An incredible good residence gadget…till it is not

I first noticed Homey Professional at CES 2023. I used to be blown away by what it provided — a good residence hub that may management every part you personal — however slightly skeptical of how it will carry out in actual life. This didn’t cease us from giving it a Better of CES 2023 award, however I used to be excited to provide it a shot in my residence to search out out if it carried out as marketed.

I’ve now had a Homey Professional in my home for slightly over a month. The excellent news is that it does do what the corporate claimed: It truly is the one hub to rule all of them. Nonetheless, the dangerous information is that attending to the purpose the place this cute little RGB-lit puck controls every part in your own home shouldn’t be as easy as one might need hoped.

On this article (and the video above), I’m going to interrupt down Homey Professional: what it’s, the way it works, what’s nice, what’s not so nice, and whether or not or not you, particularly, can buy it.

Consider Homey Professional as a mind in your good residence. Most individuals can have many alternative good residence merchandise from many alternative manufacturers, all working on totally different protocols. You might need a wise hub in your lights, and different hubs in your locks, thermostats, blinds, and extra. Plus, you want a number of apps to run every part. It may be an enormous mess.

The Homey Professional solves this drawback by bringing every part beneath one roof. When you’ve set it up, every part in your own home runs by way of Homey Professional. Due to this central hub in your gear, management of your property is now enclosed inside one app, bringing some order to the chaos.

You’re in all probability questioning how the Homey Professional can do that. Contained in the gadget, you’ll discover a Linux-based pc. Consider it like a Raspberry Pi, however beefed up. Integrated into this pc are connections for all the key good residence protocols: Zigbee, Z-Wave, Matter, Thread, Bluetooth, infrared — you title it, Homey Professional has obtained it. This permits Homey Professional to connect with (or, in some instances, utterly change) the good residence hubs you already use. It additionally lets it management just about any hub-less good gadget, both by way of the cloud and even regionally, if supported.

Bodily, Homey Professional is a black puck that’s in regards to the measurement of a water bowl for a small pet. It has an LED ring working across the base that lights up with a rainbow wave throughout common operation. You possibly can management this ring by altering colours or going darkish when issues occur. For instance, I’ve it set to flash orange after which go darkish after I open up Plex on my TV to match Plex’s branding. You can too shut it off solely when you hate enjoyable.

There’s one port on the again of the Homey Professional for USB-C energy. You can too purchase an Ethernet adapter from Homey that lets you bodily join the gadget to your community with no need Wi-Fi. That is offered individually ($29 at Amazon), however you too can use third-party dongles if you have already got one. Athom (the corporate that makes Homey) received’t assure these would work correctly, although.

Having all of your good residence gadgets funneled into one hub is cool and all, however it doesn’t imply something if the software program isn’t any good. Fortunately, that is the place Homey actually shines. I believe the Homey software program is so good that it would even be the perfect companion software program I’ve ever used for any gadget.

The Homey app works on Android, iOS, and the online. The net model has extra capabilities than the cell apps, however they’re all designed precisely the identical.

The primary interface of the app jogs my memory of the Google House app. By default, every part in your own home is organized by room, however you’ll be able to manage them in one other approach when you like. Every room has slightly sq. button that lets you management every gadget. You possibly can create your individual buttons right here, too. For instance, you would create a button that controls all of the lights in that room, so you’ll be able to flip all of them on/off with one faucet.

The app additionally lets you create and management Flows — i.e. automations in Homey lingo. Flows are easy to place collectively and might be extremely highly effective. It’s based mostly on a “When… And… Then…” system. For instance, one I exploit is “When the solar rises and I’m residence, then open the blinds in the lounge.”

As a result of Homey connects to actually every part in your own home, you may get very particular with Flows. An actual-world instance I’ve arrange is to scrub the world close to my cat’s litterbox. Each time he makes use of the field and will get out, he drags slightly little bit of litter with him. I need to clear this up mechanically utilizing the robotic vacuum, however I don’t need it to occur after I’m watching TV (the litter field is close by), nor after I’m asleep. I added a movement sensor to the litter field to trace his actions, and my Stream appears to be like like this: “When the litter field movement sensor is triggered and the TV is off and it’s between 8:30 AM and 10:00 PM, then inform the vacuum to scrub the litterbox space with a 10-minute delay.”

These Flows took me perhaps 5 minutes to place collectively, due to the Homey app’s easy-to-use drag-and-drop card system. There’s no coding mandatory, simply faucets and swipes.

