I would agree - except as I said before, for all intents and purposes, I have no wall switches in the house (or rather there are switches which are not working as expected and need to be taken off). So I am faced with the option of buying dumb switches, or something a little more intelligent. I need to cover about 40 3"x3" squares in the walls all over the house with something - anything, as long as it looks good enough, is 3"x3" (or close), and delivers some degree of functionality. I have not settled on the Wallmote as yet, though I have ordered one, and I will test it as soon as it arrives and I manage to wrap my head around setting up the hub, installing the right device handler, and configuring it. Something tells me that on its own will take several days considering I am a novice here.
Also - I would put the possibility of Internet being down as close to nil - with two different Internet connections to the house, of two different providers, which use different submarine cables to connect to the main backbones in mainland Europe… So the chance of downtime is mostly determined by the probability of the hub developing a fault, or the Smartthings cloud being down. I have looked at the link kindly provided by JDRoberts - and of course it shows about 6 incidents a month, but most appear to be minor incidents, but definitely that probability is not Zero.
May I ask - if Smartthings in future starts to natively support Wallmotes and Nano switches and Dimmers - would those devices then be able to use local device handlers, and therefore be able to run locally?
Remember also that smartthings can and does push out firmware updates to the hub which will take the hub off-line for anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours. These updates can be neither refused nor delayed. We usually get a few days notice ahead of time, but not always. Historically there have been one or two of these a month, but sometimes more. Those don’t appear on the bug reports or status page lists, but they are effectively still outages. If your only means of controlling the lights is cloud dependent, you are definitely going to have some issues, even if your Internet is working fine.
As far as unplanned outages, there has been at least one a month for each of the last 20 months except, I believe, January 2017. Again, sometimes it only lasts a few minutes, sometimes a few hours, but if your only light switches don’t work at all when smartthings is down, you are going to have some issues.
May I ask - if Smartthings in future starts to natively support Wallmotes and Nano switches and Dimmers - would those devices then be able to use local device handlers, and therefore be able to run locally?
Those are two separate steps in the process. Many devices which are officially supported do not run locally. Some probably never will. Device type handlers which do run locally are distributed to every single smartthings customer along with the hub firmware updates, so they are fairly selective in which devices they choose for local operation. Also, they’ve never said, but my assumption would be that they prioritize the most popular devices first.
My own guess, and this is only a guess, is that devices which use central scene commands are unlikely to ever run locally, at least not for a very long time. Same reason that even now routines do not run locally. (The Wallmotes use central scene commands.)
So as always, plan based on what smartthings does today, not on what you hope it will do in the future.
The Neo switch is a good candidate for a number of use cases, but it does not match the requirements that the OP has specified. For one thing, it’s not a dimmer.
Thanks for your suggestion - to be honest, I have no intention of returning anything… I will test first, and then decide. I’ll admit I am a little stubborn, maybe, but I will try and report results.
I appreciate any suggestions though. In your pic, I see Dimmers, Shutter Switches, relays, and Bypasses - likely for the dimmers. I do not see on-wall switches or a replacement for Smartthings. Or are you saying to just change all the devices to Fibaro ones?
Thanks, I’d missed this - it still runs in the cloud, but I’ve switched over in case it ever makes it into the firmware.
From those swapping over from @benerkens DTH (thanks), you can do so without having to remove/reinclude. Just change the parent DTH to Z-Wave Dual Switch and the child device to the Z-Wave Binary Switch Endpoint DTH.
Co-incidentally, a guy came over to my house today to take measurements for the door of my house, which I am changing soon. He asked me what I want to install as a door lock. I immediately said I would like to have a Zigbee or Z-Wave enabled electric door lock which I can then connect to SmartThings, and he said ok - send me the links. Upon starting my research, I am obviously not understanding something. The many Yale locks I find online - I have no clue whether these can on their own lock a door with just 4 batteries. The door locks at three points - on the side and then there is a vertical metal bar behind the door that lock the door from above and below… Surely there is something I am not getting here.
Where do I start my research please? I did look around the community but the cases are different to mine
It just seems to me that there is another component necessary to lock a door, something I must be missing completely.
The Monday offers have been 20% off (for some items at least) - I’ve been getting a few £48 Fibaro/Qubino for £38.40. It looks like they matched that - a great saving overall.
I’m finding I’m leaning towards the Qubinos over the Fibaros for my few final switches (I have neutrals) as I like the ability to add the temperature sensor.
It will depend on the exact design of your current lot. If it is a standard “mortise” multipoint lock, then Yale makes some, but they require that it be professionally installed.
As you may know, in North America locks are typically just a single point, making the lock designs much simpler and the big lock companies will still allow you to do self install. But once you get into multi point lock it all gets much more complicated.
If you like happens to have a single thumbturn lever on the interior of the house, there is a retrofit device that you can put over that lever and make the existing lock smart that way. But some mortise locks require turning to levers at the same time even from the interior of the house.
Here are the mounting options which work with the Danalock:
Note that you would have to use a separate keypad device if you also want a keypad on the exterior side of the door.
Thank you. It is a multi-point lock - which is almost standard where I live. Guess it’s not as safe as in North America
I just watched a Yale video. It seems like it’s not a full lock - It’s mounted externally on the door, and utilises the “existing” lock (which in my case does not exist yet) in order to open. I guess I require more research on this one.
In the US, people typically have two or even three single point locks on the same door. The deadbolt is one lock, the door knob has another lock, and sometimes there is a second deadbolt. So the safety is the same but it takes more devices.
As others have said, I would not have a wall switch in my house that required cloud-based support to turn on a light in the room. Networking delays and service outages will cause great frustration to users that know how conventional lighting is supposed to work. I would recommend adding smarts behind conventional switches that control their loads directly or get an integrated smart switch that does the same. As long as you have power, such switches will work just like a dumb switch would.
However, if you insist on controlling an Aeotec Nano-Switch/Dimmer with an Aeotec WallMote, I would recommend configuring the WallMote to do so directly without any dependency on SmartThings. I have a couple of WallMote Quads with one button that is configured this way. If I have power and z-wave connectivity between these devices, the button will work. There is no dependency on SmartThings, Internet access or cloud services.
- to be honest, I have no intention of returning anything… I will test first, and then decide. I’ll admit I am a little stubborn, maybe, but I will try and report results.