As far as I can tell, the SmartThings guys already work Saturdays and Sundays, so they’ve got that covered ;-).
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For sale:
1 x SmartThings Hub
1 x MicroUSB power cord
1 x Network cord
1 x SmartThings DC Launch T-Shirt in XXL
∞ x Hopes of a Super Early Bird Backer
My Vera 3 has been ordered. What a disappointing end to such a promising platform.
You won’t be disappointed with regard to Windows!
@greysonmorrow, @kg4fku we won’t let you guys down.
I understand your concern. From the outside, the way Samsung acquired Boxee and perhaps others, I see how it can seem troubling. This acquisition is much, much different. We are, in fact a wholly owned subsidiary, operating independently, in our own physical office spaces and with no changes to our team (other than our own organic growth). We are not an “accelerator company” — we are post-accelerator. This is the type of thinking and vision that Samsung is betting WILL influence it as a whole — make it more agile and more open. Odds our we know much more about the initiatives going on inside Samsung than you do. David Eun is an exceptional advocate for SmartThings’ continued independence and the needs for the open platform.
You’ve hit on some of it. Samsung produces some stunning hardware (and admittedly, at the low end, some not so great stuff). We are going to see new devices get incorporated and be able to take advantage of the HUGE research budgets to gain improvements in battery life, processor, and radios, to name just a few. We’ll see screens, voice and gesture control and more. Samsung is agile and iterative in its hardware business in much the same way we are in software.
From Samsung’s side — they are really most interested in the platform. We do software well, we have a great community of developers, and we are the leading OPEN platform. All these things appealed to David and the larger Samsung org.
Maybe we should leave our name as is 
@tslagle13 - Yup. Your friend is right.
@pstuart - jokes aside, we likely will get a little more structure internally, but we are operating independently, right down to payroll, benefits, and other hr and accounting functions. Hard to remain separate if not for this.
As for Homekit compatibility - I think it is the same as it alway has been. We’ll have to see how it all plays out but our plan is to take advantage of as much as we can.
Thread is more of a protocol and groovy is our SmartApp language. Not incompatible. I could see supporting both ZigBee HA and Thread in upcoming products. Smart TVs and opportunities to make many more devices “hubs” is also exciting.
@vnangia - I have read your feelings about Samsung and I don’t know that I can refute them. It doesn’t seem like you have much faith in SmartThings or it’s leadership, in any case. All we can do is be open and honest with you about our plans. You obviously have your own decisions to make regarding products you choose to support. Best of luck.
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@Ben - I disagree. There are plenty of ways for you to refute my concerns. Here are some specific suggestions:
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Clarification on how you intend to share user submissions with Samsung, and specific information on how the user submissions (particularly the non-code, non-sandbox submissions) will be handled by Samsung.
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A written long-term support plan for those of us using the gen 1 hub with Zigbee and Zwave support, given Samsung’s propensity to jump from internal idea to internal idea and vertically integrate and control.
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Given Samsung’s history of acquihiring (c.f. Boxee), a clear and unambiguous timeline for when you intend to deprecate products with sufficient notice that those of us who rely on your devices have time to move to another platform. A sudden death may seem the better option from Samsung’s HR’s perspective, but it’s awful for your users.
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A commitment to publish on a regular basis (every month on the first business of the month, for instance) what is happening with the SmartThings subsidiary. This is our early warning that your staff are leaving or being absorbed into the mothership, or Samsung is otherwise abandoning SmartThings.
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Perhaps a copy of your signed legal agreement with Samsung so we know you stand.
I have serious doubts that you will do any of this, except perhaps change the TOS to clarify the user submission sharing with Samsung. The fact is that you’ve gotten into bed with a company that has, at best, a mediocre reputation in the tech community that is your bread-and-butter customer base. Instead of addressing these valid concerns, we’ve seen a nice rah-rah PR post from Alex; not entirely confidence-boosting, n’est ce pas?
Nice work SmartThings Team!!! Pretty cool for a 2+ year old Company to come this far so quick.
