Smarthings has HAD the great abillity to combine various units from different manufactors, thus creating wonderful setups.
But I am starting to feel that Smartthings is serious falling behind the giant market of integration, where I have experienced the lack of support for units from the most well-known manufactures.
As an example I have an iRobot Roomba vacuum cleaner robot. Roomba is perhaps thee must well-know robot vacuum-cleaner manufacture out there. Does Smartthings support it thus automating house lights on / off during vacuuming, Seems to be a NO. Although IR remote control is fastly disappearing, I still have several items that is controlled via IR like amplifier and BD player. And to facility this I have just bought a Broadlink IR4 unit, does Smartthings support this so it can control my amplifier, LED candle lights or my LED Fireplace, Seems to be a NO.
Smartthings is supporting a huge list of manufactures, but must of them are only know and used by a very few people and must of them only from one specific country.
Smartthings - Come on, get better and get integration with the bigger and more used manufactures out in the big world. Or fall behind and get overrun by some other APP producer. Smartthings got its success due to the vast amount of integration users could create with it, but other systems i.e. Google and Alexa is starting to pass Smartthings and can offer a deeper system.
I might be completely wrong, but as far as I know, integration depends on the manufacturer.
They pay ST to certify their products in the platform.
All other integrations developed by the community is because manufacturer exposes a way to devs interact with devices and develop integrations by themselves.
That is the impression I get too, though I donāt think that should be interpreted as it all being down to the manufacturer to actually do the technical stuff. I believe ST have a team for that sort of thing. It does need the manufacturer to be engaged in the process though, and I assume it doesnāt come free unless there is obvious benefit to Samsung/SmartThings.
Iāve long held a suspicion that the answer might be yes, to some extent (and Iām not talking about ye olde community solutions here), but that it could be localised to their home markets. We donāt tend to hear much about what happens in the east Asian region in this forum but I am sure the mobile app has a lot more under the bonnet than it lets on. It is right up the top of my wish list.
I donāt know who developed the native DTHs that made a lot of devices to work with the platform, but changing one platform to another was a demand from ST.
So I think this is because the tech team is involved in keeping their old contracts by migrating the whole code.
For new certified devices, I think ST is working as consultants.
In the case of this thread, I think it will all depend on how interested iRobot is in integrating its devices with ST, and not the opposite, as ST has its own vacuum cleaners and they compete on this market.
I find the idea that the manufacturer will prioritize development for ST AND pay for the privilege absolutely laughable.
The combination of this and the end of all the Community written Groovy apps feels like suicide for the long term future of this platform.
Given that Matter is already turning into a dumpster fire - no backporting of existing products to Matter, slow rollout and some big names delaying their support - any idea that this was the alternative to the years of work that have been wasted is becoming a massive own goal.
Well over 90% of SmartThings users donāt have a hub and never use any custom code. And have fewer than 15 devices. They have a Samsung smart television, smart appliance, smart vacuum, or a galaxy phone. They all use the smartthings app, but theyāll be completely unaffected by this particular problem. They are the future of the platform, and the source of most of Samsungās profits. And they generally rate the app and the platform very high.
Power users like the majority of the community members in this forum are a small percentage of a small percentage of the total user base. It is what it is.
In between those extremes I think also exists a large number (me at least ) of users who believe in the Edge local platform, running on an off-the-shelf plug-and-play hub, but who want to get the most out of it using some of fantastic drivers and utilities made by community members.
BTW fully identify with the frustration of those who have suffered this problem, a platform transition of such complexity was almost certain one day to have gone wrong, but thatās of little help to them.
This is actually the only reason I went all in on ST. Replacing the DTHs with Edge is moving things to the local setup and allowing me to break away from the cloud. I donāt want a smart home that allows too much data access.
Even though the Edge model currently requires a hub, I suspect many Samsung devices will start acting as Edge environments, at least for LAN and Matter devices.
Yeah but the other way to look at it - I had, for example, a perfectly good community written Tado app working for me. Now I donāt.
Tado have made it clear that they arenāt interested in a partnership, theyāre not rushing on Matter and I donāt have a grand to replace my heating system.
