Homey Portal Smart Home Controller With Dial UI
Homey launches Homey Portal, a 2.8-inch round touchscreen smart home controller with a stainless steel dial, priced at $249 on preorder.
Stock photo for illustration only, not from the actual event
- Homey has introduced Homey Portal, featuring a 2.8-inch touchscreen and a stainless steel dial
- It supports over 70,000 devices from more than 2,000 brands, including Matter and Zigbee
- Preorders are open now at an introductory price of $249, before increasing to $299
Smart homes have increasingly made routine tasks complicated, where turning on a light can involve multiple steps compared to simply flipping a switch. To address this friction, Homey, the Dutch smart home platform owned by LG, has introduced a new hardware solution.
This week, the company launched the Homey Portal, a touchscreen smart home controller. Preorders opened on the launch day at an introductory price of $249 or 249 euros, with shipments scheduled to begin in December.
The device features a 2.8-inch round touchscreen paired with a stainless steel dial. It can be placed on a desk or mounted on a wall while powered via a USB-C cable. Users can tap icons to control devices such as lights, speakers, thermostats, and shades, and twist the dial to adjust brightness, volume, and temperature.
The combination of a touchscreen and a physical tactile dial addresses a common usability gap in modern smart homes, which have grown overly reliant on smartphones. Providing a dedicated physical controller ensures that household members can operate connected systems instantly without needing to unlock a phone or navigate complex apps.
A key capability of the Portal is its broad interoperability. Homey claims support for over 70,000 devices from more than 2,000 brands, alongside support for Matter, Zigbee, Z-Wave, and Thread protocols to help unify disparate ecosystem products.
Stock photo for illustration only, not from the actual event
Stefan Witkamp, CEO of Athom, Homey's parent company, noted that the device aims to restore simplicity to household automation by offering a direct physical interface rather than routing every interaction through software applications.
“We’ve always wanted a smart home to feel as simple as flipping a light switch, instead of doing everything through an app.”
Stefan Witkamp
The interface dynamically adapts to each selected action, such as displaying room lighting controls and color adjustments when tapping the light icon, followed by brightness tuning via the dial. It also features a weather forecast view, a built-in timer, customizable controls, and integration with Homey's Flow automation engine, including video prompts from smart doorbells.
The Portal does not function as a standalone hub and requires a connection to one of Homey's platform options, such as Homey Cloud or a Homey Pro hub. Following the initial promotional period, the retail price will increase to $299 or 299 euros per unit.
Source: The Verge
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