On the 10th of February, 2016 I received my Homey by Athom. It’s a home automation hub which listens to you and speaks back, and can control all kinds of devices. It has just been released, which means there’s still quite some bugs. So I will list here what has worked for me, and what hasn’t.
Currently on version 0.8.39 (started on 0.8.17)
Bugs I’ve encountered myself:
- https://github.com/athombv/homey/issues/94 – philips hue, lux lamps wont (all) turn off or on with command all lights off or on
Works:
- Adding and controlling Philips Hue lights. I have an existing Hue setup with Hue, Hue Lux, Hue Whites, Livingwhites, Livingcolors and LivingAmbience lamps. Homey added them all very easily by pairing with the hub (I have a first generation hub). You can then place the lamps in rooms so you can tell homey “OK Homey, turn of the lights in the living room” and that actually works 🙂
- Adding and controlling Eurodomest 433MHz remote sockets. I bought a set of 3 sockets and a remote at Big Bazar for €10. They work nicely. Homey can add a socket by copying the remote’s radio signal, or by pairing with the socket directly after putting it into learning mode (press the on-off button on the socket itself for a few seconds)
- Asking the time (“OK Homey, what time is it?”). Other built-in commands: what version are you, what are you doing, testing 1 2 3… voice recognition isn’t as good as Siri (Apple iOS) or OK Google (Android) though.
- Adding a flow that turns on and off a light at a specific time. The turn off card has a delay so it first turns on the light then after a few seconds turns it off again.
- Fibaro Motion sensor FGMS-001. A device that looks like an eyeball and uses Z-Wave. It was quite easy to pair, however the pairing wizard doesn’t know it is a Fibaro Motion Sensor and in stead adds some generic device. On the Homey forum I read that it was supposed to be on association group 3. Whatever that means 🙂 I’m new to this Z-Wave stuff.
Doesn’t work (yet ;):
- Adding a bluetooth speaker. Confirmed that it doesn’t work yet, although it is being worked on by Athom.
- cloning IR remotes isn’t working very well. Tried to copy my Philips TV remote but it won’t register even though the tv itself does (while pointing the remote at Homey!)
LED ring color meanings:
Yellow: Homey is starting, please wait
Red: Homey is dead, please disconnect power and restart
Blue: Homey is downloading something, you can still use me
Pink: Homey is updating, do not disconnect power
Orange: Homey is listening to your voice command
White: Homey is analysing your voice online
Rainbow: Homey is operational and waiting for an event
REST API:
Find the bearer token to use with the Authorization: Bearer HTTP header in the REST API:
go to my.athom.com, log in to your account, copy the link address of the homey picture, paste as text in a text editor, write down the bearer_token
tip: use https://www.getpostman.com/ to create the proper requests
Programming for Homey
I got my first Homey app working thanks to the documentation at https://developers.athom.com/library/introduction. I am creating an app to control my Marantz NR1604 receiver over the network (using the telnet-like interface over TCP).
The app (driver) is now online 🙂 https://apps.athom.com/app/nl.marcovandenhout.marantz
It should also work for similar Denon AVR’s which have the same network interface.
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