Iāve switched to Edge wherever I can, and brought some disused zigbee and z-wave stuff back into service, but Iām still worse off.
I havenāt seen evidence of anyone working on a Tado Edge driver (is that even possible?), I donāt have a scooby how to code one, so Iām stuffed.
Iām moving towards Zigbee where I can, I agree that local is better, long term, but Iām going to have legacy products in my set up for a good while. Itās just infuriating is all.
I wanted to let you know that Iām actually working on a Tado Edge driver after losing the old smart app. So far, Iāve been able to achieve pretty good control of my thermostat and have most data reporting correctly, but like any project of this nature, there have been a few setbacks along the way. However, Iām confident that with continued effort and collaboration with other users, we can overcome any obstacles we encounter.
Iām just not sure how to reconcile this with the fact that the SmartThings app still requires the cloud in the new architecture, and every activity is logged to your cloud account (otherwise it wouldnāt show up in the app). I donāt know what ātoo much data accessā means in this context, but it seems to me they have all of it, and itās all stored in the cloud. It just doesnāt all run in the cloud. But it is logged there. Every notification you get in the app ran through the cloud.
In contrast, for example, Apple HomeKit runs everything locally, including the app, except voice requests, and even those are anonymized. There are multiple other platforms with a similar approach. But even after edge, smartthings just isnāt either āfreed from the cloud,ā or particularly strong on privacy.
SmartThings will use edge to run more transactions locally in the moment, hopefully providing better reliability, but everything is still tracked in their cloud.
All true points. Samsung still has my data, but not every vendor and their respective clouds. For example, you can run Philips Hue locally and you donāt have to connect to the Philips Hue cloud unless you need remote access. If you want local, itās possible to do that with Hue, and still get local automations. Granted that itās not totally free, but I see this as momentum in that direction.
As for the ST app, they made the decision to allow remote access all the time, which means the app itself isnāt free of the cloud. But if you create local automations with local controllers (switches, buttons, etc). You can go days without ever opening the app or needing an internet connection.
My comments were more in comparison to Alexa and Google which are cloud driven and need internet.
To those of you who tries to make this a discussion on cloud use or not, please start your own topic and get out of mine!
This is my attempt to say to SmartThings not to get to far behind.
I have seen it before with example IFTTT but by far limited to them.
IFTTT offered a possibility of cross service use, although it was very slow and unreliable. But then they demanded a gigantic fee or users was limited to less than a handful of their own setups. IFTTT has become useless for people like me who really wants to automate their homes. And then came SmartThings.
SmartThings must work harder with the manufactores to achive integrations. This is what made Smartthings into the success it is now, users having the possibility of crossservice automating their hardware.
But SmartThings is falling way behind now, and if they do not change this direction they to will fall, Matter or not, I will still be using SmartThings for all my gadgets for many years to come, that is unless SmartThings does insist on becoming useless.
Hi Thomas.
Thanks for sharing this. Iām a massive fan of Tado but am desperate to bring its full functionality into Smartthings. Again, happy to support if you need any test on the rad stats and other heating devices.
Thanks
Hi Thomas. Backing up @mean1979 here - if you need any support please do let me know. Be wanting Tado and SmartThings integration for YEARS. Have messaged you directly on here to offer my support (I have access to two properties with Tado, connected in different ways to help with any testing). Also happy to roll up my sleeves on development work where I can help.
Am chasing up Tado to see if thereās any update but not holding my breath.
Apologies for the late reply. Unfortunately I decided to abandon the Tado project due to insurmountable challenges with Tadoās API restrictions. Despite my efforts, gaining full control had proven unfeasible.
IMO all corporations involved in this, or nearly all, are āfalling behindā on integration. The larger ones in particular have a tendency to imagine they can create a closed-loop of their own products, and to therefore move their output and support in that direction. Samsung certainly has done thisā¦ so has LG, BMW, google, Chamberlain, and a slew of others.
Bear in mind that sales ALWAYS trumps support, and that the only real reason for the existence of any support at all is to prevent a loss of future sales.
) of users who believe in the Edge local platform, running on an off-the-shelf plug-and-play hub, but who want to get the most out of it using some of fantastic drivers and utilities made by community members.