Disappointment

General Discussion
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Feeling rather disappointed with the way things seem to be going.

Used Smartthings quite a bit 3/4 years ago with DTH and custom DTHs etc. Then not used much for 2/3 years. Was vaguely aware of the edge drivers change going on. Now trying to get going again to make my new extension smart.

Boy oh boy, trying to do stuff with Smartthings now seems painful. It seems you now have to buy many many different manufacturers hubs to get anywhere at great cost. How exactly is this an improvement ? Looks like matter is a piece of commercial crap designed to extract more money out of the poor consumer and erect proprietary barriers into home automation networks.

How is this better ?

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I understand feeling disappointed. Change is always hard, and Samsung hasn’t handled this change in the way that would be the easiest for users, even power users, to understand.

It’s also very reasonable to feel disappointed with matter, which has not met its goals of ease of research and use, either. At least so far. Lots of discussion of that in the following thread, if you’re interested:

Matter - smart home connectivity standard (formerly Project CHIP)

All of that said, matter does not require that you buy a bunch of new hubs. Devices that use either matter over Wi-Fi or matter over thread are individually certified to the matter standard and don’t require any extra hubs at all. They will work locally as long as you have a SmartThings/Aeotec hub. And they will work out of the box with no custom code, another improvement.

You will need to have one “thread border router” in your home if you are going to use thread devices, but the smartthings/Aeotec hub, the smartthings station, and the built-in hubs/dongles for the Samsung big ticket devices already have that included. So it’s only if you only have a smartthings V2 that that issue would even come up, and since there are thread border routers built into many smart speakers, you may not even need anything extra for that.

FAQ: What do I need to add a Matter device to the SmartThings app? Do I need a bridge router device?

So, when would you need an extra hub from another company? Only if they are not individually certifying their end devices for matter, but rather bridging them through a hub. But there will be lots of competing devices from other brands that don’t need that method.

And sometimes it will be up to you how you choose to do the integration. For example, aqara Zigbee devices can either be connected directly to a SmartThings/Aeotec hub, or imported through matter by connecting them to one of their own hubs which can act as a “matter bridge.” Connecting them through their own hub will probably be a little easier and will not require any custom code, but you still have the option to do it the other way.

So… Quite a few people are feeling disappointed with smartthings right now, and many people, including me, are feeling disappointed with the way the matter rollout has been handled by the third-party standards organization, and those are both legitimate concerns. But there shouldn’t be anything in either of those, or in the combination of them, that requires you to buy a bunch of expensive new hubs.

Which specific devices were you concerned about? :thinking:

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By the way, if you’d like more details about how the new edge Driver architecture works, see the community FAQ. But be aware that that is long and detailed and may not be what you’re interested in right now. :thinking:

FAQ: I have no idea what Edge is. Is that a new developer tool? (2022)

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Thanks for that. So far I find myself ordering a Moes/Tuya hub to try to get connected to a Moes 2 gang zigbee dimmer. And now I find an Aqara mini switch can’t seem to be connected (oh unless I buy an Aqara hub).

Even a simple smart lighting routine - turn on and off based on a Smartthings motion sensor - doesn’t even work out of the box.

Making me think I should abandon ST and get with Home Assistant.

If I am frustrated, what does a Joe Public think. It all plays into Apple & Google’s plans to own everything I guess.

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Anything that is true about those specific devices was true under the old architecture, except that now matter may offer some additional integration options that we didn’t used to have.

As far as Moes, they are a re-brand of Tuya, and the issue with Tuya is that it uses a lot of proprietary code only intended to work with its own hubs. And that’s always been true.

They won’t work with the official integration (and if you get one of their hubs, and the device is not using matter, then you’ll only get the integration you can get through the Smart life app, and that’s pretty limited).

But there are some community developers who have written some edge drivers that do work with some tuya devices.

Find the “fingerprint” of your device (the combination of the manufacturer code, and the model number that you can get at the official web interface to your smartthings account)

My.SmartThings.com/advanced

IMG_8196
IMG_81961380Ă—958 139 KB

Then post that information in the community request thread for Zigbee devices and hopefully someone will know of a custom edge driver that will work with your specific device. (Make sure you read the first post in that thread carefully so you know what information the developers will need to help you).

Post Requests for Zigbee Edge Drivers Here (community-created)

As far as the aqara button, I know that early on there was at least one community driver for it, I’m not sure if it has since been included in the official drivers or not. I do know that it’s supposed to be an absolute pain to pair, with most people saying they had to try four or five times, and some more than a dozen just to get it to connect. :man_shrugging:t2:

You can go ahead and post a request for that one in the request thread as well if there isn’t already one posted there.

As far as home assistant: people who are programmers tend to love it, and ask themselves why they didn’t go to that years ago. People who are not programmers often come back to an easier platform after trying it. It’s up to you if you think it’s worth the time to try it. You can look at the category in this forum called “other hubs“ and find some recent discussions, if you’d like to ask people with experience with it. There are also a fair number of community members running both home assistant and smartthings, because they like the smartthings app way more than anything available with home assistant. Choice is good. :sunglasses:

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This should work, but will probably require two routines, one for on and one for off. At least that’s how most people do it. You can ask for examples and help with this in the following section of the forum:

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I already posted it here - seems like it is a bug and maybe ST don’t test some stuff before releasing it ?!@?

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Yep, from that interchange, it looks like one of the newest features is in fact, broken. :disappointed_relieved:

But you should still be able to do it out of the box with the two routine method.

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To me ST seems to be improving post the botched driver transition process; however unexplained things still occur- such as why locations got screwed up this week and local operation did not seem to work…

As to Matter, that is another matter (pun intended)- sorely disappointed with what I’ve heard about it to date (and hence why I’ve not gotten any Matter devices): limited product availability, higher costs than Z wave, limited capabilities, etc. As a result, I continue to look for Zigbee/Zwave alternatives.

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I’ve got a couple of the Aqara mini switches (the buttons, model WXKG11LM) that I’ve been using for over 3 years. I’ve never owned an Aqara hub and they work just fine with ST. I use the Xiaomi/Aqara Switch and Button edge driver from veon.

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Thank you very much. I’ll give it a try.

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