Think of a smart home hub like the conductor of your home's tech orchestra. Without one, you've just got a bunch of talented musicians playing their own tunes. A dedicated hub like Homey gets everyone playing from the same sheet music, creating a seamless symphony of automation. It centralises control over all your smart gadgets, so you can stop juggling dozens of apps and start creating a truly intelligent home.
Unifying Your Smart Home Devices with Homey
Here’s a situation most people with smart gadgets know all too well: your smart lights are Philips Hue, your thermostat is a Tado, and your door sensor is from some other brand you found online. Each one has its own app and operates in its own little world. They're smart on their own, but they don’t actually work together.
This is exactly the problem Homey was designed to solve. As a smart home hub, it acts as the central brain, translating all the different communication languages—or protocols—that your devices use. It’s the bridge that connects different brands and technologies, making them work as a single team.
The Role of a Central Conductor
A hub like Homey is essentially a multilingual interpreter for your gadgets. It’s fluent in all the different protocols, which allows it to talk to a massive range of devices from countless manufacturers. These languages include:
- Zigbee: A popular, low-power mesh network that's perfect for things like light bulbs and sensors.
- Z-Wave: Another reliable mesh network, often found in security devices and smart locks.
- Wi-Fi: The go-to for high-bandwidth devices like security cameras and smart speakers.
- Infrared (IR): The same technology in your old TV remote, which is brilliant for controlling air conditioners and older audio systems.
By bringing all these technologies under one roof, Homey unlocks what your smart home is truly capable of. This isn't just a niche idea; the market shows a huge appetite for it. The Netherlands smart home market alone was valued at USD 1.25 billion in 2023 and is expected to rocket to USD 5.10 billion by 2030.
Why Separate Apps Fall Short
Without a Homey hub, your phone is a graveyard of single-purpose apps, each one controlling just one device or brand. This makes for a clunky, disjointed experience. Want your front door sensor from one company to trigger the living room light from another? Good luck. It's often impossible.
A dedicated hub like Homey transforms a collection of individual smart products into a single, cohesive ecosystem. It’s the difference between having a dozen remote controls and having a home that intelligently responds to your needs.
To really get why this matters, it helps to start by understanding smart home benefits. This kind of centralisation isn't just about making things more convenient; it's about enabling powerful automations that genuinely simplify your day-to-day life.
How Homey Unites Your Entire Smart Home
So, how exactly does a Homey hub get a Z-Wave motion sensor from one brand to trigger a Wi-Fi lightbulb from a completely different company? It’s all down to Homey’s role as the ultimate universal translator for your home.
Think of every smart home protocol—like Zigbee, Z-Wave, or Wi-Fi—as a distinct language. Without a translator, your Zigbee devices have no clue what your Wi-Fi gadgets are saying. Homey steps in as the multi-lingual expert, fluent in all of them, enabling every device to communicate effortlessly.
This is what truly breaks down the "walled gardens" that manufacturers love to build. You're no longer trapped in a single brand's ecosystem. You’re free to pick and choose the very best device for the job, whether that's a sensor, a lightbulb, or a thermostat, without worrying about who made it.
The Six Pillars of Homey Connectivity
Homey’s real strength is its built-in support for six different wireless technologies. This isn't just about ticking boxes; it's a practical approach that guarantees you can connect almost any smart device you can think of, all through one central point.
Here's a quick look at what each protocol brings to the table:
- Zigbee & Z-Wave: These are the workhorses of the smart home. They create low-power mesh networks—think of them as dedicated, congestion-free motorways just for your small devices like sensors and switches. This keeps them responsive and reliable.
- Wi-Fi & Bluetooth: You already use these every day. Wi-Fi is essential for high-bandwidth devices like smart cameras and speakers. Bluetooth is perfect for direct connections to nearby gadgets and can even be used for sophisticated presence tracking, which you can learn about in our guide on setting up room presence with ESPresence and Homey.
