I am sure this has been discussed before; so point me in the right direction.
How sustainable is the free Smartthings Cloud service? It looks like Iris is going away, how long can Samsung continue to support all the services out there, for free? We have all purchased the hubs and devices, but there is no on-going revenue stream for Samsung. Is this a good model?
If the Cloud service goes away, how usable are the hubs? Would they continue to be able to process preexisting local rules, for lights etc? Or would it simplify stop working all together?
I realise the apps would stop working straight away, which would mean no adding new devices, or changes to smartapps and rules. And no remote monitoring via the app. Sounds like the kiss of death to me.
Samsung could pull the plug at anytime. That’s in the terms of service.
The flipside of that is that Samsung does continue to invest considerable resources and are in a major transition period: New hub, new app, new cloud platform. (The app and the cloud platform aren’t fully finished yet.)
It seems very clear from where they’ve been spending their money that Samsung wants to have a simple home automation system that works with their very expensive smart appliances and televisions. They’ve also mentioned in this forum a number of times that the majority of their customers have 15 or fewer devices and use no custom code at all.
The new app does seem to be aimed at that audience. It’s very much improved over a previous version if you do have a Samsung appliance or TV. And the official rules engine is better than the one in the Classic app as far as ease of use. Yet it doesn’t support the custom code that made the classic platform so powerful.
As far as security features, it’s very hard to tell. They’ve clearly pushed as much of that over to the ADT model as they can, it’s just hard to judge whether they’re going to continue with that model or not.
They also separately have the whole artik project, which is a massive cloud intended to let manufacturers of health monitoring and IOT devices use their cloud services, sort of like Amazon Web services except specifically for hardware devices.
All of which to say I feel pretty confident that something called Samsung smartthings will still be offered four years from now. And it can be offered free if its main function is to give a marketing edge to $4000 refrigerators and $8000 televisions.
I just don’t have any confidence at all in saying what home automation or home security features it’s going to have. We may just have to wait and see.
Does SmartThings cost anything?
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SmartThings reserves the right to require payment of fees for certain features of the Services. Should you elect to subscribe to such features, you shall pay all applicable fees, as described on the Services in connection with such features. Subject to any subscription agreement or other restrictions, SmartThings reserves the right to change its price list and to institute new charges at any time, upon ten (10) days prior notice to you, which may be sent by email or posted on the Services. Use of the Services by you following such notification constitutes your acceptance of any new or increased charges.
. Will SmartThings ever change the Services?
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We’re always trying to improve the Services, so they may change over time. We may suspend or discontinue any part of the Services, or we may introduce new features or impose limits on certain features or restrict access to parts or all of the Services. In some cases, the changes we make to the Services may cause older hardware devices, third party services, software configurations or setups to no longer work with the Services, and you may be required to upgrade or change these devices, services, configurations or setups in order to continue using the Services. We’ll try to give you notice when we make a material change to the Services that would adversely affect you, but this isn’t always practical.
