Homey by Athom

Homey has now matured and a v4.0 has been released. We're going to take a closer look at him.

With the Homey you can easily operate your smart devices at home. With the APP you can turn your lights on / off, regulate your heating, keep an eye on your energy consumption and many other things. The possibilities are endless. You can even operate your old infrared remote control via the Homey.

The Homey can also arrange things itself. This is possible with the flow editor. For example, you can automatically switch on a lamp when it gets dark or switch it off automatically when you go to bed.

It can be purchased from € 299.00 through our partner for the normal version (which we will be testing). In addition, there is also a PRO version which is available for € 399.00.

Homey total solution:

The Homey has the unique feature that it can talk to almost all wireless devices. There are 8 different wireless technologies built in for this. These are Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Z-Wave, 433Mhz, 868Mhz, NFC, Infrared and Zigbee. Enough protocols to handle the future. The nice thing about all these combinations is that you can let both the more expensive ones (Z-Wave / Zigbee) and the cheap modules (433Mhz) work with the Homey. That saves money in the wallet.

According to Athom, more than 50,000 devices are supported. We will add a number of modules / devices to test whether they are working properly.

What do you get:

- Homey
- Nutrition
- USB cable

Specification (normal version):

Protocol: 433.92 MHz, 868 Mhz, Bluetooth, Bluetooth Smart, Somfy RTS, Z-wave, Z-wave Plus, ZigBee
WiFi: 802.11b, 802.11g, 802.11n
CPU / SoC: Single core
Processor speed: 1GHz
Memory size: 512MB
Power: Via power supply/mini USB cable (1.5m)
Dimensions: Length: 120mm | Width: 120 mm | Height: 120 mm
Weight: 600 g

Specification (PRO version):

Protocol: 433.92 MHz, 868 Mhz, Bluetooth, Bluetooth Smart, Somfy RTS, Z-wave, Z-wave Plus, ZigBee
WiFi: 802.11b, 802.11g, 802.11n
CPU / SoC: Dual Core Processor speed: 1GHz
Memory size: 1GB
Power: Via power supply / mini USB cable (1.5m)
Dimensions: Length: 120mm | Width: 120 mm | Height: 120 mm
Weight: 600 g

Installation:

To start, you supply the Homey with electricity. The LED will start spinning and after a while the Homey will tell you to go to setup.athom.com (so don't be alarmed if it starts talking). When we go here we see that we have to download the APP. We then do this, after starting up you must first create an account. If you have an account, you can start adding the Homey. Adding this continues that the Homey is a hotspot that you connect directly to over the phone. When it is connected, it transmits your WiFi data to the Homey and then it can connect to your own network. By the way, this LED first turns blue and then green during this process.

This setup is ready when the Homey welcomes you and the APP has started and you see the start screen.

APP

Make sure you download and install the APP (android/iOS) after installation. After logging in you will be taken to the main screen.

Here you will find 4 main menu items:
Home - This is the home screen
Devices - Here you can manage / add devices
Flows - Here you can create rules to control your devices
More - Here you will find the general settings

I will handle each part separately.

Home:

In the home screen you will find at the top right which users are using the Homey and what their status is (home / awake / etc). We will discuss this further later. Below you have the option to put devices in your favorites. This is a handy feature so you can quickly turn something on and off. You have to take that 'fast' with a grain of salt because starting up the APP is not very fast. If it is there, then of course you can control everything quickly.

Below you will find your favorite flows. Flows are rules / automation. More about this later. Nice feature is that the flows can now be started directly. If you go further down you will find your timeline. Here updates come forward and you can have something set up yourself.