- Infrared (IR): This is the same classic technology your old TV remote uses. Homey can blast out IR signals to control devices that aren't "smart" at all, like your television, sound system, or air conditioner.
- 433MHz: A simple and effective one-way radio frequency. It’s commonly used by a whole range of affordable devices, from remote-controlled plug sockets to weather sensors.
Homey's unique ability to manage all these protocols simultaneously is what turns a collection of disparate gadgets into a truly interconnected and intelligent ecosystem. It’s the central nervous system of your smart home.
This push for smarter, more connected homes is a massive trend. The European smart home market was valued at around USD 24.74 billion in 2025 and is expected to climb to USD 32.67 billion by 2030. A huge part of this growth comes from people using smart home tech to boost energy efficiency and cut down on bills—something a hub like Homey is perfectly designed to do. You can find more details on the European smart home market on marketsandmarkets.com.
Building Powerful Automations with Homey Flow
This is where your smart home hub truly starts to shine. Once all your gadgets are connected, Homey Flow is the creative workshop where you bring them together. It’s what lets you build automated routines that make your home react to you, without you having to write a single line of code.
The whole system is built around a brilliantly simple idea: When... And... Then.... This straightforward logic is the key, letting anyone—from total beginner to seasoned pro—craft intricate automations that fit their life perfectly. You just pick a trigger (When), add any qualifiers you need (And), and then tell Homey what to do (Then).
This image shows the initial setup, which is the groundwork you lay before you can dive into building these automations.
Think of this as the hardware phase: unboxing the hub, connecting it, and adding your devices. Once that's done, you're ready for the software magic with Flows.
Your First 'Good Morning' Flow
Let's walk through a classic example to see this in action. A simple 'Good Morning' Flow can ease you into the day instead of jolting you awake.
A basic version might look like this:
- When... It’s 7:00 AM on a weekday.
- And... Your phone is in the bedroom.
- Then... Slowly fade the bedroom lights on to 50% over 10 minutes.
Just like that, your mornings are already a little bit better. But the real fun begins when you start layering more actions and conditions to build truly intelligent scenes. You could add another "Then" step to play your favourite morning playlist on your Sonos, or even get your smart coffee machine to start brewing.
Creating a 'Movie Night' Scene
Now for something a bit more ambitious. What if you could create the perfect cinema atmosphere with a single voice command? A 'Movie Night' Flow is a fantastic way to see how Homey can command an orchestra of different devices from totally different brands, all at once.
Here’s how you could build it:
- When... You say, "Hey Homey, start Movie Night."
- And... It's after 7:00 PM.
- Then... Dim the living room lights to a cosy 10%.
- Then... Fully close the smart blinds.
- Then... Power on the TV and the sound system.
With Homey Flow, you stop being a remote control for individual devices and start becoming the director of experiences. It’s about making your home’s technology work around your life, not the other way around.
You can apply this same logic to almost any routine. A "Goodbye" Flow could turn off every light, set back the thermostat, and arm the alarm system with one tap as you head out. Automating your heating is a brilliant way to save on energy bills. If you're interested in fine-tuning your system, you can learn more from our guide on using a thermostatic valve on underfloor heating.
Ultimately, these Flows are about turning those repetitive, daily chores into seamless background operations, freeing you up to focus on more important things.
The Importance of Local Control for Your Homey Hub
So, what happens to your smart home when the internet decides to take an unscheduled break? For a surprising number of gadgets, the answer is frustratingly simple: they stop working. This is the Achilles' heel of any cloud-dependent device. They need to phone home to a server thousands of miles away just to turn on a light, turning your smart home into a museum of dumb plastic the moment your Wi-Fi drops.
This is precisely where a locally controlled system changes the entire game. It's a core principle behind powerful smart home hubs like Homey.
Think of it this way: a cloud-based system is like ordering takeout for every meal. It's convenient, sure, but if the delivery service shuts down, you're going hungry. A local hub like Homey is like having a professional chef living in your kitchen. They can whip up anything you want using the ingredients you already have, no outside help needed.
