Wow, I just saw this on The Verge. I was very torn between Revolv and SmartThings at the beginning of the year. Revolv’s $300 price tag and SmartThings’ openness finally pushed me to buy SmartThings instead of Revolv.
What about Revolv attracted you; was it just the extra radios?
The extra radios were intriguing but primarily I couldn’t differentiate between the two until I looked at these forums and saw that individual users could hack away at will. That seemed unique.
At the risk of being flattering: I’d say there are quite a few people on the SmartThings team that share a lot of the home wireless communication expertise of the “10 people in the world” from Revolv.
Dude you have no idea!
Greetings! So I am one of the many Revolv users who were just orphaned by Google/Nest. I’ll be honest, it was the acceptance of Insteon and the other radios that enticed me to give them a chance. Revolv had a great attitude, sense of humor and the idea of future thought. Having one hub that basically included all protocols seemed like a safe bet. During the 3 months I was a user I had a great experience. Phone support, fast responses to emails and updates decently often to the software. Then on friday while mowing my lawn I received the push notification of death from the Revolv app. “Good news! Revolv is now a Nest company!” At first I thought, well this could be great. Revolv clearly is in need of backing as they are releasing software and features at a snails pace. Only to go on their website to see that Nest immediately shut down the hub. The ONLY product they made. According to Matt of Nest they are not “fans of yet another hub” and therefor want all devices to talk via their Wifi IP Thread protocol. They want all their customers to be cloud to cloud communicating, making internet and the maintainance of all these other “works with Nest” partners servers need to work together all the time. Something I have no interest in buying into and I’m sure no one else here does as well. Additionally Nest/Revolve refuse to refund anyone who spent $300 on a hub, 31 days ago or more. Josh from Revolv said to me, “I know that this is a frustrating experience. Whenever someone buys a product from a small company there is always the chance that the company will be acquired by a larger company and changes will take place. I don’t know how this risk can be avoided except to strictly buy from large companies. We appreciate that you supported us with your purchase and we hope that you will continue to support our vision for the conscious smart home by following us in the Works With Nest program.” If Revolv went out of business that would be one thing, but they negotiated the terms of the purchase. This was one of the most unprofessional practices I’ve seen a business, especially one Google is part of, conduct. I have about $500 in Insteon products and $500 in z-wave because Revolv bridged them all together.
@Ben Would you mind creating or suggest best to me, the creation of a topic that can welcome all Revolv orphans and maybe give is a little information on how you differ, how you are similar, what the transition might be like for us? Especially addressing the fact that 99% of us probably have some sort of Insteon products.
You should search the forum. Someone built a ST - Insteon bridge that’s not too expensive.
I love the idea of a sticky topic talking about Revolv and SmartThings so the Revolv users can get a sense of what is different with ST to help them get acclimated if they decide to come over. The god news is the existing Revolv hubs will be supported for a while. So, while ST is get Hub v2 ready, Revolv users can eagerly wait in the wings (if they are heavy on the Insteon side). I’m hoping that hub V2 will have Insteon or an option to expand it to include it - and “officially supported” option. 
This is a great idea. We have talked internally about how we could help the Revolv users have a soft landing. We know how much what happened can be frustrating. I’d like to take a little bit of time to create the thread in the next few days - in the meantime can you put forth some more of the things you liked and saw as gaps with Revolv?
And check this thread out while you wait:
I don’t know that adding the proprietary Insteon radio to a future hub is something we will do, but Thanks to community members like @pstuart and @tslagle13 there are always innovations where needed. Frankly, we were amazed when Revolv announced it has all those radios because of thproblems with interference we knew would be present. Wonder if they created some nice way of alternating which radios broadcast at any given time to avoid that.
Ben, thank you. I’ve been pretty active on the Revolv forums and I would be happy to link whatever you get set up for us all. I know there are some commonalities, but I know there seem to be a lot of additional things Smart Things has done far beyond were Revolv left off. To your point of how Revolv had Inseton, when my devices turned on it was very sequential. I don’t know if they only powered on each radio command by command but I did notice that. I know Staples Connect is adding it as well so it would be a wonderful addition if ST was able to go that route. Thanks again.
But wait a second, I understand that if the company would go bankrupt there would be no recourse. But by acquiring Revolv, Google/Nest inherited all their legal rights and liabilities. They must honor the warranty, whatever it is. I see a potential for a class action suit here.
Exactly! I totally would understand that if they went out of business that there isn’t anything I could do. I wouldn’t just be bummed. But thats not what happened, they were acquired. I was promised features, updates, future development. I also bought over $1000 worth of home automation based on this promise. I know someone mentioned I might be able to get ST to work with Insteon but not being native i’m just not as confident. My home lacks lots of light switches and the Insteon remote light switch is very classy. I also have no neutral in any of my switches, I’ve been told only Insteon has a switch for this. Google/Nest should very much need to honor these warranties, they’re website literally says, “Revolv is now a Nest Company” so how is Nest not responsible?
