FAQ: All in one place--is there a single comprehensive list of all Devices that work with SmartThings?

Is there a place online that I can see all of one type of device? Exampleā€¦ One place where I can see all 3-way dimmer switches available for smartthings? Thanks a ton!

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Not at present. There are a couple of places where you can look, but none are comprehensive. :disappointed_relieved: Thatā€™s the downside of having one of the most flexible platforms there is ā€“ ā€“ a lot of devices can work with it!

The official list

There used to be an official compatibility list, but now itā€™s just a page of links to manufacturers and isnā€™t very useful.

US:

UK:

https://www.smartthings.com/uk/compatible-products

Inside the SmartThings App

If you go to ā€œadd a deviceā€œ inside the app, thereā€™s a tab at the top of the screen for ā€œby typeā€œ that sounds like it would be useful, but again, it mostly just lists the manufacturers. You can click on the manufacture name and in some cases see a list of models, but in cloud to cloud integrations you may not.

Feature Discussion

There is a thread in the forum that discusses the various features that devices might have and why people might choose one feature over another. It does discuss several of the individual dimmer brands, but not all of them. The light switch discussion starts around post 40. If you are in the US, I would definitely recommend reading that, as it will give you a good background on how different brands might vary, and it does call out some of the most popular US brands as examples. (It might be frustrating if youā€™re in the UK, though, as all of the device examples are US devices.)

The official zwave site

SmartThings should work with any certified Z wave dimmer switch for on/off/dim (although some might require custom code for advanced features). Similarly any certified Z wave sensor should work for its basic operation such as open/close.

The official Z wave alliance products site lists all of the certified zwave devices, Separated by geographic region, and there is a category for dimmers. The only problem is that some of the devices that have been certified havenā€™t come to market yet. Still, thatā€™s a good place to start if youā€™re looking for Z wave. Then you can search the forums hear to see if there are any reviews for any individual device that looks interesting.

http://products.z-wavealliance.org

US: the homeseer online store in the US also has a good comparison table of Z wave dimmers, but they only list the brands that they sell, which means they donā€™t have Evolve or Leviton, two popular brands. But I still use this table a lot.

http://www.homeseer.com/compare-z-wave-dimming-wall-switches.html

UK: the Vesternet online store in the U.K. doesnā€™t have a table, but it does have good informational articles on U.K. Devices, again, though, limited to the brands they carry:

The official zigbee site

As far as zigbee, there is a similar site from the zigbee alliance, but it just isnā€™t kept up-to-date the way the zwave one is. And integration with SmartThings is more complex than for the Z wave devices. So you can look at the ones listed under the ā€œzigbee home automationā€ Tab, but youā€™ll still have to do a lot of individual research as well. And definitely check the forums.

http://www.zigbee.org/zigbee-products-2/

There is also a community topic in the wiki section of the forum that lists compatible zigbee wall switches and dimmers:

In addition, the US allows for higher power transmission levels than the UK and Europe, what is often called ā€œamplifiedā€ zigbee. This means that quite a few zigbee devices which are popular in the US are illegal to import or operate in the UK.

IFTTT

You can get indirect integration with SmartThings with anything that has an IFTTT channel/service, but that can add a few seconds a delay, so you probably wouldnā€™t use that for light switches, particularly ones that you want to control with a SmartThings ā€“ controlled motion sensor. But it is another option. There are people who are using that method with some cameras, for example.

Other Protocols that require setting up your own intermediate server

Another option for some other brands like Insteon (US) and Energie (UK) that donā€™t currently have a direct integration is to set up your own server as a middleman between the two systems. If that sounds like a lot of technical work, it isā€¦ So youā€™re generally only going to go into that if you already have installed home automation devices that donā€™t have a direct SmartThings integration. Itā€™s another plus for SmartThings that it is often possible to do this, but even so, most people wonā€™t want to go to this much trouble if theyā€™re buying new devices. Thereā€™s a list of project reports by people who have done this type of integrations already:

http://thingsthataresmart.wiki/index.php?title=Supported_Network_Protocols

The Community-Created Wiki

You would think there would be a comprehensive device list in the community ā€“ created wiki, and there are quite a few individual devices listed there, but no one has worked up a full table of all the devices that community members have confirmed to work with SmartThings. Mostly devices get added to the wiki when someone has written a custom device type handler. Which unfortunately means almost none of the dimmer switches are there, because most of them donā€™t require custom code. But I add this here just for completeness.

