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.
Comments
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@Moek, Thanks
Now all the misunderstanding is out of the way I will try one more time to persuade the testers to share small quotes of their success with Homey in their house.
Remember when the controller get's the attention of the general public they do want to know what they can do with it and likely will end up on this forum.
Therefore I'm convinced it is beneficial for current owners, potential buyers and Atom to share experiences
Maybe one of you wants to start a new topic e.g. "Experience with the Homey controller in my house"
Possibly @Emile want's to make it a sticky topic
I will certainly share mine after receiving my Homey and the example below is in operation for over 2 years on my current controller. I propose to use a more ore less standard format in pseudo code and provide an example below.
Initiating the awake status of the house.
- If motion is detected in the living room between 07:00 and 10:00 and light level in the room is less than 10 some lamps are switched on and the radio is switched on and set to Arrow classic Rock , if the light level is equal to or more than 10 the curtains are opened to 50% and the radio is switched on and set to Arrow classic Rock.
- If light level is more than 20 or the time is 10:15 all lights are switched off and the curtain opened 100%
PartlistI myself, bought Homey because i have some cheap sockets and sensors which would be able to communicate with each other including my somewhat out of date IR-devices. For what I've read/heard Fibaro is supported. The others, I don't know. But I'm sure there are some First Batch users who can answer that.
I'm sure though that ALL devices will work. The setup of Homey is so open, that almost any signal can be used, and added.
When I found Homey on Kickstarter, I was instantly in love. Being a gadget-lover and Apple-fan, I for longer time was looking for a solution to give me complete Home-control, but not by paying $50k to top-of-market System Integrator who would fill a complete rack with equipment, like if I had a $3M home (which I have definitely not).
What was I looking for in the perfect Home-controller?
- not linked to one specific technology, but as many as possible (you never know which one survives)
- for sure not the old serial home-control technologies like you see with closed systems like Gira and Busch-Jager, which hugely limit flexibility and often ask for re-cabling and are pretty expensive too
- my home controller ideally should support all major domotica actors (for switching light, doors etc)
- Continues development, as this world of inexpensive domotica (compared with the high-end stuff) is just starting
- not the complexity of the geek-systems like Homeseer, where you have to run a server, ideally have Linux knowledge etc
- Wife friendly: it should be stable, work via the light switches too
- Be able to set it in my own language would be great (faster learning curve)
- should include cloud based solutions like IFTTT, ideally also open to Homekit and other future systems
- Be able to adapt it to my personal needs, like change status of items depending on time, location, status of other devices as flexible as possible
- should integrate with my alarm system easily (to use the alarm sensors for activating lights too) and camera's
With this in mind, I backed Homey hoping it would deliver most of the above. I was a bit skeptic with the not very experienced (young) team, but looking at many other kickstarters (find e.g the watch which projects on your arm, cicret :-) I think the Athom team did just great until shipment day arrived. For a modest investment, I find 1.5 years later Homey just gave me all and it continues to be fun too to see, how it evolves as every month new features come out.
Homey now connects all in my home: lights, heating, camera's, alarm-system, TV, location-based (me), music (Sonos), a dashboard on my kitchen android touchscreen, sensors etc. I am happy to have standardized on Z-wave Fibaro switches, which are very stable. Once I come home the alarm automatically disables, lights turn on, music starts and I hear 'Welcome Home'. Once I go to bed, I tell Siri on my Iphone that I go to sleep with the recent Homekit integration. Homey starts a flow and with some delay, enough for me to reach my bedroom, turns of the lights, the music and TV. It potentially could arm the alarm in 'at home mode', but so far I decided to only enable it once away. And the best of all, my wife and kids love it. During the past summer holiday, my lights automatically went on and off; not just one light in the corner like with a timer but the normal lights (spots in ceiling and wall) so it looked someone was home. I could have started/stop the music on a time to make it even more real, but my wife thought I went too far :-).
For the future I am investigating to buy the Google Home as voice control in my kitchen. Asking it to show something on my Android screen and/or dim the lights and/or play another playlist could be kind of fun. The Homey speech recognition I do not really use, knowing it is standing next to a noisy television. So great Homey now connects to multiple 'Smart Speakers' from multiple vendors, knowing speech recognition is a complexity in itself so better to leverage the rich-companies like Apple or Google here.
Great compliment for the team and bring it from idea to a working and stable solution which really works and is simple enough, to understand for a non-tech guy like me.
Couldn't agree more neighbour!