Hi all! I’m looking for a way to replace my Alarm.com z-wave hub installed by our homebuilder who basically took our smart home features hostage unless we pay $9.99/month. From what I can tell the Aeotec hub is potentially the best option on the market. I just am nervous as many places online it is out of stock. Is this a supply chain issue or is the hub itself going out of production? I don’t want to invest in something obsolete that won’t be supported moving forward.
Are there multiple models of the Aeotec hub? Again I cannot figure out if there’s more than one and want to be sure I’m getting the newest model. I see this one on FB marketplace as a new in box item. Is this the newest hub model?
There has been only one model of the Aeotec Smart Home Hub for SmartThings that was released in 2021. It is the same model of the SmartThings V3 hub that was released in 2018 but simply rebranded to Aeotec.
Don’t purchase the SmartThings V3 hub as many sellers jack up the price to huge numbers as it is no longer manufactured.
ST did release a new hub a couple of years ago called The Station but it did not have a z-wave radio. It was a combo charger/hub. I have not seen in stock anywhere so it leaves one to wonder if it is still available.
So the one shown in the picture is the same one from Amazon?
If that’s the case then I do see a handful of Aeotec hubs on Marketplace. Just don’t want to buy one there new in box if it’s an older model. Sounds like there’s only one model so any Aeotec hub listing will be the same.
Smartthings is popular because it has a very nice app for people who are going to be using multiple communication protocols, in particular Zigbee and Matter. But it’s definitely not the best hub if all you’re going to be using is z wave.
In fact, Samsung has said officially that Zwave is not on their roadmap going forward, and the newest SmartThings hub, the station, doesn’t even have a Z wave radio in it. Instead, Samsung (which owns SmartThings) is basing future development on Zigbee and matter.
That’s particularly unfortunate because z wave has some really interesting features in the newest generations, but even the Aeotec hub for smartthings is now three generations behind the most current.
So smartthings would definitely not be my first pick for someone migrating Z wave devices from alarm.com. . I like a lot of things about smartthings, but their Z wave implementation isn’t one of them. (They’ve been ahead of most of the competition on Matter support, though. Every system has pros and cons. It’s just that the Z wave implementation is not one of smartthings’ Pros.)
I detailed this in the following thread last year, but things have only gotten worse since then.
So for an all Z wave set up now I certainly wouldn’t be buying anything that wasn’t at least Zwave 700 generation, and smartthings never went past 500.
Is Z-wave going the way of the dinosaurs? I have browsed online for different hubs and seem to see more Zigbee than Z-wave. If that’s the case that’s very frustrating as our builder seems to have locked us in to using their alarm.com hub which only will work with subscription. ugh.
Any suggestions on a hub that would support Z-wave going forward, seeing as SmartThings may not do it in future models?
I was a network engineer working with both Z wave and Zigbee before I ever bought my first smartthings hub over 10 years ago. My personal opinion is that Z wave does have a future, even though at present it does not work with Matter.
But that doesn’t mean it has a future with smartthings, and Samsung has specifically said they don’t intend to do much with it going forward.
As far as what z wave hub to get, it depends very much on your personal willingness to deal with technical stuff.
FOR TECHIES: HOME ASSISTANT
If you’re willing to get elbow deep into some of the stuff that looks like code, even if technically it isn’t, then it’s hard to beat home assistant using an add on Aeotec stick that supports smart security. (They don’t all.) but that requires much more technical tinkering than a lot of people want to deal with.
(Homeseer would be similar in that regard, but home assistant is more modern and supports more communication protocols.)
You can also add the third-party dashboard and rules engine from SharpTools to make things a little easier, but you can’t get away from the underlying need to get into the technical weeds.
If you want a much slicker, more user-friendly interface, you have two good options right now.
the z box from The Smartest House is a joint offering from them and Fibaro with hardware specs based on the Fibaro Home Center Lite (HCL).
The Smartest House also makes the Zooz line of zwave devices which are very popular no matter which hub you get. Many people in this community also get Zooz devices. They keep up with the most current Z wave features and have nice design and excellent customer support.
At the time of this post the Zbox is a Zwave Series 700 hub with S2 security support. So not the very newest Z wave technology, but the newest that is widely deployed. Priced around $125 at the time of this posting. Excellent customer support.
Two things to be aware of. This is a Z wave hub. There’s no support for Zigbee or matter except in a few specific bridge implementations like the Phillips Hue hub.
Second, you really need to be willing to work on a laptop to use this. They do have an app, but it’s really just for tap to run type situations. You need to set up everything on a laptop first.
HOMEY PRO
This one is more expensive, running close to $500. But it has both series 700 Z wave and Zigbee, along with some other protocols. Active community. I don’t think the customer service is quite as good as the Z box, but hardly anybody is. You can also use sharptools with this. There are some power user features, but you can definitely use it without having to feel like you’re supposed to be a programmer.
At Amazon, it’s highly rated, but frequently returned, which implies to me that it’s more complicated than many off-the-shelf buyers thought they were getting into.
HUBITAT
One more candidate to consider. This company was started by former SmartThings users who wanted more local control. It has jumped ahead of smartthings in Z wave support. But has not kept up with them in terms of Matter. (But again, to be fair, smartthings is one of the best for matter support.). Very helpful community. Works with SharpTools. But it was originally intended for power users and professional installers, and it will still feel more technical than Z box.
They are definitely keeping up with the latest Z wave features: you can even get a series 800 hub from them. And they do have good Zigbee integration as well.
I like the people, I like the product, I like the community: but I like all of that for power users. So I’m not sure it matches your specific situation.
YOUR SITUATION
Unless I’ve misunderstood the situation and you or someone in your household is willing to do code-like stuff, I would suggest looking at the Z box first.
If you want something which is probably closer to what you thought smartthings would be, but with a more current Z wave implementation, you can also look at the Homey pro hub. But it is much more expensive.
At present, I’m running a Z-Box Hub in place of one of my old, original ST v2 devices and like it very, very much. Realize it does not support Zigbee (but there are ways to do it) or Matter (yet). I find Matter very interesting, perhaps not ready for prime time with the average user (YMMV), but it is apparently in the pipeline for this hub.
Currently in Beta is LR support on the Z-Box–and it works seamlessly. I’ve recently begun changing over some of my devices capable of ZWLR and no problems to date.
