You’ll find some older posts about that page (though maybe they’re on Discord, I forget).
It caused a lot of amusement when they first published it.
Amusement? I thought it was a fair assessment, why would it be funny. TBH if they can solve device tracking at all better and they actually have proper user authorization and claims.
HA is like ADHD. We can’t seem to have them focus on anything long enough to finish it. “Oop the year changed, time to abandon last year’s theme and move on.”
If you wanted a fair assessment of a Chevy truck, you wouldn’t watch a Ford commercial. This probably a better comparison.
That being said, if you really want to take the chance the Homey servers will never go dark and drop $600 CDN for an ok but less capable hub, have at 'er!
I stand by my sentiment that Homey’s assessment was pretty unbiased and certainly not comical. I think your post is disingenuous.
600? Assuming CDN mean NZ$ (never head it that way, content delivery network? lol), because it’s half that US.
The cost is less than nabu casa subscription if you don’t want to take that risk with the lifetime. It’s locally controlled for the most part, just like HA. So servers going dark? I don’t think that’s a thing really. But as with everything it’s always a risk.
Interesting comparison, and just looking at the photos Homey does have some UI advantages. Not having to cobble together multiple radios is nice to have, but obviously won’t appeal to people that want to be able to change over time.
It seems fairly even handed but is still clearly marketing material. Comments about Homey are obviously glowingly positive and comments about HA are neutral, often adding caveats about needing programming experience (I don’t find this to be the case for most things). The security comment I find to be disingenuous and somewhat scare mongering while trying to come off as objective.
Different markets for these systems. It wouldn’t take a lot to close some of the UI awkwardness (e.g. the absolute pain that creating scripts and automations in the UI with 1000 dropdowns that don’t work while typing) and continuing to refine the prebuilt HA hardware offerings to close the gap.
All that said, this is good for the consumer—even if it might feel like someone is taking a jab at your home team, this is one way to foster ideas and make things better. Iron sharpening iron and all that.
Clearly biased in favor of Homey, but couldn’t have been any other way, considering the source.
| Homey | HA |
|---|---|
| The slickest, just-works, platform compatible with UFO tech and as private as your own mind. | Meh, yeah, it works with a bunch a hanging wires and if you know how to code in Assembly and APL. |
Based on what I read around, it seems that Homey falls more in line with solutions for the typical consumer. Maybe a prettier interface, but at the cost of flexibility.
Mmmmm. Sure.
- Voice assistant’s aren’t only paid - yes there’s a paid option, but there’s also free ones.
- “Amazon Alexa integration is only available via the Home Assistant Cloud subscription costing 5$ per month” clearly false
- “Google Home integration is only available via the Home Assistant Cloud subscription costing 5$ per month” ditto
- They carefully advertise 50K+ devices supported by them, but “only” 1.8K integrations in HA
- They talk a lot about HA requiring coding skill… I suppose that’s one way to describe structured YAML
- “Scenes are simplified automations” … no they’re not
- etc, etc, etc
The language throughout is carefully chosen to lead the reader towards Homey… which is no surprise since that’s the whole point of the article.
So yes, amusement.
So in other words, your fanboism is perfectly justified but their marketing material is laughable. Yep, you’re so fair and balanced you should be an anchor for Fox. I mean you do know what the L stands for in YAML, right?
I’m all for more variety in home automation and perhaps others ecosystems are more approachable for new and less advanced users. That said, I’m with Tinkerer on this one, that comparison is pure marketing and has little basis in reality, if it’s the right solution for you, then by all means, enjoy. I have very little interest in an ecosystem that requires subscriptions, allowing third parties access to my data, is closed source and limits my ability to customize it.
Does Home Assistant frustrate me, sure, PRs can be a huge pain, and it’s annoying when we can’t get simple things merged, but I always have the ability to change the source to meet my needs. I’m not aware of any other ecosystem that has the power and flexibility of Home Assistant.
On that we agree. It’s think an approachable option for many and while not on the same scale, comparable. I find hyperbole tiresome and unnecessary.
I think we can all agree that all mainstream news media today is as objective and unbiased as a Soviet newspaper.
And so you all traverse down the rabbit hole. You like Homey? Use it. Post your comments there in support. You like HA? Use it. Post your comments here in support.
Please keep it civil people:
If you can’t then moderators will take the appropriate action.
I’ve been thinking about testing out the Homey Pro because of the shortcomings with this thing. The reasons they stated may or may not be true, but the outright ridiculous things one has to do for very simple “automations” is a time suck I’d rather not have. Funny enough I keep seeing people refer to this thing as “advanced”. Cumbersome does not equate to “advanced”. Complicating the hell out of simple tasks does not equate to “advanced”.
So If Homey can offer me the simple, while KEEPING it simple, with the option to create more advanced routines, then that’s where I belong. I have better things to do than type. Like watch paint dry.
The point is some of the things they raised should be viewed as competitive concerns. Because ultimately a $500 hub is a lot cheaper than 500 hours working on nonsense, and always will be
I think you should. 
Well in the meantime LG bought Athom, the makers of Homey.
If you have the extra money for giving it a go, go ahead. I would be cautious myself in terms of future viability.
I took a close at what users say about Homey to possibly recommended to a non-techie friend and decided against it. My takeaway was that while Homey has a nice-looking design with a soft and intuitive app UI, one is riddled with malfunctions and the other with bugs and half-baked code. Integration wizards often don’t work or barely do it.
If someone here has given a good try and disagrees, I’m all ears.