Cozify is a smart home hub from Finland that supports different radio standards and connects sensors from various manufacturers into one seamlessly working entity. Cozify can be controlled from anywhere in the world and even allows your guest to your smart home system with adjustable permissions.
Setting up the hub
All the functionalities of the hub have to be set up and controlled with the smartphone app, since there is no web UI available. The app has a simplistic design and is mostly intuitive to use. Setting up the hub only takes a few minutes and it automatically scans the environment to detect supported devices. In our case, the Sonos system and the Philips Hue light system were detected and added automatically. To add a Zigbee sensor, you have to press the pairing button on the sensor and put it near the hub in order to be discovered by the hub.
It is to mention that even though the hardware supports Wifi, Bluetooth, ZIgbee, Z-Wave and 433.92MHz ISM, only Zigbee and ISM are implemented in the firmware.
Creating rules
By selecting a combination of sensors, the app lists all possible rules, that can be further refined. This simplifies the process of creating a rule and furthermore frees the user from thinking of possible rules that can be set for a specific combination of sensor. Rules can be created either as standalone rules, that will apply anytime when turned on, or as bound to scene rules, that will only apply if the scene is active. An other way to create rules is to use the devices list and to drag and drop a sensor on top of an other.
Creating scenes
Scenes are used to actuate multiple devices at the same time but also to schedule devices and rules to turn on/off automatically. There are two kind of scenes, namely the home mode scenes (home, away), initialized by Cozify, and the favourite scenes, created by the user. Multiple scenes can be active at the same time.
Conclusion
The Cozify smart home hub is a good hub with an intelligent and powerful smartphone app. But it is just not complete yet. The app is sometimes laggy (on a Samsung Galaxy S6) and when creating rules using the devices list, it also proposes rules for sensors that have not been selected. The missing web UI is a drawback, because if you are working on your laptop you might not have your smartphone next to you. An other aspect is the current support of only Zigbee and ISM and hence the small number of supported sensor manufacturers. But since the hub is still in progression, the expectation is that soon Cozify will be one of the best consumer smart home hubs on the market.