Homey (smart hub)

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Homey is a smart home hub manufactured by the Dutch company Athom B.V.

Contents

Homey has a mobile & web app interface with an open API that allows third-party developers to add support for their products in Homey. Like other smart home hubs, the purpose of Homey is to act as a central point of configuration, control and monitoring of components in a smart home. An automatic control flow is nicknamed a "Flow" in the Homey app.

History

Homey was originally started as a Kickstarter project in May 2014 by Emile Nijssen and Stefan Witkamp, [1] and the company Athom B.V. was founded to take care of the development. In 2015, private investors invested 1 million euro in the company. [2]

Models

Homey (2016)

In 2016, the first version of the Homey was released after having started as a Kickstarter project in 2014. The first generation of Homey had a built-in microphone and software for speech recognition, [3] and as such could be regarded as both a smart speaker and a smart home hub. It had support for connecting over Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, ZigBee, Z-Wave, 433 MHz, 868 MHz and infrared light.

Homey (2019)

In 2019, the second generation of Homey was released. Notable hardware changes includes removal of the near-field communication module due to little use, as well as removal of the microphone because Homey had deemed it to not be good enough to function as planned. [4]

The software was also updated to version 2.0, and older equipment could also be upgraded to this version. Some of the changes in the software was a more complete mobile app, while support for the desktop application was removed. Support was added for lighting control using KNX. [5] The Homey second generation had a hardware with 512 MB random-access memory and a single core central processing unit.

Homey Pro (2019)

Homey Pro was also launched in 2019 at the same time as the second generation of the Homey base model, but the Pro edition had a twice as powerful hardware with 1 GB of random-access memory and a dual core processor. [6]

Homey Bridge (2022)

Homey Bridge was announced during a livestream on September 7, 2021, as an optional wireless antenna for the then-introduced cloud-service.

Supported technologies are Wi-Fi, Bluetooth Low Energy, Zigbee, Z-Wave, 433 MHz and Infrared.

Homey Pro (2023)

A new generation Homey Pro was announced during a livestream on October 12, 2022, and started shipping in Q1 2023.

Notable changes are a new flat design, similar to Homey Bridge, based on a Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4, shipping with a quad core processor, 2 GB of random-access memory and 8 GB flash storage.

Supported technologies are Wi-Fi, Bluetooth Low Energy, Zigbee, Z-Wave, 433 MHz, Infrared, Matter and Thread.

Supported devices

The Homey software has partial support for integration with selected components from other smart home systems, such as Philips Hue, IKEA, Google Nest, Chromecast, Logitech Harmony, Spotify Connect and Sonos. [5]

Homey claims to support over 50 000 different devices [4] [7] from over 1000 brands. [8]

See also

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References

  1. Homey gives your living room a voice | Engadget
  2. Athom funded for over 1 million euros with latest investment round ! - Archive // EIT Digital
  3. This voice-activated smart hub feels Homey - CNET
  4. 1 2 Athom Homey (2019) - Test - Tek.no
  5. 1 2 Review: Athom Homey 2.0 - Smart home hub for all your smart devices
  6. Guide: Athom Homey kan det meste
  7. SmartThings vs Homey – Smart home system comparison | Homey
  8. Athom Homey Pro Smart Home Hub launched plus Homey v2.0 app - A hub for Z-Wave, WiFi, BLE & more