Lifelong free online services after one purchase of a hardware device isn’t a sustainable business model - as witnessed by numerous companies pulling the plug on those kinds of things. Even with a surcharge on the device purchase, in the long run it’ll be a loss.
I’d rather pay a non-surcharged price for the device hardware, and then a reasonable subscription to keep the service alive.
Also I’m not buying any more hardware at all that doesn’t adhere to a common and open standard - so I can run them on my own local service in case the vendor(s) drop dead some day.
Yep, ive been doing my best to avoid buying anything which isnt matter compliant for a while, and migrating a good chunk of devices to matter versions. Whilst ive no immediate desire to jump ship having all my devices on matter gives me that option.
Honestly, I won’t pay 5€ per month just to have my washer send me a notification in Home Assistant when it is finished. Samsung, if you are considering closing your ecosystem instead of opening it and encouraging users to buy your smart products, that’s an epic marketing fail. Personally, I recently bought a Samsung washer because I knew that SmartThings integration with Home Assistant works and is reliable. Bad timing, I guess, but I’m not willing to spend another good amount on subscriptions with Samsung and other vendors that have decided to paywall their APIs. It’s an open community, we’re creative, and we’ll find other solutions.
It’s a bit sad because the Home Assistant integration has seen a lot of work lately that’s really improved it. But, oh well. My new refrigerator is likely to be an LG now.
Perhaps they are intending to do exactly that, in which case SmartThings probably needs to change.
What I was really trying to establish was whether SmartThings was bizarrely incapable of handling the desired control and automation of Samsung appliances natively, despite it’s own API exposing the required functionality, so requiring the use of HA or other third party platforms as something of a necessity. The alternative being that HA was simply being preferred for the job.
The difference colours how you interpret reactions.
Not exactly that, but for the Samsung The Frame TV, the SmartThings API does not support controlling the art mode, which is an essential function of this TV. On Home Assistant and Homebridge, there are integrations that use a local API which does support controlling art mode. The local API has other limitations, though, so the benefit of something like Home Assistant currently is being able to use both APIs together.
Unfortunately, to my knowledge there is no edge driver for SmartThings that allows similar local control of the TV.
And bizarrely, the SmartThings API seems to support the similar ambient mode of other Samsung TVs, but not the art mode of the Frame TV, one of their bestselling models.
There is no way that I’m paying $5/mo. to simply turn on/off my TV and change the inputs from my smart remote (especially if it goes through Samsung’s cloud, those commands should stay local to my network)! I won’t be able to be a Samsung customer if this breaks my automation and it sounds like it will.
SharpTools dashboards will continue to work without changes on your side.
There are still aspects of the SmartThings Commercial API program that haven’t been made public, so I can’t comment on those. Our (free) Rule Engine accounts for a much larger share of our SmartThings API usage, so that’s the area I’m still working through.
I’m really hoping the API subscription fee doesn’t affect SharpTools. I’ve been using the Rule Engine for years because the SmartThings fadeLevel duration has a 5 through 60 minute limitation. Never understood why the hours option is excluded.
It is a cloud feature and they send brightness updates to the light every minute, a compromise between cloud resources used and functionality.
The minimum is 5 so they have at least 5 intermediate steps, which is not that gradual but prevents users from saying “it just turned on and went suddenly from 1% to 100% without gradually changing”. The maximum is 60 probably to limit the execution time and simplify the logic.
This is a case where a external service sending more cloud updates over time or more frequently could justify the paid tiers or the pay per usage. A client constantly looping or polling uses more resources.
But the solution is not adding more cloud resources, it’s adding more local features! Zigbee and Matter lights have native smooth fades, from 100 milliseconds up to 109 minutes, they run in the light so once started you can even disconnect the hub and they keep fading by themselves in the smoothest way they can. I use the feature for wake-up and wind-down routines, completely local, but you’ll need either the Rules API or custom drivers if you also want to change colours at the same time.
Always appreciate a dev’s insight, thanks for the explanation.
I had created those SharpTools rules long before SmartThings even had a fadeLevel feature. When I saw this subscription fee announcement, I thought it would be a good idea to transfer those rules to SmartThings so I could avoid the possibility of having to pay. While trying to recreate them, I realized the SmartThings’ duration limitation. The routines can be recreated with multiple 60 minute / delay / 60 minute steps but I’ll wait and see what happens in October. As it is now, I ̶k̶n̶o̶w̶ assume I’ll have to delete the routines that I’ve already created in Rules API so I won’t be charged. If there isn’t a free tier offered, or some sort of local API, then I will just finish the migration to Home Assistant and put the SmartThings hub back in the box.
We are completely starved of any proper detail on this which is causing endless speculation and angst.
Some sort of scoping statement would really clarify what’s chargeable and what’s not. I would have thought api rules created using smartthings awa would be exempt but we don’t know yet.
But what about
Voice assistants
Bixby, siri, google, alexa etc
Both for instant voice control but also 3rd party automations within (eg alexa routines) .
What about things like samsung phone modes and routines ?
Sharp tools may be ok but HA won’t be, is that correct? Is that because HA is more a competing platform than a companion?
Smarthings cli tool is exempt presumably but that’s assumption again.
Absolutely. I can only make some sense of it if the free tier means access via the SmartThings app and an individual developer subscription is for absolutely anything else.
That would only work if the app gained the ability to dump hub logs and authorise account access.