@Ben The area’s i really liked about Revolv was the native Insteon, I just really like the option, there are many nice Insteon products. As mentioned their remote battery light switches, led wall dimmer switches.
As far as gaps. Well i mean i’m on iOS and I still don’t have conditionals. So when I come home and my lights turn on, it still happens in the middle of the day. Supposedly conditionals was in the latest and last update thats on it’s way but is clearly too little too late.
I unfortunately have a Nest thermostat and would like native control over that.
The geosense (geofense) was very unreliable. Half the time the lights wouldn’t turn on when I got home.
I was looking forward to have greater control over motion sensors. For example, I would like my back light to be at 15%, sense motion, jump to 100% for 15 minutes and then jump back to with 15% or just previous state. For security I love this feature that was promised.
Text or push alerts for switches or motion sensors. I would like to know if someone is in my home via motion sensor and be able to turn that off when I’m home.
I think thats enough for now! Thanks guys!
I am one who had made a decision to go Revolv - fortunately, I made it recently enough to be able to quickly get my money back for the hub with the Nest announcement. I’ve spent quite a bit of time researching the alternatives out there, and to be honest had narrowed down my choices to the Universal Devices ISY-994 or the Vera3. I had ruled out SmartThings due to one thing which for me was a major showstopper - the complete and total lack of ANY offline capability at all.
After spending some time reading here the last day or two, and finding that the forthcoming v2 hub will be introduced in Q1 2015 with offline capabilities, I think I’m going to try to wait and see what the specs & capabilities of the v2 ST hub are as it gets closer to release, before making a decision and hub purchase.
Read the fine print of the Revolv’s Warranty and Terms of Use.
While you are at it, also read the same from SmartThings.
You’ll most certainly find that they very thoroughly disclaim themselves from the type of liability you imply.
In the case of Revolv, my guess is as long as they keep the cloud and basic support running for 1 year from the date of purchase, they’ve met their warranty obligations.
We are ALL in the exact same risky position with SmartThings. If Samsung shuts them down (unlikely, fingers crossed), then we have no recourse for all the installation and SmartApp programming effort put into our homes. Always keep that in mind when purchasing “Things” and when configuring SmartApps. This is a major reason why I am glad that ZigBee and Z-Wave are standards used by multiple vendors – but that won’t help make the SmartApps portable.
That’s why I only use Z-Wave devices, so my risk exposure is limited to $99 investment in ST hub. SmartApps is a nice bonus, but my life does not depend on them. 
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Indeed, that has been my philosophy, but more and more new devices are ZigBee (HUE, GE Link, …). Is Aeon ZigBee?
Regardless, as my system grows, the greater concern I have is the effort I’ve spent to join /configure / group devices, install and configure rules, modes, SmartApps, and personally actually coding SmartApps from scratch in a proprietary environment and cloud. That work is worth much more than $99.
Yep, this is one reason why I went with a Z-Wave thermostat instead of a Nest or Ecobee that relies on an API for integration with SmartThings.
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I actually prefer public, local APIs on any device I look to install. I have made it no secret that Nest (as nice as it is) doesn’t fit my lifestyle, at least as far as its core functions are concerned.
I ended up going with wifi thermostats from Venstar. They aren’t cheap either, but are easily and highly configurable from PC/thermostat/web interface/SD card, and have a wonderful local RESTful API, and support remote sensors. Like Hue, I can avail myself of the cloud functionality if I want to, but it is not necessary as I can communicate with them locally as well.
After a couple a years with them, I can’t think of anything that meets my needs better.
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When it comes to thermostats, I totally agree. It’s too critical of a component to trust it entirely to SmartThings. I also have a wifi thermo with local API (Filtrete 3M-50) that I linked to ST using custom device handler, but I can always fall back to a native mobile app that works both locally and remotely, if I have to.
I was a relatively new Revolv user when the news came out about the shut down. Super disappointed. Fortunately, I picked my hub up off eBay for a nice price, and assuming that the iOS update with conditionals still gets released, it will meet my needs for the time being. I’m looking at SmartThings as an option for replacement, but I’m holding out for V2 to see what’s included - like offline capabilities.
I chose Revolv after a lengthy review process, my main reasons were as follows:
1 - Insteon support. I was already invested in Insteon, I love their products, so that was a big factor.
2 - The promise of multiple radios - seemed like a great investment in the future. Still would like to know what else is in the hub that is not activated. Clear Connect RF?
3 - Committed to HomeKit. As an avid Apple user, this was incredibly appealing to me. I did not make my purchase until after Revolv had announced they would support HomeKit.
I’m going to continue using my Revolv hub, in the hopes of the upcoming iOS update and IFTTT integration, I think I will be set for at least the next six months. It will suck that development has ceased, but there is nothing I can do at this point. I’ll be looking very closely at the next SmartThings hub, but it sounds like Insteon is a no-go, so not sure if that will ultimately work for me.
Thanks for taking us Revolv users under your wing though - speaks volumes about the ST community.