Yes apologies for over generalizing. I was typing too fast and should have said it would be challenging for anyone with typing difficulties or anyone not good with IT in general, not based on incorrect assumptions about age or other abilities.
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Lol, before you give it away, I forgot to mention one other huge reason why I didn’t get rid of Smartthings completely for Home Assisstant and why I would hold onto it (for now at least) - was the Alexa device control. On Home Assistant, you would have to subscribe to the home assistant cloud for $5 a month, or go down a very dark complex rabbit hole to set up Alexa device control, best explained by Dr. Zz’s here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmeIEEKmv58
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Check Santa’s naughty list, he might take you up on your offer if he runs out of lumps of coal and sticks.
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Gotcha. I was under the impression that Node Red integration with the Alexa palette (or whatever they call it) will give me this functionality, but I will hold on and hope for better days.
This one? https://flows.nodered.org/node/node-red-contrib-amazon-echo That seems way easier, but you have to setup nodes for each device then. The other HAASKA method is a pain but seems like it would add the device instantly like how Smartthings works .
I think there are several different ways to integrate Alexa with Home Assistant actually, there’s some hue bridge simulator too. All have ups and downs, but its definitely been a barrier for me to do a full switch over.
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I am considering adding Hubitat just for Echo Speaks. What is to keep Amazon from shutting it down on that platform too?
Amazon did not shut down Echo Speaks… Samsung did. Samsung saw Echo Speaks was the number one cloud computing resource consumer, and thus it was costing Samsung in terms of cloud computing costs/resources to run it. Thus, they decided to shut it down.
On Hubitat, Echo Speaks runs directly on the Hubitat Hub, not in any cloud.
Could Amazon decide to block excessive traffic? Sure, that’s possible…but its much less likely now that SmartThings users are no longer hammering on the Alexa servers.
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With ST, I used the LastSpokenTo attribute from my Echos with webcore. Does Echo Speaks on Hubitat make the LastSpokenTo attribute available?
I am not using EchoSpeaks on any platform currently. I do know that the EchoSpeaks codebase is the same between ST and Hubitat so I would guess that the LastSpokenTo attribute is available. You’d probably get better answers over in the Hubitat Community, in the EchoSpeaks thread.
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Yes.
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I agree, and it doesn’t seem like Echo Speaks is coming back to Smarthings based on what’s going on in that thread (unless Rboy somehow can work save it based on their post https://community.smartthings.com/t/not-working-echo-speaks-v3-actions/173073/1614). So the Echo Speaks on Hubitat and Media Player on Homassistant integrations are working, and like @ogiewon pointed out they run local so no need to worry about a block coming on their end. There appear to be some node red integrations too which might be an option, but still require some server/raspberry pi to run on. My one concern though is not Amazon blocking these things due to traffic, but Amazon actually making changes to their API where they could cause them to stop working in the future. In the Homeassistant Media Player Alexa integration, it actually says something like “this uses an unofficial API, that could be shut down at anytime”.
That’s a risk with any cloud integration though, like the Sling box being discontinued noted previously. You really don’t have control over that. On the plus side though, the developer documentation and support on Amazon is amazing, so even if that API was shutdown, I’m sure developers would quickly find a workaround using an Alexa skill or something else in AWS. The developer support on Smarthings on the other hand is a mess and the future is completely uncertain, so many developers are hesitant to even bother trying to update apps to work with Smartthings when they might have to completely redo them in the future.
So long story short, if you’re missing Echo Speaks and need that integration, it probably would be a good idea to look at alternatives now instead of waiting for the lite version.
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Well, I finally made the switch to Hubitat. Took around a month to replicate what I had in ST, and it’s not been without it’s problems. My only concern now is IFTTT’s reliability in switching my Hive heating on and off. But it’s been worth it after all. My internet went out for an hour is so the other evening and I didn’t even notice until I tried reading my emails. Hubitat is a very different environment and takes a bit of getting used to, so if you make the switch don’t imagine it’s gonna be plain sailing. But, as ever, YMMV!
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Curious if you used the built in RM or any WebCore?
I have all WebCore pistons so I “assume” it would go fairly quickly once the devices are migrated.
No. I’ve used just the built-in Apps for most of my automation, just a couple of custom Apps to control my central heating. I’ve used WCore on ST but it was a bit overkill for my uses. I tried RM but couldn’t get on with it. Just a bit too complicated for my little brain…
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In my case, the things I tried to do in my complicated webCoRE piston for motion controlled lighting was handled out of the box by the Motion Lighting App in Hubitat. My other piston ended up being easily done as a Simple Automation Rule. I’ve yet to deploy any real production RM rules.
I’ve still got 4 production pistons running in SmartThings because I haven’t moved those devices over year. When I do, I think half of them will easily go like the above. The last two might need RM (or I’ll consider installing webCoRE).
(as part of my kitchen remodel, I’ve deployed all new Z-Wave switches and these are all on HE. Thus, I’ve still got all my 80+ Zigbee devices on ST, and until I get around to building out that mesh they won’t mode to HE).
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An interesting video @JDRoberts. I might be missing the context though. So is the loss of echo speaks “the straw that broke the camels back” for many? If so, whats the “root cause” of all these smartthings issues lately? Its really not a good sign that it’s hard to buy a smartthings hub anymore. That happened to Wink in its last gasps.
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I think the point would be that this isn’t about the recent issues. This is about a delivery philosophy that goes back to before Samsung bought the company.
They have never been use case driven (the frozen pipe use case that one of the founders, the original CEO, used to describe as his impetus still can’t be done with the system today, although it can be done with some competitor systems). They have never publicly documented changes. They have rarely provided tutorials that were use case based.
They have provided a highly versatile platform with a lot of interesting features And an app that looks really good in screenshots, and that in turn has attracted A number of hobbyist developers who were willing to provide their own change logs and documentation. And that in turn has provided a lot of value to other hobbyist customers.
But companies that are use case driven have a very different kind of communication with their customers. They may be much less flexible (“these are the 17 things our system does, and that’s it“), but in general something that works on Monday still works on Tuesday.
So the context for that video is that the root cause isn’t any single individual change, it’s the process for making change that leads to these results.
IMHO , of course. 
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And if you really want sample the opposite of that, read the Custom Capability and CLI Developer Preview - #1027 by cscheiene thread every now and then. 
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For me a there are a handful of reasons why I’ve switched:
- Loss of Echo Speaks
- Forced to use new broken Alex integration. I’ve heard it has gotten better, but I’m using Hubitat’s instead now.
- Uncertainty of the future of the platform
3a. Groovy going away
3b. IDE going away
3c. Losing support for any apps and dth’s that aren’t updated
3d. Many of the community developers have already moved on to other platforms - Major stability issues
4a. Hub going offline out of nowhere while I still had internet
4b. Slow or lack of response of motion lighting
4c. HueBSmart just randomly stopped working for me one day (90% of my lights are Hue)
If it were just one thing, I would still be 100% on SmartThings, but the day my HueBSmart decided to stop working, I ordered a Hubitat hub. While I was waiting for my new hub, I was able to get HueBSmart to start working again, though I had already taken the leap. I am still using SmartThings for some things, but the majority of my devices and automations are on Hubitat now. I am using HubConnect to sync my SmartThings devices to Hubitat.
Hubitat isn’t perfect and isn’t for everyone. There is a learning curve and they do have some bugs to work out, but almost everything seems to be working much better for me over there. I am happy that I took the plunge, and I will be keeping a curios eye out on SmartThings to see if they actually fix the mess they made.
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