I’m excited to report that I managed to get my first few flows live in Homey. I connected the Aqara T1 LED bulb to both Alexa and Homey and have a couple of flows running using that device.
I also got the Aqara water leak sensor connected to Homey and am totally thrilled with it so far. It’s literally perfect for my use case.
But it’s not all perfect. I noticed that I’m missing out on some features and functionality with the Aqara light bulb in combination with the Homey Pro hub compared to if I had an Aqara hub instead.
It makes me wonder if I should have just bought an Aqara hub instead of the Homey Pro, but more on that a little later…
My first Homey flows
The first flows that I set up are pretty basic, but you have to start somewhere, right?
This is what I started with:
Water leak battery monitoring
Dining table light battery monitoring
Kitchen water leak detected
The first two are really simple. If the battery percentage in either device gets down to 10%, I get a push notification and a notification inside the Homey app reminding me to go and change the battery. Easy peasy.
As you can see, I’ve also added a dining table vibration sensor flow too.
The last one is actually helping to solve a real problem we have in my home. If a water leak is detected on the bench beside the kitchen sink, this is what happens:
The dining table light turns ON
The Sonos Arc soundbar says “Kitchen water leak detected” at 40% volume
I get a push notification
I get a persistent notification inside the Homey app
I’d say it’s pretty good for covering most scenarios where either my wife or myself might have forgotten that the water filter is running and alerting us to the fact. Of course, there are probably scenarios where I still might not know about it right away, but it gives me peace of mind and it’s certainly better than what we had before, which was nothing!
Definitely worth the money for the water sensor in my opinion.
This flow works like a charm.
I’m buying more Aqara devices
I’m so impressed with the Aqara light bulb and the water sensor that I’m hankering to do more. I’ve already bought an Aqara vibration sensor (more on that coming next post) and I also ordered three more T1 LED light bulbs and a motion sensor for the lift lobby area outside our front door.
I’ll keep you posted on how that goes once I get everything connected and set up a flow or two.
Why can’t I control the “warmth” on the Aqara T1 light bulb?
This question bothers me.
Seriously, do I just not get it, or is this a short-sighted business decision on the part of Aqara? Don’t get me wrong, so far I love their products, but why on Earth can’t I enjoy the full feature set unless I have an Aqara hub?
That makes no sense to me. I mean, surely they could expose the full functionality to third-party ecosystems like Homey if they wanted to, right?
One theory I have is that Aqara wants people to buy their hubs instead of third-party hubs. If that’s really what’s happening, I think that’s short-sighted. I bet you if Aqara allowed third-party systems to have access to the full feature set of their products the uplift in sales on their full range of products would more than make up for some nominal loss in revenue from selling fewer hubs.
But hey, maybe I’m way off the mark…
Next time, I’ll let you know what happened when I attached my new vibration sensor to my living room table in hopes that I would be able to turn the entire table into a “light switch”.
Spoiler, it didn’t really work the way that I hoped that it might!
Until next time, have a good one.
Learn more about Automated Home here.
Check out the Homey Pro for yourself:
https://amzn.to/3MaktQf (Amazon affiliate link)
Aqara T1 water leak detector:
https://amzn.to/4cVp5EP (Amazon affiliate link)
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