I’ve been starting to look into home automation as I am having a new home built and I’m pretty sure that I am going to go with Smart Things as my hub. The only thing scaring me off though is the issue the smart things hub had about a year and change ago when it would set off the alarms in the middle of the night. I read about it and saw that CNET pulled their Editor’s choice rating due to this but I have not seen any article or thread that explained that the issue has been resolved.
My other question is that is there any benefit to sticking with one standard like Z-Wave or Zigbee for the whole house? I know they act as repeaters (at least from what I’ve been reading) and I know that Philips Hue uses Zigbee but I’m a bit worried that mixing and matching could cause issues overall even though ST does both.
Also I would like to have color changing lights in two rooms. Besides Philips is there any one that would be recommended? I know philips hue needs the hub to change colors?
The reliability issues still exist. See the following, for example:
With regard to the Phillips hue bridge, it forms its own mini network, so while you are right that it uses zigbee,it will not affect any of your other devices and will not act as repeaters for them.
With regard to choosing one protocol or another, different people make different choices in these regards. See the following for my own recent answer to the same question.
