[NEED HELP]Allowing users to control & monitor Z-Wave based devices when NOT on local network

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Hello Community,

So this is what I am expected to develop:

  1. Using the AOETEC SMART HUB and the SmartThings (to be abbreviated as ST for the conversation) App, connect a Z-Wave enabled device(say a Z-Wave enabled Switch). Here the smart hub will act as a controller. Here the Smart Hub is connected with the local internet of the end user either by an ethernet cable or Wi-Fi.
  2. From what I understand, the user will be able to control the Z-Wave enabled switch ONLY on the local network using the ST App.
  3. Consider a scenario that the user is at the office and he/she remembers… “Oh, I forgot to turn the Z-Wave Enabled switch OFF [at home]”.
  4. Now I need to develop a solution which enables the user to turn off the switch when he/she is NOT on the local network.

Proposed/Probable solution: CLOUD! Oh, only if the user could somehow control it using SOME cloud service.

I saw some tutorials and found that this can be done using the USB Stick (which works as a gateway) connected to a local computer running the HomeAssistant. The HA provides subscription to some cloud service for 5 bucks per month. But I am not sure if the same method can be used in the case of ST.

Maybe I am not looking at the right places, but can someone please point me to the location where I can find some probable solution to my problem? This is my first time working on an IoT project. Any help would be appreciated.

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It is almost the exact opposite. The user will only be able to control the Z-Wave enabled switch via the cloud.

SmartThings IS a cloud service. The ST app is a cloud client. When you use the app to control a Z-Wave device it is communicating with the ST cloud which in turn communicates with the hub. So your project is to make ST work how it works already.

ST also has a Rest API.

The hub is a point of presence for SmartThings on your LAN. It has the capability to act autonomously in the absence of an internet connection but it cannot be directly controlled as such.

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WOW! Thanks a lot for the information!

Since the ST app is a cloud server, the user does not need to pay for the cloud service, correct? I did not find any details about it.

Also, is it possible to send the firmware updates for my Z-Wave enabled device connected to the Hub?

The hub is a point of presence for SmartThings on your LAN. It has the capability to act autonomously in the absence of an internet connection but it cannot be directly controlled as such.

I didn’t get this.

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Correct, there is no charge to use the ST app. You only need a ST hub and the app to control it.

No, not at this time directly from the hub. There is a way to do it with a Zwave stick and if you search the forums, there are a lot of posts on this subject.

The ST hub will work on the local network if there is no internet connection but can only be controlled by the app through an internet connection via the ST cloud. Even when your mobile device is connected locally on the same network as the hub, you still need an internet connection for the app to connect to the hub and control it. There is no direct connect between the app and the hub.

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Hi @mlchelp ,

Thanks for taking time to respond. Much appreciated.

Correct, there is no charge to use the ST app. You only need a ST hub and the app to control it.

Thanks a lot for the clarification.

No, not at this time directly from the hub. There is a way to do it with a Zwave stick and if you search the forums, there are a lot of posts on this subject.

While I will do my research on this, is there a way we can use the Z-Wave Stick (like this one: Z-Stick Gen5+) with the SmartThings hub solely for the purpose of OTA?

The ST hub will work on the local network if there is no internet connection but can only be controlled by the app through an internet connection via the ST cloud. Even when your mobile device is connected locally on the same network as the hub, you still need an internet connection for the app to connect to the hub and control it. There is no direct connect between the app and the hub.
Ah thanks for the clarification. This is what I understand:

  1. My user is in his home and he wants to control his Z-Wave enabled devices. To do so the Hub needs to be connected to Wi-Fi router and the mobile phone (in which the app is being used) MAY or MAY NOT be connected to the same Wi-Fi network. Now to control the Z-Wave network with his phone, there must be an ACTIVE internet connection. So it does not matter if the user is in the home or at the office, as long as the ST Hub is connected to an ACTIVE internet connection, he can control the Z-Wave network from his APP. Is this point (1) correct?

  2. The internet is DOWN. But there is an active Wi-Fi network at home (i.e., the Wi-Fi router is powered ON and functioning properly). This does not mean that the user can control his Z-Wave devices from the App (from HOME or from OFFICE or anywhere but home) because an active internet connection is required to put everything on CLOUD (the APP).

The ST hub will work on the local network if there is no internet connection but can only be controlled by the app through an internet connection via the ST cloud.

  1. By the statement “ST Hub will work” it just means that the Z-Wave Mesh Network will keep working as per the current configuration. Say the current configuration for a particular switch is “OFF”, the particular configuration will remain as it is. But the user cannot change it because there is no internet connection. Is this statement (3) correct?
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Correct. At the time of this posting, the user does not need to pay for the cloud service.

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We should note, however, that, from the very beginning, SmartThings has been trying to find ways to get people to pay for extra services. At one point you could pay for security monitoring, but that’s no longer available. At another point you could pay for extra video storage, but that’s no longer available. And there was a joint project with a security service in Europe, where you could pay for a package of services, but that’s no longer available.

The main point is that Samsung can, at any time, start charging for whatever they want to: there is no promise of “free forever“ with SmartThings. So it’s just something to be aware of.

For example, under the terms of service that you agree to when you set up a smartthings account, Samsung could decide tomorrow that it’s going to start charging a fee for being able to use Alexa or Google Assistant with smartthings. I’m not saying that they will, I’m just saying that they could, and since it sounds like you are designing something where you will be providing services based on SmartThings to other people, it’s something to be aware of. :thinking:

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Yes, I have not personaly done it but there are many posts on the forums on how to do it. Maybe @JDRoberts would have more info on this.

