We have a vacation home in which we plan to use a smart things hub. Occasionally guests stay there that will not have the iPhone app. Is a hand-held remote a good choice in this situation, or should they just get the app?
You probably don’t want guests to use the mobile app. The way the ST mobile app works, your only option is to give them complete control of the hub and connected devices. You can’t restrict access to certain devices only, or prevent someone from making changes to devices or automations, deleting everything, etc.
Depending on what kind of control you want to give them, how many devices, etc, a handheld remote could work. But if it’s more than a couple lights or something, it might be difficult for your guests to keep things straight on a handheld remote.
A better option might be a dashboard that you setup to allow access to only certain devices or automations, with no ability to access more basic functions of your ST account. The dashboard app that’s discussed most often on these forums used to be called SmartTiles, which recently released a major update and is called ActionTiles now. Definitely look into that.
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I agree with both of @marktheknife 's suggestions: don’t give visitors the app, and consider a wallmount tablet with a dashboard. So I’m just posting this to give you a couple of links that might be helpful.
The first one is the list of buttons and remotes that work with SmartThings:
And the second is the link to actiontiles. The original iteration, smarttiles, was free, but the current version, actiontiles, requires a paid subscription. It’s still very popular, because it just offers a lot of features that people find very valuable, but I just wanted to be clear when providing the link that it is now a paid service. You can customize the colors, size of the tiles, and exactly which devices appear:
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Thanks, JD, I should have clarified that a dashboard like actiontiles is usually run on a tablet.
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