Homey Professional mini overview – The Ambient

Homey Professional mini: Introduction

Homey is certainly one of (if not the) finest sensible house automation platforms, and it’s bought even higher since LG invested within the mother or father firm, Athom B. V. If there’s one drawback, it’s that the barrier to entry for the total expertise with a Homey Professional, is excessive; till at this time with the Homey Professional mini.

A barely lower down model of the Homey Professional, the mini provides you all the important options you want, with sufficient energy to deal with your common house, all for a a lot lower cost. For most individuals, then, that is the sensible house hub to purchase.

Design, set up and protocol assist

My unique Homey Professional overview goes into the principle particulars of what the system can do, and the core method that the system work stays the identical with the Homey Professional mini. The distinction is right down to core specs and supported protocols.

The Homey Professional mini has a 1.5GHz processor and 1GB of RAM. That’s the identical processor that the Professional makes use of, however half the RAM of the unique and one quarter of the RAM of the 2026 Professional mannequin.

That reduces the variety of apps which you can run: between 20 and 25 on the mini, and 60 on the unique Professional and greater than 100 on the brand new Professional. Nonetheless, for many properties, the restrict of the mini is greater than sufficient.

The second distinction is within the radios. With the Homey Professional mini there’s assist for Thread, Zigbee and Matter; you don’t get Z-Wave, Bluetooth, 433MHz or IR assist. Once more, these are largely omissions that your common house received’t miss. 

If you happen to do need these protocols, you may add a Homey Bridge into the combination. Impressively, a Homey Professional mini and Homey Bridge are nonetheless cheaper than a Homey Professional.

From the skin, the Homey Professional mini appears to be like very similar to another sensible house hub. In contrast to the cylindrical Homey Professional, the mini is a sq. with rounded edges.

On the rear is the USB-C energy port, and an Ethernet port, which even the bigger Professional doesn’t have (though you may add Ethernet with the elective adaptor). The flip aspect is that the Professional has Wi-Fi built-in, whereas the mini doesn’t, so it’s wired or nothing.

For me, that’s not a problem. I choose to make use of Ethernet for my hubs, as I feel it makes them extra dependable, and I’ve bought a cabinet in my home that has an Ethernet swap in it, constructed for all of my sensible house gear.

Beneath, there are a few mounting anchors, so you may place the mini out of the best way on a wall.

Including the Homey Professional mini is simple by way of the app. As soon as detected and added, the Homey app walks you thru creating a house, full with the rooms you’ve bought.

If you happen to did need to run a Homey Professional mini and Homey Professional collectively, the HomeyLink app permits you to see all units below one interface, with a number of minor limitations on the sorts of automations which you can create.

Options and efficiency

I final reviewed Homey a few years in the past, and people years have been type to the platform. It was a bit restricted in system assist, however this has quickly improved. And, not like SmartThings, the adjustments have come with out dumbing the system down.

Matter assist has seen a giant enchancment, with direct management for a rising variety of units. For older units there’s nonetheless cloud-based management, with a rising variety of supported corporations. 

Total system compatibility is superb, whether or not via official integrations or neighborhood apps. For instance, beforehand, I might solely add particular person Ring Alarm sensors by way of Z-Wave; now, the official Ring integration contains cameras and doorbells, and due to the neighborhood’s Ring Safety app, I can join my Ring Base Station via the cloud. This lets me management my alarm via Homey or use it as an automation set off.

Matter assist simplifies including units like my Aqara Valve Controller T1; connecting by including the M200 hub was simple. My Tado X units additionally built-in simply with Homey.

Homey gives extra options than different platforms. In contrast to HomeKit, which generally gives solely primary triggers, Homey lets me use Tado X units to set automations for on/off, temperature, humidity, and scheduled circumstances. For instance, I can begin a Circulation (the platform’s title for an automation) if the temperature is above 18°C for 20 minutes.

With the ‘And’ choice, it’s potential to set off Flows based mostly on a number of inputs, creating extra granular management. For instance, with a Fiabaro movement sensor, I can flip my Hue lights on solely when movement is detected; the luminance degree is under a set degree; and it’s between dawn and sundown. That claims, flip the lights on if I’m round and it all of a sudden will get darkish in the course of the day.

There’s additionally the choice to do various things relying on the inputs. For instance, when my workplace door locks, I can shut the blinds and switch off the sensible plug; however, I may also flip the backyard lights on however provided that it’s after sundown, so I can see my method via the backyard again to the home.

All of this makes Homey exceptionally versatile and extra highly effective than another big-brand sensible house platform.