Living in Fear as a SmartThings User (Jan 2019)

I want to go to Hubitat (Installed) to Smartthings (Virtual).
Other Hub app is for Smartthings (Installed) to Hubitat (Virtual)

Also the Other Hub app is a one way communication. ST to Hub

Using MQTT and Node Red because I am going for two way communication.
ST to Hub & Hub to ST

Hassio is in there too but dont plan on using it.

I have physical devices connected to Hubitat and use Other Hub to populate those devices in SmartThings as virtual devices. I can control them in SmartThings or Hubitat. Also, sensors just report and Other Hub passes that information to SmartThings.

Actually, Hubitatā€™s official ST to Hubitat integration is what youā€™re referring to (I.e. one way integration of ST devices to Hubitat virtual devices.)

The ā€œOther Hubā€ Community Integration allows Hubitat devices to appear as virtual devices in ST with two way integration.

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Wouldnā€™t the cloud to cloud defeat the purpose of local integration?
After all thats the only reason I purchased Hubitat and tinkering with Hass.io

Yes, but thatā€™s the price of keeping smartthings in the equation. Although it can be argued that you can still get a lot of value out of the local operations of hubitat for many things, which is why some people are using a dual hub set up.

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I used both of these integrations in the early days of Hubitat for two reasons. First, to make sure Hubitat was stable and reliable. I moved rooms of my house over in chunks at a time. Second, to augment missing capabilities in the early days of Hubitat.

But now, my ST hub is unplugged. Everything I need is fully supported. My home is much more automated than it ever was on ST due to improved performance and reliability of local processing. Itā€™s not perfect, but we shouldnā€™t let perfect be the enemy of good!

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The Other Hub app takes STā€™s local LAN IP address, so I donā€™t think itā€™s cloud-to-cloud? I canā€™t remembered for sureā€¦itā€™s been several months since Iā€™ve used ST for anything.

The official app is LAN IP. One way communication
The community app is cloud. Two way communication

I wish I could say the sameā€¦I am using Hubitat at a second location with a much more simple setup. But the system still has lots of bugs - it crashed twice requiring a physical reboot. And my lock isnā€™t updating status, HSM isnā€™t behaving properly, etcā€¦

As it stands for me, SmartThings has/had many GREAT features that I absolutely love! The problem is, SmartThings seems determined to steadily take away: :man_facepalming:t4:

Contacts was awesome! Had the ability to send notifications to selected contactsā€¦Gone

The Family Tab in the Classic App was awesome! Quickly go to the Family Tab to check who was present or awayā€¦Gone

Things Tab is pretty awesomeā€¦Gone for meā€¦Support is like, ā€œScrew your issues in the Classic Appā€ we are no longer updating it.

Smart Apps Tab works 25% of the timeā€¦Same response.

Classic App was awesome! Getting ready to be replaced by a complete POS thatā€™s super hard to use and intuitive.

Custom DTH and Apps are awesome! Getting ready to make 80% of them obsolete with the new API.

Hubitat seems like a good replacement on surface but I am a user and I see the glitches with that system as well. It works most of the time and cloud outages doesnā€™t effect it like SmartThings but try getting the wife to write a ruleā€¦Not going to happen.

Make SmartThings Great Again (MSGA)!

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Hubitat is a platform with some great prospects but it is not perfect either. I switched over, at least I tried but have been unable to build a stable Zigbee mesh after 6 weeks of trying. I had no issues with the same devices in the same locations in SmartThings. Their devs are aware and might have a solution soon.

The old expression about the grass not being greener applies doubly here. You can do a lot in Hubitat that you can do in SmartThings, but aside from local execution, thereā€™s not a lot in Hubitat that you canā€™t do in SmartThings.

For me, Iā€™ve moved a part of my home back to SmartThings for stability and reliability reasons. Iā€™m sure in a few months, hopefully sooner I will be able to move everything back when the issues are resolved.