Homey is that local chef for your home. It runs your core automations right there on the device itself, making sure your essential routines work flawlessly, even when your internet connection doesn't.
Speed, Privacy, and Unbreakable Reliability
The benefits of keeping things local go way beyond just surviving an internet outage. It has a massive, tangible impact on how your smart home actually feels to use every day.
- Instant Speed: When you tap a button on your phone to turn on a light, you expect it to happen now. Cloud systems add a delay—your command has to travel to a server, get processed, and then travel all the way back. With local control, the signal zips a few metres across your living room. The result? No lag, just instant response.
- Rock-Solid Privacy: Every time your data leaves your home, it's a potential privacy risk. Are you comfortable with a third-party company knowing when you turn your lights on and off? Local processing keeps all that sensitive activity and personal data safely inside your own four walls. You own your data, period.
- Unwavering Reliability: Some things just have to work. Your security cameras, your automated door locks, the motion sensor that turns on the hallway light at 2 AM—these are not optional. Local control ensures these critical systems will function 24/7, no matter what’s happening with your internet provider.
This growing desire for more secure and reliable smart homes is fuelling huge market growth. In fact, the Netherlands smart home market alone is projected to skyrocket from around USD 95.5 billion in 2025 to over USD 300 billion by 2032. You can dive deeper into these Netherlands smart home market trends and challenges at prsync.com.
By putting local processing first, Homey makes sure your smart home isn't just clever—it's also resilient, private, and genuinely dependable. It’s the kind of foundational feature that gives you real peace of mind.
Visualising Your Homey Hub With HDashboards
Think of your Homey hub as the powerful engine running everything behind the scenes in your smart home. If that’s the case, then HDashboards is the beautifully crafted, custom-built control panel. It’s the visual layer that turns all that complex automation into simple, intuitive controls for anyone in the house to use.
While Homey is busy managing device communications and running your automated Flows, HDashboards delivers the front-end experience. It lets you build stunning, interactive dashboards that you can pull up on a wall-mounted tablet, your phone, or any computer with a web browser. This is what takes your system from something you just configure to something you truly live with.
Picture a sleek tablet mounted in your kitchen. With a single glance, you can see the weather forecast, check the feed from your security cameras, tweak the thermostat in the living room, and tap a single button to launch your 'Dinner Time' scene. That's the real magic of a dedicated visual interface.
Building Your Perfect Command Centre
The secret to a genuinely useful dashboard is personalisation. Not everyone in the house needs access to the same controls or information. HDashboards is designed for this, letting you create multiple, purpose-built interfaces for specific rooms, different users, or certain situations.
You can craft entirely different visual experiences for whatever you need.
- A Family Hub: Put a main dashboard in a high-traffic spot like the kitchen. It could show a shared family calendar, simple lighting controls, and one-tap buttons for scenes like 'Movie Night' or 'Goodbye'.
- A Guest Interface: Set up a stripped-back, simplified dashboard for the guest room. This gives visitors easy control over their room's lights, temperature, and blinds without needing to download an app or learn your entire system.
- A Personal Remote: Design a compact dashboard just for your smartphone with your most-used controls. This gives you lightning-fast access to arm the security system or check if you left the garage door open when you're away.
This level of customisation is what transforms a functional smart home into a truly accessible one. If you want a deep dive into the specifics, our article comparing Homey Dashboards vs HDashboards breaks down exactly how they work together.
HDashboards bridges the gap between the raw technical power of your smart home hub and the practical, everyday use of that power. It makes your smart home feel less like a hobbyist's project and more like a natural extension of your home.
From Data to Actionable Insights
A well-designed dashboard does more than just give you buttons to press; it presents information you can understand in an instant. By adding sensor data and other live feeds to your interface, you get a quick, visual overview of your home's status.
The table below breaks down the roles of Homey and HDashboards, continuing our engine and control panel analogy. It shows how the two work in tandem to create a complete smart home experience.
