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We've received very positive response from the community on Homey since we posted our First impression of Homey. The home automation scene has been stagnated with the usual hubs and people have been looking for a hub to upgrade or be excited with.

Today, we are sharing more on creating flows on Homey. In Vera and Fibaro it is called Scenes, in SmartThings, it is called Routines while in Homey it is called Flows. 

For the sake of comparison and for you to judge, here's some screen shot of the Vera and Fibaro scenes and SmartThings routines.

The Vera scene has a textual wizard to step through the scene creation.

The Fibaro scene uses blocks for specifying logics.

SmartThings's routine is also a little like Vera, except that you do it mostly on your mobile devices.

Here's how Homey's flows look like. Refreshing huh?

The flow editor is done on their Homey desktop application. 

Homey's flow is based on a card system that has a when (trigger), and (condition), then (actions) and else (actions). In short,

“When something happened, and this and that are true, then do that.”. 

Basically you just drag the component cards from the left bar into the 3 columns. The cards are also contextual, meaning if you drag a switch to the if column, you can only see the respective option cards for use in that column. This screenshot should give you a better picture. In this example, the same wall plug is dragged into the "when" and "then" column multiple times. You can then choose the different triggers and actions by flipping the cards. You can also send values (cards with tags) to placeholders to conditions for evaluation and actions.

 Let's go a little deeper with a frequently used example. In this example, we want a standing lamp to turn on when there is motion, but only between 6PM to 6AM. Here's how to:

In this example, not only the standing lamp wall plug is turned on, Homey will also announce "Motion Detected" and pulse its LED in red. If you are familiar with Vera and Fibaro scene, you will know that the "time in between" condition is not available and you have to achieve the above with 2 scenes instead on 1 in Homey.

Let's move one to a more interesting use case. Where a condition is being evaluated. In this example, we want to make sure that the last person who leave the house locks the door. If this happens, send a Telegram message specifying name if the last person who left the house and then automatically locks the door. Here's how: 

Looks simple? If you notice on the left bar, you can also do a lot with other devices such as DoorBird, Ring, IR devices etc, each with their very specific triggers, conditions and actions. 

Conclusion

We feel that the flow editor provided another way of defining automation. In a way, Homey made everything seemingly simpler and yet able to achieve more complexed scenes in a single flow. Check out this link for a introductory page to Homey Flows.

In our next few articles, we will share more on other integrated devices such as DoorBird, Ring, music IR and 433 devices. So do keep a look out for them!

Automate Asia Team

Deciding your first Z-Wave controller can be a daunting task. We always get questions such as the difference between Vera, Fibaro or Zipatile controller, which controller is more value for money, which ones are more user friendly, how is SmartThings compared to the rest etc. 

We think we will have a different answer today because we've just laid our hands on one of the up and coming smart home hub Homey. And we are very excited to share our first impression as we were totally blown away by it's user interface and product design.

Homey is a voice-activated home automation hub created by Netherlands-based startup Athom. Athom recently launched Homey on Kickstarter in 2014 with  996 backers.

First look

The hardware looks un-usually minimalist. In fact one of the most minimalist design we've seen do far. Just a sphere with LED ring, with a USB power port, a 3.5mm audio jack and a speaker grille. Not even logo or any single letter on the device itself. In fact the box does not even come with an instruction manual because Athom provided 13 instruction videos on YouTube just for setting up Homey.

Supported Protocol

These guys are seeing things differently and the number of protocols it supports make it stands out from Fibaro, Vera and even SmartThings :

• Wi-Fi ® 802.11b/g/n 2.4 GHz 
• Bluetooth ® 4.0 Low Energy 1 
• ZigBee ® 2.4 GHz 2
• Z-Wave Plus ™ 
• 433 MHz 
• 868 MHz 
• Infrared Receiver 
• Infrared Transmitter (6x) 
• NFC (ISO14443A) 

You are actually getting an infrared blaster, 433 Mhz, NFC on top of whatever the competitors are offering in the market! The hub is also a speaker that can channel audio via the 3.5 mm headphone jack as well as Bluetooth A2DP.

Setup

Upon boot up, the Homey will prompt you by voice to connect to http://setup.athom.com. From this point, everything will be done on your browser until the point you download the Homey app.

The downloading of latest firmware and the voice files actually took some time as the files are around 150 MB to 200 MB in size.

Once the Homey hub is connected to your Wifi and firmware updated, you can download the Homey desktop application to start adding devices and create flows. Homey named their scenes as flows and we must say we were quite impressed with the user interface.

Homey supports an impressive array of devices as shown in the screenshots. There is an app for each brand of Z-Wave devices and you will need to download the app from the Homey App Store into Homey before pairing them.

Furthermore, the pairing instructions are very clear and device specific. The device parameters for each brand of Z-Wave devices are laid out very clearly. We feel that they have outdone both Fibaro and Vera in terms of parameters management. Till date, Homey is compatible with over 20,000 devices. 

Homey App

Once you are done with the setup, adding of devices etc, here's how the look and feel of the app. Again, we love it's simple and material-design like UI. (Vera app had a flat UI but seems overly flat and Fibaro app looks like it is till in the iPhone 3GS era).

Conclusion

With the wide range of device support, clear parameter management and clean UI, Homey is definitely a strong contender among the existing hubs out there. The best thing about Homey is that, like SmartThings, it depended on a strong community in building more support and yet do their quality check on their app and UI assets. For geeks, their add-on are all written in Node.js (the geek in me is screaming woo!). 

