I have a Ring Alarm system (with base station and ring extender) with a Ring doorbell, several Ring contact sensors, several Ring motion sensors, and numerous Leviton dimmer and appliance plug-in modules. I have various models of Amazon Echos (Gen 4, Flex, Show 5 and Show 8) throughout my home for Alexa voice commands and routines.
I recently updated my home wifi network to a NetGear Orbi router/2 satellite mesh which is working perfectly in my 2500 square foot two-story with unfinished basement home.
I am interested in adding SmartThings programmable scenes, conditional logic, and virtual devices (to indicate status and states of various devices and conditions) that I can initiate via Alexa commands and other time and status triggers.
I am trying to determine 1) What is the most current and recommended SmartThings hub to purchase? and 2) If the Wifi-mesh-enabled hub is the recommended hub, 3) what is the specific model number? 4) Can I disable the wifi-mesh portion of the hub to avoid conflicts with my NetGear Orbi mesh wifi network?
I would avoid the ST combination mesh WiFi router plus hub devices. Based on the following, it probably won’t be long before those disappear as well.
It is an uneasy time right now to be buying a SmartThings hub. Too much uncertainty on what the future is going to look like, IMHO. If you can afford to wait a few weeks/months, perhaps things will become more clear. If you need something sooner, perhaps look for used v2 or v3 ST hub. Or, check out other home automation platforms altogether, depending on your needs.
I wouldn’t try to mix the smartthings Wi-Fi mesh hub with eero.
SmartThings hub availability and future right now is uncertain, so it would be better to wait.
if all you are looking for is conditional logic, then there are other platforms you could consider.
A) If you already have iOS devices, Apple’s HomeKit is a good candidate as iOS 14 added a lot of logic options. And if you have some technical skills, you can use homebridge to bring in virtual Switches and the ring alarm system.
B) Ifttt Pro is another option which is a cloud-based rules engine that has added a lot of complexity. It now has a monthly subscription, but it’s worth considering. The only thing I’m not sure about is if you can do virtual switches that way. Also, I personally have some concerns about the company’s long-term viability since they have just switched to you paid plans and did so in a fairly awkward way. But if you want to wait for smartthings to sort things out with its hubs, it would be a good way to bridge the gap.
C) and of course Hubitat is from a very small company founded by former smartthings users who wanted a local system instead. It has become quite popular. It definitely has virtual switches and complex logic support. It also has a lot of community-created code to extend echo functions which Are no longer available on smartthings because they took too many resources from the shared cloud. (EchoSpeaks, etc). What it doesn’t have is a polished app, but you can use sharptools for that.
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You might try also asking your questions in the Reddit home automation subforum. They are brand agnostic and might have additional ideas.
