Interesting new device carrying the brand “Samsung SmartThings”
Too bad it requires AT&T service - not a fan of the company!
Interesting new device carrying the brand “Samsung SmartThings”
Too bad it requires AT&T service - not a fan of the company!
It also will only work with the new app. But there are a couple of people in the community who have ordered them. I don’t know if anyone has it working yet.
edited per @tleroy 's correction below. My apologies for any confusion.
It works with the V2 hub, but it does NOT work with the classic app.
I had to load the new app so I could activate the tracker. The app tried to duplicate my location, but none of the cloud based devices work. The tracker works in the new app, but it just reports coordinates in the classic app.
So now I can’t integrate the tracker into my existing automations on the classic app, and I can’t create automations on the new app because it can’t see any of my cloud based devices.
Well, it kind of works. I had to set it up using the new Samsung ST app, but then it shows up in classic showing longitude and latitude.
However, I think if you add it using the developer portal, you can just use “KT Tracker” which is what it shows up as once I added it with the new app.
All we need is for someone to create a device handler for it. I pro
Here is what the battery shows on the developer page:
2018-09-30 10:27 AM EDT - 3 hours ago | battery | 80 | |
---|---|---|---|
2018-09-29 11:00 PM EDT - 15 hours ago | battery | 95 | |
2018-09-29 10:09 PM EDT - 16 hours ago | battery | 100 | |
2018-09-29 9:25 PM EDT - 16 hours ago | battery | 95 |
Hope they have a firmware fix for the battery life, because this is kind of useless otherwise. I’m not going to charge this every 4 days. It would work great in a vehicle or in a situation where you have power to it.
I’m also not sure why we can’t change the SIM card and use a $1/month service after our free year is up:
https://info.aeris.com/iot-sim-cards-connectivity-2018-wireless-tech
It looks pretty sealed unfortunately, but the back does have a visible seam.
Below if the best review I’ve found of it so far. Looks like it doesn’t integrate well at all with traditional smartapps since it doesn’t seem to have presence sensor capability. I ended up ordering one several days ago, but I’m prepared to be disappointed with its integration. The lack of a paging function is a pretty big omission for a tracking device, too.
I am sure it can be made to integrate well since it exposes longitude and latitude in the classic app. That video is just for average users who aren’t developers. I think in time we will be able to do more with it.
Personally I am kind of mad about not being able to access the SIM card. I’m not paying $5/month later when there are $1/month plans that use the same network so I may return it, but want to play with it some more before that.
Nice review. Rose Is always very thorough.
To me, the use case that jumps out at me is if you have an elementary school aged kid who doesn’t have a smart phone and you want to know that the kid got on the bus on time to come home.
This is a real world issue for some families. My nephew used to miss the bus about twice a month and it drove everybody crazy, including the school. (The problem had to do with the fact that his dad would pick him up from school sometimes, but not on any regular schedule, so it never surprised the bus driver if he wasn’t there.)
Once the kid gets old enough to have a smartphone, you can use life 360, but when they are younger, this is a use case which hasn’t had a whole a lot of good solutions in the under $20/month range. Especially if you don’t need 2 way voice. There are a bunch of good kid trackers out there, but they tend to be quite expensive and have a bunch of other features you might not need.
https://www.safewise.com/resources/wearable-gps-tracking-devices-for-kids-guide
Of course this depends on the kid having the tracker with them. My nephew usually had his backpack, so this would’ve worked for that. Existing alternatives are usually wearables of some kind.
I wouldn’t use it for tracking a pet, because it’s just not the right size and shape and there are some other issues as well. I’ve mentioned before that my brother has an escape artist dog and uses The Whistle/Tagg tracker. It’s more expensive than this one, but it just works really well and it fits nicely on the dog’s collar. But the cheapest plan is seven dollars a month, and you don’t get the first year free.
So this looks like an interesting gadget to me, but I personally wouldn’t have any use for it. I think it’s going to come down to The specifics of the desired use case.
So JD you never get lost…
If there are any developers interested in this, here are the attributes and datatypes for the tracker I dumped using the developer site . The parse data also seems to be logged from the KT Tracker device handler, but I didn’t feel comfortable putting my location, serialnumber and other stuff on a public forum. We don’t need to do a parse routine though.
All you folks need is a virtual presence device handler and a smart app. The smart app would subscribe to the geolocation capability of the Tracker (using the KT Tracker device handler samsung has us using out of the box), and pass this to the virtual presence device handler when certain location parameters are met (e.g. 20 meters from home, etc…). Pretty simple if someone wants to spend some time on it. I would if I had a need (or for an hourly rate), but the sim card has me mad enough to return it.