Homey Hub Control vs HDashboards Visualisation
| Feature | Homey Hub (The Engine) | HDashboards (The Control Panel) |
|---|---|---|
| Automation | Executes complex 'When...Then...' Flows quietly in the background based on triggers. | Provides one-touch buttons to manually kick off your favourite and most-used Flows. |
| Device Control | Manages the communication protocols (Zigbee, Z-Wave, etc.) for every connected device. | Offers beautiful, intuitive sliders and toggles to directly control individual lights or blinds. |
| Information | Collects raw data from sensors like temperature, motion, and energy usage. | Displays this data visually through real-time graphs, icons, and clear status indicators. |
| Accessibility | Primarily configured and managed through the dedicated Homey mobile or web app. | Accessible on any device with a web browser, making it perfect for wall-mounted tablets. |
Ultimately, with HDashboards, you aren’t just building a remote control. You’re designing a window into the heart of your home, making your smart hub and all its connected devices truly visible and effortless to manage.
Common Questions About Homey Hubs
Even after you've got your head around what a smart home hub is supposed to do, a few practical questions always pop up. Let's tackle some of the most common ones we hear from people just getting started with Homey and home automation.
Do I Really Need a Hub if My Devices Already Have Their Own Apps?
This is probably the number one question people ask. It's true, almost every smart device comes with its own app, but relying on them alone creates a messy and disjointed smart home. You'll find yourself constantly switching between different apps just to turn on a light or check a sensor.
A Homey hub cleans all that up. It acts as a universal translator, bringing all your gadgets together into one seamless system. It doesn't care if your thermostat speaks Wi-Fi and your motion sensor uses Zigbee; Homey gets them talking to each other. Suddenly, a sensor from one brand can trigger a smart plug from a completely different company. That’s when your collection of devices starts feeling like a truly smart home.
Is Homey Too Complicated for a Beginner?
Not at all. The team behind Homey put a lot of thought into making it approachable, even if you’ve never touched a smart device before. The setup process is handled through a simple mobile app that holds your hand every step of the way, from connecting to your Wi-Fi to adding your first few devices.
When you're ready to create automations, you'll use Homey Flow, which is built on a simple 'When... And... Then...' logic. It's more like snapping together building blocks than writing code. This visual, drag-and-drop style makes it easy for anyone to build powerful routines that make life a little easier.
A hub like Homey fundamentally changes how you live in your home. Instead of constantly telling your devices what to do, you set up 'Flows' that run automatically in the background. Your home just starts taking care of things for you.
What’s the Point of HDashboards if I Already Have Homey?
Think of it this way: Homey is the powerful engine running everything behind the scenes, while HDashboards is the beautiful, custom-built driver's seat. The official Homey app is fantastic for setting things up, but HDashboards is all about creating a personalised control panel for day-to-day use.
You can design sleek dashboards for a wall-mounted tablet or just to use in your browser, giving everyone in the house an incredibly simple way to see what's going on. Create a 'Living Room' dashboard with just your media controls, or a 'Good Morning' panel that shows the weather and starts the coffee machine with one tap. It takes the Homey experience from just functional to truly elegant.
Will My Homey Still Work if the Internet Goes Out?
Yes, and this is a massive deal. Homey was designed with local control as a top priority. This means that for super-reliable technologies like Zigbee and Z-Wave, all the communication and automation logic happens right there on the hub itself—not on some distant server.
So, if your internet connection drops, your core automations keep running just fine. The motion sensor in the hallway will still trigger the lights, your security alerts will still work, and your timed schedules won't miss a beat. This local-first approach makes your smart home far more reliable and private, ensuring it’s there for you when it matters most.
Ready to create a beautiful and intuitive control panel for your Homey smart home hub? HDashboards gives you the tools to design stunning, custom interfaces that bring your automations to life. Try it for free today and see how easy it is to build the perfect command centre for your home.
Learn more and start your free trial at https://hdashboards.app.
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