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SpawnreaperSpawnreaper Member
in Archive

I trying to imagine how homey is going to function in my house. I am hoping it will be a centralised hub to conduct all my home automation applianced by voice command. The problem I am facing is that I want to have the voice access thoughout my house, not only in the room where homey is located. In some of the interviews on youtube I found that same question, will there be a mic extension.

I believe the homey team would love to have me buy a homey for every room. But that seems a bit overkill.  

5 rooms X 299,- = 1495,- 

I love the idea of homey but that is a big bil to pay for a mic extender. Wouldn’t it be a good idea to create a small homey slave that simply relays the audio from the rooms to homey and IR commands from homey to the rooms? That way all scripts stay in one single managed location.  An alternative could be a stripped homey OS for the a raspberry PI with a mic and IR attached to fulfil this role.

What do you guys think?

Comments

  • honeyhoney Member
    I like your idea, an open homey OS would be great. Not sure if the homey OS will be available, guess the guys want to keep the system secure and protect their intellectual property.
    Probably this not what you had in mind but might be an inspiration:
    How about a wall mounted/recessed 100€ nexus 7 tablet (or similar) and a running android app. The device has WIFI, mic, speaker, visual interface and the app has voice activation.
    The IR, hmmm... that is a bit of pain. Although there are IR accessories for android devices but the app does not have plugins at the moment but hopefully that will change soon.
  • fuzzybearfuzzybear Member
    I was under the impression you would be able to communicate with homey via your mobile telephone not only using the touch screen but also with voice commands. If not I guess this would not be too difficult. 
  • p0ntsp0nts Member
    edited January 2016
    fuzzybear said:
    I was under the impression you would be able to communicate with homey via your mobile telephone not only using the touch screen but also with voice commands. If not I guess this would not be too difficult. 
    It is, but requires you to have your smartphone with you the whole time, even if you have for example no clothing "winkwink" on so there are no pockets for the phone hehe.

    a tablet would be the best choice i guess, but also rather expansive.
  • SpawnreaperSpawnreaper Member
    The  annoyance of most home automation app's on the market is that when you want to do something, for instance turn on the lights, you have to get your phone, unlock it, find the correct app, go to the right lightbulb en turn in on. How is this more convenient that just pushing the button on the wall. I say, voice command for all, throughout the house. I just want to tell my home what I want my appliances to do.
  • SpawnreaperSpawnreaper Member
    The homey OS does not need to be open or free, just a small new os or plugin that can make a raspberry pi talk to homey nothing more. Just a relay station OS.
  • MarcoFMarcoF Member
    edited January 2016
    The  annoyance of most home automation app's on the market is that when you want to do something, for instance turn on the lights, you have to get your phone, unlock it, find the correct app, go to the right lightbulb en turn in on. How is this more convenient that just pushing the button on the wall. I say, voice command for all, throughout the house. I just want to tell my home what I want my appliances to do.
    Homey's "Speech reach" is about 5 meters. So if you have a large home with big rooms, where do you place these relay stations? 
    And what if 2-3-4 kids are sleeping and you want to turn on the TV in your bedroom? 
    You almost need to yell at Homey 3 meters across your bedroom and hope the kids stay a sleep.

    Switches and remotes will stay in homes for years :)

    Give me 1 super smart remote for every room with a mic, small display, user
    recognition so i can control my favorite functions in that room. No lockscreens, no fancy apps, no lack, no battery life compromise, just a simple remote that extends Homey.

    Therefore I ordered one Neeo remote for testing.
  • MoekMoek Member
    How about a couple of these? http://www.cepro.com/article/sengled_puts_voice-controlled_home_automation_in_a_smart_bulb
  • DaneeDeKruyffDaneeDeKruyff Member

    Hacking into this: https://www.conrad.nl/nl/apple-siri-afstandsbediening-1398712.html would make me happy :) With iBeacon functionality it would even know where I am in my house.

  • DenWDenW Member
    I'm with Spawnreaper on this one. Imho there should be an easy\cheap way to extend some of Homey's basic functions to other parts of the house. Especially IR (preferably 2-way) is a big concern for me. While IR technology is old it is still the most used technology in the average consumer home. I feel this has yet to be addressed by Athom.

    Neeo is a possible solution if supported by Homey, but as it's almost as pricey as Homey this is not for everyone (i.e.: me! :) ). As is Athom's "solution" of placing a Homey on every floor \ in every room. There are much cheaper alternatives (at least for IR support).
  • SpawnreaperSpawnreaper Member
    Main reason I wanted to adres this is because I don't want to scream :D 
    Hope the homey crew can voice there input on this matter.
  • MichaelMichael Member
    I'm really looking forward to see what the community will come up with. I know a guy who created a wall controller with an arduino which looks awesome. Should not be to hard to port this to Homey I guess...

  • SpawnreaperSpawnreaper Member
    Michael said:
    I'm really looking forward to see what the community will come up with. I know a guy who created a wall controller with an arduino which looks awesome. Should not be to hard to port this to Homey I guess...
    Looks cool. I wonder how much it would cost to build.

  • MichaelMichael Member
    Spawnreaper said:
    Michael said:
    I'm really looking forward to see what the community will come up with. I know a guy who created a wall controller with an arduino which looks awesome. Should not be to hard to port this to Homey I guess...
    Looks cool. I wonder how much it would cost to build.

    Actually I think it's well below 100 euro. It's an arduino, ethernet shield, small OLED display and some cheap buttons. The cost driver is probably the custom laser cut front.
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