If you wish to get much more thorough together with your automations, there may be an Superior Flows device that’s locked to the online app. In the event you’re a wise residence buff already, you’ll acknowledge it as wanting rather a lot like Node-RED. There’s additionally an old school script editor if you wish to get tremendous particular together with your Flows (additionally locked to the online app). Nonetheless, I discovered common Flows to be highly effective sufficient for me. Even Stefan Witkamp, the founder and industrial director of Homey, instructed me he solely makes use of customary Flows in his own residence!

Lastly, the app has a bit known as Insights. This lets you see what’s occurring relating to vitality consumption in your gadgets in your house. For instance, you’ll be able to see the facility utilization of any gadget over the previous few days. This might be particularly helpful when you’ve got solar energy or are in a spot the place vitality consumption is tremendous costly.

So that you’re satisfied that Homey Professional is terrific, however what’s the catch? The catch is that it’s not simple being the one hub to rule all of them. Though Homey Professional does an amazing job of incorporating hundreds and hundreds of gadgets into its system, not every part you personal might be coated. There are methods round a tool missing official protection, however it’s not going to be as plug-and-play as you’d hope it to be.

For instance, my Nanoleaf gentle panels are formally supported by Homey, with Nanoleaf itself truly a associate in that integration. As such, all my Nanoleaf merchandise labored flawlessly proper out of the field. My TP-Hyperlink good dimmers, although, have an official app, however for some cause, they disconnect continually, which implies that at the least as soon as every day, a few of my Flows don’t work appropriately. I reached out to Homey’s assist about this, and the issue is presently being addressed. In the meantime, my Roborock robotic vacuum lacks official assist solely. For that, I wanted to depend on group assist, which includes hacking collectively an app to include with Homey unofficially. It really works, however it was a very difficult and complicated course of to get it arrange.

These points imply that Homey Professional shouldn’t be the set-it-and-forget-it gadget you would possibly hope for. You’ll must do a ton of troubleshooting to get the gadgets you already personal working correctly, change them with new good gadgets which have official assist, or wait patiently till official assist lands in your current merchandise.

This can be a large drawback, however it hasn’t been a large enough problem for me to cease utilizing the Homey Professional. I like the software program, and I like that it really works with nearly all my gadgets — I’m simply hoping that, over time, the opposite gadgets that I’m having issues with will get fastened.

These issues I’ve talked about with Homey Professional stop me from recommending it to simply any good residence consumer. You’ll have to be a really particular kind of consumer for this to be applicable.

The way in which I see it, there are two forms of good residence homeowners. The primary has just a few gadgets: a light-weight, some plugs, and perhaps a lock. They don’t want Homey Professional. Their good house is sufficiently small that it may be managed in one thing like Google House, and any Flows they create could be fairly simplistic. On the flip facet, you’ve gotten folks with dozens of good gadgets of their homes with dozens and even tons of of automations to cowl all of them. These customers might use Homey Professional, however they’re in all probability already invested within the House Assistant ecosystem, so Homey Professional could be form of irrelevant.

Homey Professional is designed for the folks in the midst of these two extremes. For instance, individuals who have loads of good residence gadgets and need to get into superior automations however don’t need to get into House Assistant. Or individuals who need to get into the facility of House Assistant however don’t need to construct any {hardware} to run it. For this class of individual (of which I used to be admittedly a member), Homey Professional is an ideal all-in-one system. You purchase it, you set it up, you get going. It’s simple to make use of, the educational curve is low, and you can begin making your good residence desires come true. It’s going to take you some hours of effort, however you’ll get there.

In fact, that is the place the elephant within the room pops up: worth. Right here in the US, the Homey Professional prices $399. That’s some huge cash for a tool like this, particularly when that when you went the House Assistant route, you would construct one thing your self for lower than half that.

Have in mind, although, that the Homey Professional doesn’t contain any subscription providers. You pay your $399, and that’s it — you’ll have entry to every part it could actually do endlessly. There’s a non-Professional model of Homey that requires a small month-to-month charge and has extra limitations than the Homey Professional. You can too use the Homey app without spending a dime with none Homey {hardware} when you merely need to see the way it works and determine which {hardware} answer is greatest in your wants.

Additionally, the Homey Professional is able to working your good residence regionally, assuming that you’ve got the gadgets to assist that. In the event you do, you would run your total residence with none web connection, which might be an actual boon for folks on the market who worth their privateness.

Athom has been round for practically ten years and has launched many gadgets over that point, most of that are nonetheless supported in the present day. In different phrases, investing in a Homey Professional appears to be a good suggestion in the long term since you ought to get the assist you want because the years go by. The one factor you’ll want to simply accept is that you just’ll must do loads of troubleshooting once you first take it out of the field, and also you would possibly want to exchange a few of your good residence gadgets — or wait till these gadgets get assist. However, when you can look previous these flaws, the Homey Professional might be an amazing addition to your good residence, identical to it was for mine.