, I guess you cant with most of the off the shelf consumer products (like KAKU )
With Homey only one year on the marked after the Kickstarter i think it already showed nice progress.
Please , does anybody has a solution or at least a suggestion what the cause of this issue could be?
https://github.com/athombv/homey/search?q=scroll&state=open&type=Issues
Could you file one, if possible with a screenshot?
Scrolling improved in the current 1.3.0 update tho
@dejongj
Well it kinda feels like bashing and not a design flaw. It's not that you need to setup the flows all the time. I haven't even touched them for months. I agree it would have been nice to get working on tablets as well, but i understand that it's to hard to get it to work on 2 different browser engines (android and iOS). I just made the same choise to go with for homeydash as well. A desktop app to set it up so i don't have to fear the issues that comes with developing for different browsers.
I find it weird why when I ask a question whether I'm doing something wrong it is seen as bashing the vendor. Very strange indeed. If you never want Homey to grow and get market penetration as a commercial off the shelf product then please do continue with that mentality.
I still don't get this concept of why it is so hard to have a browser based application work across many devices. We do that on a daily basis and not just recently, been doing that for many years. One of them is processing submissions of 200 million unique passenger movements a year for the airline industry. Unless I'm missing something unique that Athom is doing with Homey client side (and I looked using developer tools briefly) I really fail to see the issue that some seems to be so incredibly defensive about.
I questioning that bashing Athom? Oh come on, of course it isn't.
The homey UI is based on DOM manipulation, JavaScript in soo many ways and forms (drag and drop, pop-ups, inline renaming, ordening etc.) . Actually the front-end is kind off build just on top of their api.
They might be past "start-up", but what they accomplish with such a small team is just Awesome.
They made a choice to go the desktop app route. As long they really give a heads up to customers (put it on the box) i see no problem at all and even (as a dev) do understand why they made that choice. I would rather have them busy implementing zigbee then fixing their UI because Chrome got Updated again. ( by the way, what about that for a users experience... old browsers that dont work, newer browser updates that break things etc.)
However please lets not propagate the lies, yes lies, that it says so on the box. This is what it say on the box, very clear and unambigous.
I can't help wondering why you apparently did not read any reviews on Homey prior to purchasing it? All reviews I read before buying Homey mentioned the fact that it comes with a desktop client. Many people ask advice about concerns they have on the forum prior to purchasing, this helps in matching expectations to reality
I do understand where you are coming from, I had some buyer's remorse initially despite reading the reviews. My first Homey experiences were very hit and miss. Somfy sunscreen worked right off the bat, fantastic. Then tried to switch something on via IR, forget it. I had been playing with Domoticz before, and had the opposite experience, I had no expectations, and Domoticz was able to control various devices in my home which I didn't even know could be controlled.
I then figured with the community and the fact that Homey is open source, you can't lose (although you may have to wait a long time
All in all, I think it is quite common for companies to sell products partly based on projections and promises. The home-automation sector is particulary challenging I imagine, as it is an immature market in which people have huge but at the same time vague expectations. People have notions of being able to talk to devices, and devices talking back, of a fridge ordering pizza because the vegetable drawer is empty.... So they buy a 'homeautomation' device without knowing exactly what to do with it (myself included btw). I heard a Homey user mention that his brother bought a Homey because he thought it was so cool, took it home, and said to Homey: "OK Homey, turn on the light"...
I am sure that (most) tablet interface gremlins will be sorted soon. In the end the question is, what would you like Homey to do, how would you like to use it?
All review interfaces I've seen are with a browser, the packaging states it works with a browser and specifically states tablets as well. We've got 15 rooms in our home, not including any outbuildings, running from my office to a room to test a bit of flow and automation is severely cumbersome. I did investigate regarding compatible devices such that our devices can integrate which they do perfectly. So on the service with a browser based interface, with links to apps, with stated declaration that it you can use a computer, laptop or tablet. I think it is pretty reasonable to expect that to work.
As you can see from my original post, I was questioning myself as to whether I'm doing something wrong. Yet all the formal indications were there that it should do this.
I will keep my Homey for now, my daughters think it looks cute, but I really hope that improvements are truly forthcoming. And I'm not alone, Athom has gotten back into contact with me and confirmed they are seeing increased demand for this. It has to be if they want to cross the chasm.