I’ve been a faithful user for well over three years now, but after such a mess transferring to the new backend, I’ve finally decided to jump to Home Assistant.
At peak I had over 150 devices connected and dozens of automations (mainly through webcore), so today is a sad day
Ultimately, I will be left with just two devices in ST - my washer and dryer.
It’s been a blast while it lasted Samsung, but I just can’t tolerate the slow painful migration process, with everything breaking or not working randomly.
The community here is ace, and imo easily the biggest asset ST has. Take this forum away, and ST is dead. Good luck in your adventures with the new platform community, I wish you all the best
While home assistant is extremely customizable i wasnt a fan of it. I temporarily had home assistant setup for about a year running simultaneously with Wink but i wasnt impressed at all. Much happier with ST and SharpTools dashboard
I have enough custom Groovy-based stuff in my setup that I won’t be excited about having to move across to a new backend. Sounds like it may be time to start shopping around for something else, something that can handle both Z-wave and Zigbee.
A question for other old-timers on ST: besides the pain of deregistering / re-registering devices, what will convince someone who’s been with with the old ST since the early years to stick with it rather than start looking at alternatives?
I’m always looking for alternatives. As I mentioned, my current home automation philosophy is that I will want to replace anything I own, including hub, in three years. Basically the same kind of development cycle as a mobile phone. If I end up keeping it longer, that’s great, but there’s so much new stuff coming out all the time that by budgeting this way, i’m ready to say goodbye as long as I got my value out of the first three years of ownership. This approach greatly reduces my frustration and resentment over things that change in ways that I don’t like, and keep me from having to spend too much time and effort worrying about future proofing. i’m not saying it would work for everybody, but it works for me.
As far as reasons to stay with smartthings, the ability to write really complex rules with a wide variety of devices is still the biggest plus. Or, of course, if you have Samsung brand smart appliances or televisions.
What do you mean by that cause I’ve got 275 devices working and I’ve not had to re-register anything yet. I assume my custom groovy DTH’s and SmartApps may need some work, but that’s not enough of an issue for me to leave ST. In fact, my ST setup has never been better, and I’ve been with ST since their Kickstarter days.
My guess is that Samsung announced that some older hubs will no longer be supported in the future. The most likely hub to lose support/functionality is the original V1 ST Hub. So, anyone with a v1 hub is going to have to make a decision on what new hub/platform they will use in the future. This will require re-pairing all of their devices and rebuilding their automations.
No, I mean if I changed to something else, I would have to delete and re-register, and that would be a pain. Any other reasons to stay with ST than avoiding that pain, was what I meant.
I have a couple of custom virtual devices that help with Alexa integration, and a SmartThings Arduino board that is hooked up to my wired door sensors (from the defunct security system). If I have to learn a new API just to replicate that functionality, that will be a real pain.
Custom SmartApps will need to be rewritten and rehosted on the user’s own choice of platform. The choice of language is up to the developer.
Custom DTHs are still written in Groovy for the time being, and can be made compatible with the new ST Mobile App. This needs to happen before ST shuts down the Classic ST Mobile App later this year (their estimate, not mine). Once SmartThings shuts down the Classic Groovy IDE in 2021 (their estimate, not mine), those Groovy DTH’s will also cease to function. ST has not yet shared what the exact future/language of custom DTHs will be.
Please let me know if you need any assistance in porting your existing Arduino/Groovy code. Not sure if you’re using ST_Anything currently, or your own custom code. Either way, there are multiple paths forward.
To stay on ST, using their new API, you could use Konnected. It runs on modern hardware, and is well supported by @heythisisnate. I am pretty sure Konnected now has their own cloud server infrastructure, that is able to connect to the new SmartThings API, thereby eliminating the old Groovy DTHs.
I have custom code; ST_Anything was great in terms of functionality, but overkill for me. All the shield needs to do is multiplex four door sensors and a motion sensor and send the data to cloud, so ST_Anything felt like overkill.
Now, if I can only find the Arduino code, it’s at least five years since I touched the thing…
As I mentioned, my current home automation philosophy is that I will want to replace anything I own, including hub, in three years. Basically the same kind of development cycle as a mobile phone. If I end up keeping it longer, that’s great, but there’s so much new stuff coming out all the time that by budgeting this way, i’m ready to say goodbye as long as I got my value out of the first three years of ownership. This approach greatly reduces my frustration and resentment over things that change in ways that I don’t like, and keep me from having to spend too much time and effort worrying about future proofing. i’m not saying it would work for everybody, but it works for me.