So do we recommend Homey over Fibaro and Vera? We think our answer will be very likely but we are still doing range and more testing to discover out more of its cons. So far we are still very impressed!

Look out for more articles as we will be covering more on Homey especially on the flow (scene) editor, App Store and other non-Zwave controls (IR, NFC, Bluetooth etc).

Automate Asia Team

Singapore is going into Smart nation. How about your own home? Wana turn it into Smart home too? Smart Home Singapore here we are.

Automate Asia has designed a fun and educational workshop for smart home enthusiastic and new home or retrofit owner.  

Smart Home is for Family. Bring along one immediate family member (Wife/Hubby/Children) of your to attend this meaningful Smart Home Workshop for FREE. 

Smart home is one of the up and coming buzzword in the recent years. However, the concept of smart home seems very daunting to many. The common questions include:

1. Is it going to cost an arm or a leg?
2. Do I have to tear all my wiring out?
3. What technology should I go for?
4. How can I future proof my home?
5. Do I need a professional maintenance package to keep it running?

The workshop aims to answer all these questions as well as to get you started on building and maintaining your own smart home without burning a hole in your pocket.

Who should attend this workshop?

If you are getting new place or retrofit your existing place and would like to make it smarter. Or if you just want to learn some skills to start a smart home business!

Do I need to be tech savvy?

Basic PC skills will be sufficient. If you love your gadgets, then you will be tech savvy enough!

What can I get out of this basic smart home workshop?

1. You will learn about the technologies available for building a smart home and how you can apply it to your own living room.
2. Get your hands dirty on retrofitting your switches. You will get to wire the modules to make your light switches smarter.
3. Configure smart switches, sensors, wall plugs and air-con controllers.
4. Setup and experience voice control.

What else should I take note?

You will need to bring your own laptops, we will provide all the training devices and materials. Kids are welcomed as we have quite a big space but please keep them supervised at all times. Most importantly, come with your enthusiasm to pick up new skills!

LOCATION

308 Lavender Street Singapore 338814

Nearest MRT is Boon Keng MRT station --- 3 mins walk

In our previous review of the Aeotec Nano Dimmer and Switch, we've promised to test the Nano Dimmer with a ceiling fan for fan speed control. In this test, we tested it with a 65W ceiling fan that has a 3 speed regulator. Naturally, we removed the regulator and connected the Nano DImmer instead as shown:

This is the fan which we tested in this round : http://relitespecialty.com/index.php/53/relite-petite-for-low-ceiling-detail We believe that it should also work with this fan with similar specs as well : https://www.kdk.sg/products/ceiling-fan/non-remote-controlled/m60sg.html

We kept our fingers crossed during the test as the last time we tested Qubino Dimmer (which claimed that it works with fan), the Qubino Dimmer blew. This time it was a success with the Nano Dimmer.  Here's the video of the fan speed control via Amazon Echo.

Now you can get a connected fan (fan plus Nano Dimmer for around SGD200) without the cost of a Haiku :)

Automate Asia Team

Aeotec has come a long way in the history of Z-Wave. We have been using Aeotec and Aeon Labs loosely when we address their devices. Since, this is one of the first time we post a review on their product, probably we take the opportunity to re-introduce them.

Aeon Labs is a home automation and electronics company based in Silicon Valley, California known both as Aeon Labs and Aeotec. As a company, Aeon Labs' core focus is on the development and sale of Z-Wave compatible accessories which it makes available under its own name, its Aeotec sub-brand, and as white labelled goods.

Their Micro switches and dimmers have been the most sought-after Z-Wave devices due to their well-known compatibility to the ever popular Samsung SmartThings. Not forgetting their compatibilities with VERA and FIBARO. We are sure by now, you would have heard about their Nano switch and dimmer. By naming this new range as Nano, obviously will be smaller than Micro, is definite a step towards taking on FIBARO and Qubino. We tested the Nano Dimmer and Switch with VERA and FIBARO were pleased to see that it worked perfectly with the latest firmware. For Nano Dimmer, smooth, flicker free dimming from 0% - 100% and reporting the power usage too by default, for Nano Switch, worked as a single switch, nothing to shout about.

However, when it comes to FIBARO Home Center, where they used to take their time to add compatibility to other manufacturers, there are some quirky behaviour as stray devices appeared with not configured message even though the dimmer works properly. When it comes to status update from toggling the physical switch, currently you need to manually make an association to the lifeline group to make it send an update to the gateway. Once that is done, it works as well as using a FIBARO Dimmer 2. Hopefully the next firmware upgrade by FIBARO will perform the association automatically like they do for their own brand.

While FIBARO ditched the IN port for their Single and Double Relay, the Nano Switch (and soon to be released Nano Dual Switch) kept that port. In our opinion, ditching the IN port makes wiring simpler but made it impossible to control loads that are in other voltage or to trigger stuff like auto-gate or other dry contacts. The Nano Switch can also be powered by 24V DC.

The Nano Dimmer is touted to have the ability to control the fan (and speed) up to 100 watts. We tried that with Qubino and burnt the module and did not have the chance to test this function yet. What made us excited is that the Nano range, like the Micro, has the additional port to connect to Aeotec Touch Panel. We've checked with Aeotec and we understand that, the touch panels compatible with Nano will only be available in Q4 this year.

So check out some of the pictures on the device, side by side with FIBARO relay/dimmers and the wiring below.

Check out the Aeotec collection for more details.

Automate Asia Team