Homey has announced yet another new partnership, this time with energy specialist EcoFlow, marking another significant step in its bid to make your smart home more streamlined.
This latest integration follows a recent rapid expansion in Homey’s partner network, with brands like Tuya, Eve, and Govee joining the platform in recent months.
The growing line-up of partners makes it clear that the goal of Athom – creators of Homey – is to give its users a cohesive, feature-rich smart home environment, without the need to use one of the more well-known smart home platforms like Alexa, HomeKit or SmartThings.
And that commitment will be well received by the Athom community who may have had concerns on what exactly would happen to the Homey system following Athom’s recent acquisition by LG.
The acquisition saw LG take an 80% stake of Athom, with the next 20% due to change hands over the next three years.
At the time of the acquisition we were told that Athom would “continue to operate independently, maintaining its business operations and branding,” which is a similar approach to what Samsung took with SmartThings after snapping up the startup in 2014.
And while the long term goal is undoubtedly for LG go head to head with its Korean rival Samsung in the smart home, current Homey users will be delighted to see their ecosystems expanding during the meantime.
Like Samsung has with its SmartThings system and its array of multi-connectivity hubs, LG effectively now has an army of smart home hardware and software expertise to tap into.
LG plans to integrate Athom across its AI-enabled LG ThinQ platform, which already extends to ovens, fridges, washing machines, AV equipment and a whole lot more
The latest Athom hub, the Homey Pro, boasts Matter, Zigbee, Z-Wave, Wi-Fi, Thread, Bluetooth and even more and the Dutch brand has been making smart home hubs for a decade.
In recent years Samsung has started building SmartThings hubs into as many devices as it can, from TVs, to soundbars and fridges; and it would make sense for LG to copy that approach across is massive range of appliances and devices.
The partnership with EcoFlow will enable Homey users to integrate EcoFlow’s energy management solutions into their existing smart home setups, with users able to monitor and manage EcoFlow’s devices – such as the EcoFlow Delta Max 2 – all from within the Homey platform.
For example, users will be able to automate their lights to change color when their electric vehicle is fully charged or trigger appliances to run on surplus energy generated by EcoFlow solar panels.
The new EcoFlow App for Homey is compatible with Homey Cloud (Free and Premium) and Homey Pro, and is available now.