Correct.

Correct

Correct. and any routines or automations that are running on the hub will also continue to work without internet as long as all the devices are local to the hub.

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Partially correct.

A) an active Internet connection is always required in order for the hub to communicate with the SmartThings app.

B) all notifications, including state changes, require an active Internet connection. Also, if the hub has been disconnected from the Internet for a while, and then gets reconnected, you might suddenly get a bunch of old notifications, which can be quite confusing.

C) you can set up some “routines” ahead of time which will be stored on the hub itself, and can be used even if the Internet is out. For example, you might have a routine where walking past a motion sensor turns on a light. That will not require the Internet.

However, the status of the light in the app will not get updated if the Internet is not available. So people might be walking around the home triggering various local routines, and there would be nothing in the app to show that the lights were going on and off. Or, for example, that a security siren was going off.

D) but not all routines can run locally in this way. There are a number of conditions that you might put into a routine which will then require that they run in the cloud. There is a tiny icon indicator of a house in the SmartThings app to tell you which can run without the Internet, but it’s definitely not always obvious.

At one point @h0ckeysk8er had a list of conditions that could cause a routine to require the cloud. The list has changed over time, so it can also be a little hard to keep up with. :thinking:

E) smartThings is still primarily a cloudbased system, so the hub does expect to itself be connected to the cloud quite often, at least once a day, and if it isn’t, things can get out of sync.

——
So with regard to your statement…

The user cannot change the switch through the app without an active Internet connection.

They might be able to change it if they had predefined a routine which triggered the switch change because of another device change. If they had created a routine where turning on zwave switch A would cause zwave switch B to go on, that might still happen even without an active Internet connection: it just depends on the details of the routine.

Also, you may be aware of this already, but if the Z wave switch is wired into the mains, it will probably still work as a manual switch, even if there is no Internet connection. But it depends on the model and on the details.

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This is recent and may help you with the firmware upgrade.

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The way I used to recommend doing this doesn’t appear to work well under the new architecture. But both @csstup and @HalD have done this successfully, using different Z wave sticks and somewhat different methods, so it can certainly be done. But it’s not easy and requires significant technical understanding.

In one approach, you add the stick to the SmartThings hub as a secondary controller. The problem there is you have to figure out exactly which device IDs you want to update, and that isn’t always obvious. Also, it can take a very long time, depending on the security levels, and that can cause some havoc with other actions on the network. So while I used to recommend that method, I no longer do except in a few specific cases.

The other approach is to remove the device to be updated from the SmartThings network, and then add it to the Z stick as a primary and then update it there. This has the advantage of not interfering with any of the other activity on your SmartThings network, but it does mean you would need to later re-add the updated device to SmartThings and redo any routines or associations. That’s a lot of time and trouble. And, of course, if the device to be updated is a repeater, you might create some network issues there while the work is being done.

In both approaches, you will need to use update software on a PC. You can’t really do it on a mobile device.

So… in most cases, in the SmartThings environment I would consider this a task for a field tech, not an end user. Obviously, there are many power users who can do this themselves, but that’s a different group.

Here’s one discussion thread that’s pretty current:

Leviton Dimmer Switch constantly going offline after recent update - #19 by csstup

@mlchelp

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I have updated my Leviton devices and some of my Zooz devices.

The easiest method is to add the stick as a secondary controller as this doesn’t disrupt any automations. Less desirable is using the stick as a primary controller for its own mesh. That requires fully removing the devices to be updated from SmartThings.

My limited experience is that Zooz devices must be removed from SmartThings as they will require a factory reset after being updated. Your device manufacturer will almost certainly have firmware update instructions in their support knowledge base.

One thing to note is that the update software presents the device Network IDs in decimal. The Advanced Users website gives them in hexadecimal.

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I haven’t reviewed my list to verify that all of these are still valid recently, but this is a list of things I have found that can cause Routines to run in the cloud:

   * Scenes
   * Lighting Groups
   * Member Location
   * Devices from cloud->cloud integrations
   * Notification actions
   * Weather triggers
   * STHM triggers and actions
   * " Any Day" time precondition
   * Cloud virtual devices
   * Devices on two different hubs
   * 'Only once per day’ or Limit in Rules
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Correct. and any routines or automations that are running on the hub will also continue to work without internet as long as all the devices are local to the hub.

Is this TRUE only for ST Hub? What I am trying to understand is, is it how this technology works where your HUB needs to be connected to internet in order to become accessible? Do other vendors provide solutions where you don’t need internet access?

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Yes. Every hub manufacturer makes their own decision for each model as to whether or not they will use a cloud.

Hubitat, Homey, Homeseer, Fibaro, Ezlo Vera, Zooz, and several others all provide zwave hubs which are almost entirely local. (Apple’s HomeKit is also entirely local, including the app, except for voice control, but does not at present integrate easily with zwave.) you just have to research each hub to see what it offers.

SmartThings is somewhat unusual in the amount of active cloud connection it requires. :thinking:

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It’s also probably important to note that Samsung has publicly committed long-term to the use of Matter and Zigbee, but specifically NOT to zwave.

The newest standalone SmartThings hub, the Station, doesn’t even have a Z wave radio. Neither do the hubs that are being built into Samsung smart appliances and AV devices.

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Plus, the Z wave implementation that SmartThings does support in its older standalone hubs has some significant gaps compared to the competition.

Gaps in SmartThings’ Zwave Implementation (2022)

If I were a zwave device manufacturer looking for a third-party Hub to base my rollout on, SmartThings wouldn’t even make my candidate list. :man_shrugging:t2:

But obviously, that’s an individual decision.

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