I know there are many threads on the discontinuation of the v1 hub and the move to Aeotec Smart Home Hub but I am wondering what this means going forward.
As a v1 owner with dozens of devices that has yet to migrate (yes I know I have only 15 days!), I was disappointed to learn Aeotec will be taking over the hardware. I have had many of their z-wave devices over the years and I am not fond of them. While they have a great form factor and look pretty, I have found them to be unreliable and very expensive.
What happens if Aeotec decides to get out of the hub business? How long will Samsung continue to provide firmware updates?
Maybe this is a good time for me to jump ship that competitor (hintā¦ rhymes with cat). I have had nothing but problems since moving to the new app last summer. Most recently, SmartThings Home Monitor disappeared from my app. I assumed it had been moved somewhere hard to find like many components and didnāt have a chance to look into it. But after I successfully ran my disarm scene the other night, my alarm fired when I came home at 11:30 waking up my kids. (A reinstall of the app did fix this). Plus, why does it take a least a full 2 seconds to refresh the status of my devices and why does it frequently show them offline briefly? I digressā¦
Side noteā¦ while I knew this was coming, I never received an email reminder (and discount code for that matter) and only briefly saw a notice in the app a few days ago. Thanks Samsung!
Although most people donāt read the fine print, it is in the terms of service for smartthings (and has always been, at least since 2014 when I got my first hub) that they can discontinue anything at any time, or make any changes that might cause current working devices to stop working.
So thatās what everyone agreed to when they first signed up for their smartthings account.
Will SmartThings ever change the Services?
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Weāre always trying to improve the Services, so they may change over time. We may suspend or discontinue any part of the Services, or we may introduce new features or impose limits on certain features or restrict access to parts or all of the Services. In some cases, the changes we make to the Services may cause older hardware devices, third party services, software configurations or setups to no longer work with the Services, and you may be required to upgrade or change these devices, services, configurations or setups in order to continue using the Services. Weāll try to give you notice when we make a material change to the Services that would adversely affect you, but this isnāt always practical. Similarly, we reserve the right to remove any Content (including any SmartApps or device or external service connections provided by SmartThings or by third parties) from the Services at any time, for any reason (including, but not limited to, if someone alleges you contributed that Content in violation of these Terms), in our sole discretion, and without notice.
Thatās a pretty typical clause for US companies, and similar ones have held up in court a number of times. If you want guaranteed service for a specific period of time, you have to look for that clause in the terms when you buy the product.
So far, the aeotec versions of the devices including the hub look to just be rebadged versions of the smartthings brand, I think they are even using the same OEMs, so it should be the same level of engineering.
But as far as what will happen in the future, thereās just no telling.
I just joined the family and purchased the Aeotec (V3?) hub about a month ago, and installed it. It seems to be working fine - and Iāve only used STSC version of the app(s).
Coming from a Homeseer (want to talk about expensive?!) setup many years ago, the newer generations of hardware are much more welcomed here!
The thing that I really missed about the HomeSeer system was the granular control and abundance of āIF/THEN/ELSEā features that HomeSeer afforded the user. The very limited functionality of the boxed app drove me to start digging into the platform, and, of course, found webCoRE and this community. While I understand that things continue to change, I am looking forward to opening up functionality with webCoRE and custom pistons - as well as leveraging work that many have already done in the repositoriesā¦
Pick your poisonā¦ I put all my automation ātoysā into mothballs about a decade ago, and opening the interest again, here, 10 years later - I am astounded that there hasnāt been more options, development or interoperability today with the techā¦ I expected things in this realm to have made much more progress than what Iām finding currentlyā¦
The announcement that āsome hubsā would have support discontinued last year was a wake up call for me. If I had to buy a new hub, I as going to make sure to buy into a home automation platform that would continue to work even if support was removed (firmware updates, cloud processing, etc). There are lots of options in this space, including the one that ārhymes with catā, which is what handles almost everything for my house these days.
Thanks for the comments folks. I used to work for a software company. There is always the threat that the company gets bought out and the new company discontinues the software, so I know how this goes. (And thatās what happened to my company!)
Thereās just something that doesnāt sit right with me here. Samsung is a hardware company. Why choose to outsource this particular device?
Honestly, probably just not enough profit. It tends to require a lot of customer service, you donāt make much money on it to begin with, and Iāve always felt they were more interested in the buzz and the name, both of which they now have.
Samsung is a huge multinational conglomerate and have offered cloud services of many different kinds before. There was the whole artik project, although itās since been discontinued, but itās worth looking at the history. Thatās clearly been their hope for smartthings for a long time.
They couldnāt get enough device manufacturers to buy into the hardware side of the Artik platform, but if they use the same kind of communication structure for matter, it could work well for them.
Samsung donāt make all their own stuff. Samjin, who have been making the V3 hub for a long while, supply a lot of their TV remotes for example and I think power supplies too.
It may be that contracting out manufacture was the issue, but it seems the ST hardware business was loss making and also they had shelves full of the stuff because no one wanted it. Yet once there was an interruption to supply the stuff was going on eBay for silly prices. So it probably made sense to let third party businesses who specialise in the field see if they can make it work better. It probably makes the platform more attractive too if there isnāt competition from ST branded devices.
Yes, but the customer service is on the software side, not the hardware side.
Donāt forget that they are in the process of discontinuing huge parts of the Samsung Cloud service (for files and photos) this month, moving customers over into Microsoft OneDrive.
With a huge multinational company, decisions on what services live and die are far disconnected from the their own developers, and often have nothing to do with how much it catches on with users.
