CES 2022: Homey hub

For some reason, i first thought of the Damon Wayans character from In Living Color....

Seems to be a competitor to Hubitat, with wifi built in. $69 hardware, $3 a month subscription.

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Eeekkk.. that's a pretty massive lock-in and limitation:

The free version of the Homey app controls up to five devices, while the premium version lets you connect an unlimited number of smart devices for $3 per month.

Homey don't play that. :wink:

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To be positive for a second, while they look cloud based, their concept of "flows" is very cool in terms of easily stringing together triggers/automation from various services. That's the one thing I miss from Wink is the ability for someone in my family who isn't me to create automations on HE. As I prohibit them from doing it through Alexa or Homekit as it would be a troubleshooting nightmare for me.

Their biggest issues with the new Homey hub are

  1. Cloud based apart from some local ZigBee and ZWave device support
  2. Does not support local network i.e. any IP devices - this is a real shame
  3. Developers can't easily write code for it - only really big companies are welcome
  4. A consumer device so no complex apps envisaged
  5. Lack of applications and can't run Homey Pro apps

All in all a missed opportunity I feel - especially 2) and 3)

That is just a blatant lie from Digital Trends :hot_face:!!

Actually if I refer to the reference site used it's already been changed to " Homey probably works with all your smart devices." ... but 'probably' is still a gross exaggeration, even 'possibly' is pushing it.

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I expect a lot of those short-comings are where they try and up-sell people to the pro version, as @Carl mentioned.... Lies aside :wink:

Absolutely but the Pro version is a lot of money at 400 Euros - a different league all together, but entice your users in to experience some of their mainly excellent UI and coding flows and some will bite.
Their dashboard UI is still poor though.

Homey is still a clown in my mind, and this subscription further cements that idea

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Yeah, it is a steep entry for the pro, I looked at it briefly before I bought my first C-4, and from memory I think price was one factor at the time for me.

For all the interactivity that Hubitat maintain with users and prompt bug fixes and feature implementations, Athom (Homey) is the absolute opposite. They never reply on their community (claim they don't even read it) or disclose anything. Very unsettling if you have an issue.

I know which I prefer... as does everyone here I think

Disclosure - I do have a Homey Pro and a Homey hub
Sophie's Choice... If I had to choose my Hubitat Elevation or my Homey Pro I would keep my HE

It's interesting this is under a CES2022 topic - so they're testing the US market.. Are Hubitat at CES 2020? I don't blame them if they're not as they seem to have a great trajectory anyway.

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  1. No time machine on the compatible devices list.

Many subsidiaries of my company are reportedly punting on real life attendance for CES. Too much omicron jitters.