Love Hate Relationship

So before this is even considered a ‘flame’ I want to state I have a love-hate relationship with ST. I love that its the only platform out there that has the potential to do what I want from an HA perspective. But yes there is a but, a gripe, a whine, a whinge. What follows is not an anti-ST essay just questions, and a quest for advice.

I am about to move home. The present home will still need ST as its all setup and my father in law lives in it still and we want to monitor whats going on (he is 83 years old and independent, but we want to keep an eye on things).

My dilemma is do I go with ST v 2.0 for the new home?

We are totally into Hue bulbs both colored and Hue Lux. Sadly we just have to control them using a third party App as ST doesn’t control them effectively both from a status point of view and a rules aspect (sunset on off etc).

The new house has a double garage with a door opener. The facility to control this using ST seems to have disappeared with V2.

Presence sensing has gone south. ST thinks I am home when I reach a point 2 miles from where I live. My wife’s iPhone works fine within about 200 meters.

Camera’s are now just Samsung or D-Link. I invested in Arlo but no news on their integration so do I jump to D-Link? Outside camera’s considering I live in upstate NY with its cold winters are limited in what I choose.

I like the nest thermastat. Its saved me 100’s of $'s but it’s not supported natively.

Since the new update my connected smoke/co2 detectors have gone south and don’t work.

Since V2, my door sensors give false responses saying open when they are clearly closed.

Like I said I love the ‘idea’ of what ST can do. I am just worried it’s not doing it now and this is supposedly the new evolution of ST.

Do I stick with it and stay with ST? Can I have the confidence these issues will be resolved and that reinvesting in the new hub, new sensors, and Hue bulbs is the right thing to do?

Not complaining really just want some honest opinions!

I have used life360 for nearly a year now, and we love it. It does a lot more than just presence, but my whole family enjoys using it. It has good integration with SmartThings and I can count on one hand the times it has failed in 10 months. Before this, the ST app had us teleporting all over town in the middle of the night.

I have around 15 bulbs all connected to the hue bridge, I don’t have very many issues with them. I am having issues with modes not changing or being ignored altogether, but that is not just with hue bulbs.

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I wrote a smartapp that pretended to (un)lock my door based on the Life360 presence. In 3-4 months I have yet to see it fail. My only problem was if I was coming home from my daily walk, it sometimes opened the door too quickly as I was still 200-300 feet from my door. Solving the problem with a php routine and Tasker. The latter notifies the smartapp its ok to open the door when Life360 < Max Distance set by the app.