Greeting from Australia, I’m looking for a way to connect Ikea bulbs and other Zigbee devices to my (637L Family Hub™ French Door Smart Refrigerator with Internal Beverage Centre™ - SRF9300BFH) without SmartThings Hub. After researching, I found this page (Use the SmartThings Hub Dongle on Family Hub 7.0) for the US models saying that it can be achieved by plugging SmartThings Dongle to the USB port on the side door.
However, the Dongle selling in AU doesn’t mention it can work with Family Hub, but with TV for sure. (SmartThings Dongle (Black) VG-STDB10A/XY| Samsung AU). I also found that there is no SmartThings Hub under the Connections in Setting. My question is, will SmartThings Hub show up in the Connections only if I plug the dongle in? Or is this function only available in US models? I also found that the dongle Samsung sells in AU (VG-STDB10A/XY) is slightly different than the one in the US (VG-STDB10A /VG-STDB10A/ZA). Please advise.
Hi @Richard_Li
To be honest, I would advise you to buy a SmartThings Hub. Especially if you plan more automation in the future. You may be able to pick up a cheap second hand V2 hub on eBay or similar.
That is how I started with SmartThings.
I had approx. 10 Tradfri bulbs and a V1 Ikea hub.I bought a cheap SmartThings V2 hub from eBay as an experiment (£13/AU$25) and went from there. Best money I ever spent.
Oh, avoid Vodafone branded hubs; they are tied to Vodafone.
Cheers, Aidan
IMO recommendations should point to used V3 or Aeotec hubs at this point. They have thread radios and less of a hassle to register. Plus the V2 is 8 years old. Just my opinion. V2 is fine if that is what anyone wants.
this is about the age when they started looking at retiring the v1. I have no indication they will yet but at this point 8 years is a dinosaur from a support perspective. I wouldn’t deploy a new v2 at this point either.
When I switched, II E-wasted my v2. It wasn’t worth the hassle to sell it.
I understand that there are many reasons to buy a V3 hub instead of a V2; the primary ones being WiFi if you do not have a convenient ethernet connection and thread radio(s).
However, Is there a reason to buy V3 and not V2 - #2 by MinerJason points out that the V2 hub has double the memory of the V3 and double the cpu speed.
The battery backup of the V2 is a bit of a moot point; if you don’t have power, what are you controlling?
For now I am happy with my cheap V2 (I even bought a spare). If support is dropped, I will move.
No argument.
The original poster was asking about a dongle to enable hub functionality (integrate Ikea Zigbee devices) and I was recommending actually buying a Smartthings hub.
I am not sure what impact Edge has had on hub memory usage but having more memory and a faster cpu is hardly a bad thing even if it is not a good reason to buy a V2 hub at the current time.
I hate throwing out perfectly good kit and will be sticking with my V2 hub for the moment.
i’m about 90% sure this means adding a Dongle will do nothing. When I setup my M7 monitor as a ST hub, the menu setting was there even without the Dongle. Adding the Dongle added Zigbee and Thread device support to the hub functionality.
If its available in Australia, you might look into the SmartThings Station. It has similar support for Zigbee, Thread and Matter around $80USD.
Many thanks. It seems that the Family Hub in AU still stay in Tizen 6.0. I was hoping that the recent update last month will upgrade the system to 7.0. Not sure why Samsung didn’t upgrade their OS globally like android or iOS do.
How’d you find you that your smart fridge couldn’t update its version of family hub beyond version 6?
I can’t find any info regarding what versions support what fridges, and we have literally just bought a RS6HA8880S9/EU on the expectation that it had Smarthub built in.
Do you know if our fridge would recieve upgrade if in the US?
The fridge should update itself. Version 7 was released a while ago, but my last update (in August) still stayed in 6 not 7. I’m in Australia, I guess the US should be available for version 7.
The last update for my U.S. fridge was to a Tizen 6.0 version dated 07/05/2023. My fridge is a 2018 model so perhaps newer model years will get Tizen 7.0.
I have the Zigbee/Thread dongle and have both Matter over Thread and Matter over Wi-Fi devices controlled by the ST hub in the Family Hub. The ST hub is on firmware 47.11.
Do you mean you have the ST Hub enabled for the Family Hub of your refrigerator? If so, you only need the dongle if you want to connect Zigbee or Matter over Thread devices via the fridge ST Hub.
Saw this as I’m having a few problems with the SmartThings App on my refridgerator (which I’ll write a seperate post about later), but saw you posted the firmware version of your 2018 fridge to be version tizen 6.0 with a build date of July 5th, 2023. My fridge is a 2020 model with the same tizen version 6.0 with a build date of July 5th, 2023 as well. But to my surprise the dongle was only supposed to work in Family Hub version 7 and beyond, which I remember updating too, but it still said it was Tizen version 6.0 not 7.0.
I have come to find out either Tizen 6.0 build date July 5th, 2023 is actually Family Hub 8 and the Tizen version is either bugged saying Tizen 6.0 instead of Tizen 8.0 or this exact build of Tizen 6.0 is truly Family Hub version 8 and the versions are actually 2 different things. Anyway, I saw on a news article that all Family Hubs that started with version 2.0 were to be updated to 8 and not only this I have the features that were labeled as added within versions 7 and 8 even though it says I have Tizen version 6.0. I have the Samsung SmartThings Hub with the Dongle added to my account from version 7 and the Amazon Essentials and Google Photos from Version 8.
Not only this when I go into my Samsung Account on my phone it says I’m signed into “FamilyHub8”. See attached photos.
I believe Family Hub is an application that runs on top of the fridge OS which is Tizen. I think they have independent version numbers.
My 2018 fridge is running Tizen 6.0 and my Samsung profile says I’m signed into FamilyHub7.0 and the fridge itself as [Refrigerator]Samsung (which has been logged on for coming up on 6 years). There is also the independent ST software hub which is currently at 52.11.