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I think the exception is that it at least Hubitat appears to be a system with a strong developer team behind it, where everyone that built it is behind it, and itā€™s currently where SmartThings was maybe a couple of years back ā€“ sans of course the app, which is I think one of the most important things for WAF.

I think with a lot of the alternatives ā€“ Hubitat, HASS, etc. ā€“ you have a lot of tinkering that needs to be done, but in the end you feel like if things went belly up you could at least continue to function normally, even if it took a lot of effort to add some additional functionality. Maybe Company X would kill off some API access and it would take a while before someone could work things out again, but in the end it doesnā€™t feel ā€œfinal.ā€

With SmartThings, I think we all feel like things are good because thereā€™s a brand behind it and things should be relatively solid forever, but in a way it does feel like youā€™re gradually seeing a pivot towards the household products used by the ā€œAverage Joeā€ consumer, and that this (as it exists today) will eventually come to an end. And when / if they make that announcement, we might end up with just a paperweight and questions about what else is out there that we can migrate to in a hurry.

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Ummmā€¦ A couple years back, SmartThings was a highlighted product at the developers conference of Samsung - one of the biggest corporations of the world - and had literally hundreds of $ millions allocated to the division, at hundreds of thousands of Customers.

While it appears that Hubitat has some non-trivial degree of private funding and tenacious management, it is a long way from being in the same league as SmartThings - from a business perspective.

As for the actual product and technology - they are becoming less and less comparable. Hubitat is earning a niche market. The odds of it growing to the significance of practically any established player are exceedingly low.

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Be that as it may, most people will argue that having Samsung behind it has not actually done much for the platform as a whole.

You still have reliability issues, you have what appear to be two separate ecosystems managed by two separate apps, etc.

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Exactly! Samsung has done more to hurt ST than to help it, IMHO. I know that Samsung infused a ton of cash, and has helped to globalize the product, but it has also de-focused the development team and moved almost all attention away from the true enthusiasts. They are happy with users having about 10-15 devices, and mining all the user data for everything it is worth.

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Oh I totally agree. It is quite common to find that strategic business decisions do not optimally benefit consumers - and that many small businesses could serve consumers just fine (or better!) without mega growth through private investment or mega-corp acquisition.

I was just pointing out that comparing Hubitat and SmartThings is futile except for the relevant, but small overlapping niche market.

The Topic title ā€œLiving in fear as a SmartThings Userā€ can apply to any consumer product that requires ongoing evolution. Both Google and Amazon, for example, have abandoned many promising projects (acquired or internal) in the past. Nobody can be certain this wonā€™t happen to their smart home initiatives too.

But Samsung is doing a lot more work on SmartThings than meets the eye (pretty big announcement in developers blog this weekā€¦). For some reason they donā€™t care to share the progress with us.

Fear of the unknown is quite natural.

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Care to share?

https://smartthings.developer.samsung.com/blog/en-us/22/01/2019/Announcing-the-SmartThings-Schema

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Thatā€™s pretty interestingā€¦ We could actually take something like an entire Hubitat Hub and expose all of its devices to the ST cloud using the SmartThings Schemaā€¦ Not sure why I would want to do that?

Exceptā€¦

ā€¦Maybe the AT team should consider writing a Hubitat App that implements this technology to enable Hubitat users to use ActionTiles? :wink:

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Few days ago I completely moved to Raspberry Pi (god bless Node-red programming tool!) with Zigbee USB stick (zigbee2mqtt)ā€¦ I was foolishly using SmartThings ecosystem for almost two years! You can do it also if you have any problems with SmartThingsā€¦ No more disconnected Xiaomi devicesā€¦ No more stupid new app and buggy old app (Node-red has own web dashboard)ā€¦ Even both buttons on Xiaomi Wireless Wall Switches are workingā€¦ Very satisfied with my setup now (20 xiaomi devices, 10 sonoffs, 10 tradfri bulbs)ā€¦ For a fraction of SmartThingsā€™s price and with MUCH MORE customizationsā€¦

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