I think I could get at the internals, I just can’t do it and still get my money back. That back cover is really on there. I suspect there is glue or something holding it. I’m not keeping an LTE device I can’t access the sim card of…
Data dump I made of the attributes (ommitted values for reasons stated above):
TRACKER: attribute mnhw, values: []
TRACKER: attribute mnos, values: []
TRACKER: attribute mnpv, values: []
TRACKER: attribute mndt, values: []
TRACKER: attribute mnmo, values: []
TRACKER: attribute mnml, dataType: STRING
TRACKER: attribute dmv, dataType: STRING
TRACKER: attribute dmv, values: []
TRACKER: attribute icv, values: []
TRACKER: attribute st, values: []
TRACKER: attribute switch, dataType: ENUM
TRACKER: attribute heading, values: []
TRACKER: attribute mnmn, values: []
TRACKER: attribute battery, dataType: NUMBER
TRACKER: attribute mnpv, dataType: STRING
TRACKER: attribute icv, dataType: STRING
TRACKER: attribute mnpv, values: []
TRACKER: attribute psmMovementInterval, values: []
TRACKER: attribute mnsl, dataType: STRING
TRACKER: attribute mnos, dataType: STRING
TRACKER: attribute supportedButtonValues, dataType: JSON_OBJECT
TRACKER: attribute vid, dataType: STRING
TRACKER: attribute button, values: [pushed, double, held]
TRACKER: attribute data, dataType: JSON_OBJECT
TRACKER: attribute accuracy, values: []
TRACKER: attribute n, dataType: STRING
TRACKER: attribute lastUpdateTime, values: []
TRACKER: attribute numberOfButtons, values: []
TRACKER: attribute di, dataType: STRING
TRACKER: attribute mnmo, dataType: STRING
TRACKER: attribute longitude, values: []
TRACKER: attribute mnmo, values: []
TRACKER: attribute st, dataType: STRING
TRACKER: attribute data, values: []
TRACKER: attribute mnhw, dataType: STRING
TRACKER: attribute dmv, values: []
TRACKER: attribute mnfv, values: []
Capability dump of default KT Tracker device handler:
TRACKER: capability Geolocation
TRACKER: capability Execute
TRACKER: capability Ocf
TRACKER: capability Power Source
TRACKER: capability Button
TRACKER: capability Refresh
TRACKER: capability Battery
Just in case there is any doubt how ridiculous $5/month is after the first year:
https://marketplace.att.com/products/att-iot-dataplans-lte-m-us
I see 4 IoT plans for under $5. Just how much data does this device need if it is just sending GPS and battery data every hour (lowest you can set it to is 10 minutes).
SmartThings has really gone down hill. The new app, and now this rollout of what should be a bleeding edge device. How hard would it have been to add Presence capability to this device and a SIM card slot?
PS: there are array out of bounds errors if you watch Samsung’s own “KT Tracker” device handler in live logging on the developer site: “java.lang.NullPointerException: Cannot invoke method getAt() on null object @line 94 (parse)”. Hope someone at Samsung cares to fix this for others. I am returning mine to Best Buy.
You’re assuming it has a SIM card…
It doesn’t is what I found out
It probably has an eSIM. If you can find the number you might be able to register it with AT&T separately.
I just purchased one of these today. I got it added to the new SmartThings app. I can’t see the device in the classic app, nor graph or logs. How did you guys get it to show up in classic?
I’m familiar with the module and technically it’s capable of presence and Wi-Fi/BT assisted location. But the SmartThings app smallest zone is 700ft which is 35 acres! I’d hope for a firmware improvement, but I’m still waiting on my crippled hub v2 Bluetooth, which would work nicely for micro locating this crippled lte/Wi-Fi/BT presence sensor.
I never could
When I got mine, I had to load the new app, and I ended up with 2 home locations. One had the gps, and the other had all the rest of my devices. I transferred the gps to the other location and it showed up in the classic app.
It only relays the most recent coordinates in the classic app. You can’t interact with it, other than to turn it off. You have to open the new app if you want to see the map or settings.
P.S. at some point during my multiple home locations adventure, I tried deleting one of the locations and disconnected every single device from the hub. I didn’t have to re program my automations, but I did have to manually re-join everything.
Thanks, yes that was the first thing I tried. My problem may be that I already had the new app, back when I was hopeful it was an “upgrade” to the classic. I have 161 devices, and no stranger to the power struggle between Samsung and SmartThings.
On another note, I looked up the FCC data, and privacy is set to expire in January. What’s available is the 2.4ghz Wi-Fi and BLE test data. Power output on band 2/4 is higher that 12. Band 2 shows the best power levels, which is also the most commonly deployed indoor DAS coverage for ATT. (Airports, malls, stadiums, etc) yes, This is an ATT band specific device. Also, of note att currently offers a $30/year unlimited plan for cat m1 devices.
interesting. Isn’t Samsung charging $50 after the first year?
Tagg tracker charges $95/year for their profit markup.