http://thingsthataresmart.wiki/index.php?title=ThingsThatAreSmart_Wiki

Thereā€™s even a framework for a comprehensive list in the community ā€“ created wiki, but it needs a lot more contributions to fill it in. Feel free to add to it it anytime:

http://thingsthataresmart.wiki/index.php?title=A_List_of_Devices_that_Work_with_SmartThings

The Buttons FAQ

The one device class where the community has done a very good job of listing all the devices which have been confirmed to work with SmartThings for both the US and the UK is the buttons and remotes FAQ. This includes both handheld and wallmount types.

Conclusion

So unfortunately there isnā€™t a single place you can go to see all the devices that you might consider buying to work with SmartThings. I wish there was. The official SmartThings compatibility list is a reasonable place to start, but only has a few devices. The official Z wave alliance site is comprehensive and up-to-date, so it may be the easiest to check, but of course itā€™s limited to zwave. And you can come back to the forum and look for individual reviews. The community ā€“ created wiki, while very helpful for a number of things, is unfortunately incomplete on this topic. But I would definitely read the device class features forum thread listed above before you go to the Z wave site as it should be helpful background and it does list some individual brand features.

Sorry we canā€™t be of more help. This is definitely something Iā€™d personally like to see added to the wiki in the future, but it just hasnā€™t been done yet.

I have updated this post to include the UK links and moved it to the FAQ section of the forum, since it is a question that comes up a lot. :sunglasses:

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So helpful! Thank you for taking time to answer!

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@JDRoberts this is a great post thank you very much for putting the effort into this. I have a question you might know an answer to.

How does a device become officially supported? Is there any sort of community involvement where we can ask/vote on device support?

Cheers,
-Stephen

There is a thread where the community can make requests and suggestions, but that doesnā€™t really care very much weight.

It seems to mostly just be a matter of strategic business decisions, and in particular, the interest of the device manufacturer in cooperating with SmartThings in getting their device certified as compatible. So Samsung has to decide it would be worth the time and effort to certify the device and then the device manufacturer has to be interested in cooperating with that process.

There is an official partnership page for companies that are interested:

http://developer.smartthings.com/developers/partner

And hereā€™s the thread where community members can suggest a device:

We should also mentioned that there are two additional free apps that will add some more IFTTT type integrations, but for different brands.

Yonomi doesnā€™t have SmartThings integration, but it does have Logitech Harmony integration, so you can get some indirect integration that way.

And Stringify is A very sophisticated visual flow rules engine which will allow you to directly integrate smartthings with quite a few other devices, including Insteon. The only concern there is that they were recently purchased by Xfinity, and itā€™s always possible that Xfinity will decide to drop the public free version and only use it for their own customers. So while I would hesitate to base an entire home automation setup on it, itā€™s certainly worth looking at.

And if you have a really Fancy Home theater set up, you can consider using ā€œsimple controlā€œ (formerly roomie remote) for that kind of integration, but it has some fairly expensive annual subscription fees. But there will be some people find it useful.

https://www.simplecontrol.com

So those three options may allow you to create additional integrations that you canā€™t do just with SmartThings itself.

One other third-party ā€œman in the middleā€œ integration which is becoming increasingly useful is Amazon Echo. In the fall of 2018, echo allowed their own routines to be triggered by a sensor ā€“ ā€“ and in SmartThings, that can be a virtual sensor. Which means you can now turn on and off many devices, including many Wi-Fi switches, by using an echo routine and a virtual contact sensor. So that opens up additional possible integrations as long as the other devices can be controlled by an Echo routine. :sunglasses:

Is there a current list of ā€œworks with smartthingsā€ that actually shows the products not just a list of product codes?

The revision to the smartthings website last year makes it almost useless

Regrettably, no. :disappointed_relieved:

Since under the new architecture individual device manufacturers are now responsible for the integrations and they get to select which models are included, itā€™s likely that smartthings decided they could no longer keep up efficiently.

As mentioned above, Thereā€™s space for such a list in the community ā€“ created wiki, but not very many people have contributed to it. Feel free to do so, and encourage others to.

http://thingsthataresmart.wiki/index.php?title=A_List_of_Devices_that_Work_with_SmartThings