Hello,
I’m in the process of evaluating a move from Wink to SmartThings. I wanted to ping the community to get input on if any of my existing devices will have problems working with SmartThings. It looks like there are solutions for everything, but I wanted to make sure…
16 GE Link bulbs
Amazon Echo (used for voice control of lighting)
3 Nest Protects (Not officially supported, but there seems to be working code floating around.)
1 Nest Thermostat (Gen 1)
1 Lutron Connected Bulb Remote (used as a scene controller to adjust bedroom lighting to 4 predefined settings)
1 Ecolink Z-Wave motion detector (used to trigger kitchen lights on between sunset and sunrise when motion is detected and off again 5 minutes after motion stopped)
Some basic integration via IFTTT such as NEST smoke alarm = all lights on. Nothing complicated.
Is there anything here that I shouldn’t be able to get working in a similar fashion using the ST hub?
My primary challenge with Wink is simply response time. Turning on/off lights is frequently rather delayed between button/app and the actual light status change. I also enjoy tinkering since I’m a software developer and ST seems way more open in that regard.
The Lutron Connected Bulb Remote will not work with SmartThings yet. There are people looking into it, including official SmartThings staff, but it’s not there yet.
If you just want to trigger groups of devices with a button press, the Aeon minimote, which typically sells for about $25, can do the same thing with the SmartThings system. Very popular in the community. What it doesn’t have is a dim up and dim down button.
The nest thermostat is in the same situation as the nest protects. There is some community provided code that generally works with it, but is a violation of your terms of service for your nest account. So SmartThings says “use it at your own risk.” They would like to have an official integration, but Nest requires a code review and approval of any individual app, which doesn’t fit the SmartThings structure which allows individual customers to write their own code. So it’s not clear if an official integration will ever happen.
Thank you for the feedback and advice, @JDRoberts. Good to know that I would be able to get things at least mostly working aside from the Lutron remote (which I’m using as a wall-switch of sorts). I’ll look into other options, including the Aeon minimote, to solve that issue.
If you’re looking for a multibutton wall switch, there are a few options, although none are officially supported. Personally, I like the smartenIT 3 toggle, which is battery operated and works well. But it only has three toggles, not four.
There’s a Leviton four button wall switch which some community members are using, and an enerwave seven button. Both of those have to be wired to power, though.
You can create what is essentially a mini relay using a $20 Walmart wifi iPhone and SmartTiles, a very popular customizable dashboard app. That gives you a lot of options, but you have to decide how you’re going to power the phone. Either just take it down to charge or add some kind of charging station.
Aeon labs is promising a four button wall-mounted device later this year, but they have a habit of announcing product sometimes years in advance of when they actually come to market so we’ll have to see what happens on that one.
And of course they may someday be official integration with the Lutron device, but again we’ll have to wait to see what happens.
I would say that wall-mounted multibutton controllers is probably one of SmartThings’ weakest areas. many of these devices do exist using a zwave protocol. But most of those work through direct control of the end devices, and that doesn’t fit the SmartThings architecture. SmartThings needs the switch to communicate to the hub, so that they can include both Zigbee and zwave devices in a scene. So this deficiency is one reason why the wall mount tablet or phone dashboards are so popular.
Anyway, lots of things to look at, it’s just going to depend on your specific needs.
Welcome to ST, you’re jumping in around a firmware update and a whirlwind of complaints (most of which are justified) but as one ex-Wink user to another, you’re much better off here than you are on Wink.
Note that few things run locally yet but to be honest I’ve found that even going through the cloud (and from what I’ve heard from the local control beta testers for Wink), that ST’s cloud is still faster than Wink’s local control
