Homey as a company is probably only familiar to those that have the desire to get all smart home devices to talk together regardless of platform, via their Homey Bridge, but the company’s newest hub may well get them a wider audience, with the Homey Pro, which boasts possibly the most impressive list of connection options in one unit you’re ever likely to see. However, probably the two most important ones won’t be coming until Q2 of 2023.
Homey is in many ways its own ecosystem, which allows devices from pretty much any manufacturer and platform to work together, although you can also integrate these devices into HomeKit via what the company refer to as ‘experiments’ as opposed to plugins. With Matter very much on the horizon, however, Homey has taken the plunge and gone all in on the smart home experience, with their new Homey Pro, with an impressive array of connectivity options;
WiFi – 2.4/5.0GHz b/g/n/ac
Bluetooth LE 5.0
RF433MHz
Z-Wave Plus (700 Series)
Zigbee 3.0
Infrared
Matter (coming Q2 2023)
Thread (coming Q2 2023)
As you can see, there are plenty of connection options, although Matter and Thread options are not coming until Q2 of 2023.
With all these connection options, you’d expect a wired connection, but with the size of the hub already quite small, the company have made do with an optional ethernet adaptor that would appear to also power the device via its USB-C port.
The company are, unsurprisingly, charging a relatively high price for the Homey Pro – US$399. For that, you’re reportedly getting the ability to connect to over 50K devices, including product compatible with Google, Amazon, HomeKit (via the Experiments plugin), and more, that use 433MHz or Z-Wave, as well as Thread enabled and Matter compliant products.
You can check out the new Homey Pro via the company’s website.