So, I’d like my son to start trying out this stuff, along with his new Raspberry Pi (I just got my first one two weeks ago.)
Should I give him access to my account, or should I create a new ST/Webcore account for him? He’s pretty trustworthy, but I’m still worried he might accidentally mess something up. Also, if I did set up his own accounts, would he still have access to my devices (the ones that I would make available to him)? I’d hate to put his Hue Philips lights on his account and then lose access to them on mine.
It’s worse than you might imagine, since if you share a Wi-Fi network, smartthings will keep adding anything recognizable on that network to both your accounts.
I suggest talking to the people in the webcore forum to see what they think. It could get quite complicated.
This is awesome! However, expect him to make some mistakes along the way. You may invite him as a user but he will have access to all devices. Cool thing about webCoRE is, you can easily pause any Piston that starts trouble.
I vote go for it! Give him full access and enjoy the Father/Son journey. I sooo wish my family members were more into this stuff.
It’s inevitable that he will mess some things up, we all do.
So I suppose the first question is how essential is the operation of your home automation system to your home? And how old is he?
It also depends on what you have currently operating. Would you give your kid the ability to turn your furnace off for eight hours in the winter? Or is it just a matter of lights being left on or turned off at the wrong times?
So what do you have automated now, how critical is the operation of those devices, and how able is your son to understand and follow through on protecting any critical operations? Those three things together should help guide your decision making in how separate you need to make the access for him.
Nothing’s terribly uber-automated. I have a few pistons running here and there. He’s 14, and probably won’t do a whole lot…but if he screws up my Harmony Hub/Kuku, then he’s dead. Took me forever to get Kuku running, lol.
What I did with my son was got him a hub off Ebay for $15 dollars and set him up with his own accounts and allowed him to make his room and part of the basement in that Hub’s network. I have had no issues with interference at all, So far he has 4 to 5 smart bulbs ZigBee , two z-wave switches, two Peanut Plugs (cheep) and two Samsung buttons along with action tiles, webcore, etc.
But you have no access to his devices from your account, right? Is his Alexa/Google Home on a separate a account also?
Not that this is terribly important, but for example, I have pistons that will turn all house fans off and all lights off. They can be very handy, and I’d hate to lose that functionality.
First-off, with it being so relatively inexpensive to get into, and considering your current setup (and not wanting the whole ‘dead son’ thing to happen), I would definitely get him his own hub.
Cross-Contamination
If cross-contamination is an issue (i.e. SmartThings hub1 messing with devices intended for SmartThings hub2), I would simply (ok, simple for me) set up a completely separate Wi-Fi network for him so that neither SmartThings system would ‘see’ any of the stuff on the other one.
All-Lights-Off
I would also consider installing smart outlets in his room which are controlled by your setup, and plugging his stuff (including his own smart outlets) into those. That way, he can play with things all he wants, but you still have the ability to turn it all off if you want.
Of course, there are always going to be kooky things that pop up that you will have to figure out how to deal with, but if you do certain things ‘right’ from the beginning, it will help you out a lot down the road. The first ‘right’ thing you did was to come in here and ask about it. I imagine we’ve only scratched the surface so far in this thread with all of the things you might want to think about when embarking on such an adventure.
