No, I already have a full time job Iāve worked on large systems like this before, I know what goes into them, and Iām reasonably sure about the kind of work it would take to replicate even a bit of what SmartThings is doing - locally or on a private VPS. So sure, letās make an open source version, Iāll help - whatās the git repo?
I started this whole HA adventure with the Belkin Wemo products and two years on their āsupportā forums until finally I leaped into ST. That experience has possibly made me much more tolerant of ST shortcomings. When you think an app and its support canāt possibly get any worst try Belkin Wemo.
Iāll second that also. GitHub repo information please? I love following projects.
Arenāt there a few reputable and popular open source HA projects out there already?
Are they so far off track that youāre tempted to start another one?
Relative to ST, yeah. The open source projects currently out there are much lower level or not flexible, and surely not at all āvps hostableā as they all assume running locally to the zwave devices.
This was more a thought experiment. I personally would rather stick with ST, and let someone else deal with the hard bits
Thereās some great stuff out there, but zigbee and zwave, not so much. (Or, yes, and, no.)
Homeseer is worth looking at if you want to do heavy coding, but much more expensive than ST by the time you get all the bits.
Thatās rather the point of most of such projects: reject cloud and off-site risk.
I could add a few more, in no particular order:
https://www.domotiga.nl/projects/domotiga/wiki/Home
http://www.agocontrol.com/
http://opennethome.org/
http://fhem.de/fhem.html
Pick any. Theyāre all open source.
Oh, I thought you were working on one. You want me to do all the work and hand it to you on a silver platter?
Gosh, no! better stick with āthought experimentsā
Which one is āclosestā to the ideal version of āSmartThingsā?
[quote=āgeko, post:52, topic:18618ā]
thought experiments
[/quote]Better spelling on your second attempt
Seriously, though, if any of the endless open source thin veneers over the raw low level protocols were more accessible than the model ST provides over zwave / zigbee / anything else you can wire up, then weād all be there. They arenāt now, and theyāre gonna need a fair bit of work to get to where ST is now.
Which is kinda the point.
After hundreds of dollars on sensors, extenders, plugs, doorknobs, and light bulbs, and countless emails back and forth with support, I have come to the conclusion that Smartthings is nothing but a novelty item. Nothing has ever worked as advertised and there is constantly something wrong with one or more of the items connected to the hub. Using a phone as a presence sensor is completely unreliable, which makes the security functions available totally useless. To think that this will provide some sort of security for your home and family is dangerous and a total fantasy.
At this point, all of the above mentioned items now reside in a shoebox in the basement. There are no more weekends moving hubs and range extenders from here to there. I use the actual switches in the wall to turn on lights, which is much faster than taking my phone out of my pocket and watching the Smartthings app load for 30 seconds. Or, as another advertised option, waiting for the motion sensors to pick up motion and turn on the lights, witch never happens when you want it too. As far as security, wellā¦ I bought a really good flashlight and a dog. The dog hangs out downstairs and does not need to be reset or moved around every weekend, and he loves to hang with me.
I work in the cyber security field, and have many connections in academia. Rest assured that I will be spreading the word that what this company sells is really nothing more than a toy.
The point is that dog food is much cheaper than sensors and flicking the switch in the wall always works. Fuck Smartthings.
Let me know if youāre selling your system.
I canāt pay much, but need additional hub, bits and pieces for Development testing.
I always wonder why people join a user forum to post a single post which is wildly negative. I mean, its not that I donāt get the frustration over the system not working as reliably as weād all like, but still.
Oh, and sure, I expect you can unload your shoebox of sensors easy. Iāll take any contact sensors or motion sensors you want to unload.
And I still have my dog, too.
Misery loves company. And these negative Topics consistently get plenty of commiserate responses.
I agreeā¦ If you need a few things off of your hands I would be willing help with thatā¦ I donāt like doing dev work on a fully working and functional systemā¦ and have been looking for a second system to work onā¦
Iām at over 160 devices, and all is well. Sure I have an issue pop up here or there, but for my home it has become part of it in our daily lives, including my wife. That includes presence sensors, and no standalone range extenders.
As with the others, letās us know when you sell your stuffā¦
There are too many variables to count that can affect the performance of any wireless system. The number one issue that needs to be addressed with the devices is the shared wireless spectrum that is beyond saturated. This issue becomes glaringly obvious if you live in an apartment complex or a dense neighborhood with lots of chattering WiFi devices. Everyone of my neighbors has DSL and the modems provided by CenturyLink are set to max power, auto channel switch, and are very aggressive to neighboring access points. I have a very high powered multi antenna router, an access point, and a wireless bridge. Even with all of my efforts these crappy little radios manage to get on the same channels as my wireless gear and things get fouled. The networking component of home automation has to be rock solid if you want to expect rock solid results. If your network is not up to snuff, everything else will be unreliable at best or fail at worst.
Until some unifying standard comes along all of these devices will continue to break as each disparate company moves its chess pieces around the board.
The single most important improvement for me was decommissioning my Verizon router and replacing it with a 5ghz router. I found, after much trial and error, that it was regularly interfering with my Zigbee devices.
If I still lived in my old apartment building, where I could see well over 20 other networks, I donāt know what on earth I would do.
Also, the presence detectors are way more reliable than phones. (And, once in a while, I forget my phone.). Android users might try using the automation app Tasker as a backup means of doing phone-based presence detection.