Now when is the Samsung Smart TV app on the way??? My new TV uses hand motions to work some features, and it would be cool to turn off lights and such with just hand movements…
As long at SmartThings stays true to being a leader in the internet of things I could care less. I like the setup and the wholly owned subsidiary, operating independently makes me smile. Now just use some of that Samsung muscle to bring out the killer thing 
The ~$12 to $16 dollar light switch would be a start!
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Excited for you to get the Samsung smart bulb incorporated! Maybe a little discount to early adopters;) lol jk
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You guys have been nothing but great to us as customers and early adopters - and glad to hear you feel your independence isn’t threatened. Also personally happy to hear that client platform support continues to grow.
So are you guys all east coasters moving to the west coast? That may be a bigger shock than joining a massive company. I’d get in the really good east coast BBQ while you can. ;-).
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This!
Agree whole heartedly. I think if you guys were gonna get swallowed up you wouldn’t be out here telling us other wise… STs is a great company and I think it always will be 
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I would say that is the equivalent of jumping off a ship that may someday hit an iceberg to catch a ride on a dead whale.
Having switched almost a year and half ago from the Vera platform, I can tell you Vera is a dead system. They have completely alienated their user community (their biggest asset) by a total lack of support and a series of half assed “beta” software upgrades.
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Just looked over some of the different things that Samsung makes. I am looking forward to the opportunity of pairing my next Thread refrigerator, washer, dryer, oven, fans, dishwasher, iron, TV, coffee maker and lightbulbs to my favorite home automation service. Fewer switches, appliance temperature controls, power monitoring, alerts. I can then turn down the heat on my gas range without removing my behind from the sofa. Fantastic!
Put Thread on the next hub version release, let me migrate existing smartapps and z-wave/zigbee devices over. Keep the IoT management software and service free and awesome and I expect Samsung’s new subsidiary will send a lot of customers to buy Samsung products. I’m fine with all this. I think all my device tiles will even fit for once on my 65" Samsung TV screen.
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@vnangia , I’m guessing you are an Apple fanboy, for so much hate for Samsung.
I don’t use Samsung phones for one year now, I use a Nexus 5, but my wife has a Note 2. I’m not a fan of the modifications Sammy does on the original Android, but I don’t see them as a closed company. You can still get any of their phones or tablets and install any Android custom ROM on it. Samsung could easily prevent this from happening.
Honestly, fanboy speech aside, I feel much more comfortable with SmartThings being acquired by Samsung rather than Apple or Microsoft, which are companies well known for being awfully essentially evil and just not playing with other platforms.
@Ben and all SmartThings team: congratulations! I bought my first SmartThing hub last week (I know, came a little late to the party), and besides the weird “Appstore” concept, I’m just loving it. I just would like you guys to be more open about the development of new functions and support for new devices. I’m not asking for an exact ETA, but just some realistic prevision of when support to Nest and Foscam will be available, just to mention a a few.
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I couldn’t agree more. I would definitely replace every single appliance I have for Samsung models if they could talk to my SmartThings Hub, Being able to remotely turn my washer/dryer on, or put my freezer on super-cool mode so my bier is perfect when I get home, would be awesome. Ohh, and pre-heating my oven so when I get home I can just put the turkey to roast!!!
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Really? Not even waiting around to see?
Well what are you selling them for? I will gladly take them off your hands
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This would be good to have.
I’m not 100% sure what you’re looking for here. Are you looking for a commitment to continue to support Zigbee and Zwave? I can’t see them dropping support anytime too soon… but of course you never know. However give the large install base using those protocols, I can’t see that they would up and kill 'em immediately. Still, it wouldn’t be hard for them to at least write out something that said: We’ll guarantee support at least through 2015 something like that.
This, I think, would be hard to do. HA being such a fluid and fast changing environment right now, it’s pretty hard to say what new standards may or may not emerge and what existing standards may or may not become obsolete. This sorta ties in with your previous point too. I don’t really want a company tied to a legacy device that has become obsolete, required to support it beyond it’s usable life.
Perhaps a better way of handling this would be that they SmartThings guarantees at least x-number of months of support upon notification of ending support. For example, if they decide tomorrow that Z-wave is obsolete, they put out a notice that says:
Come November of 2015, we will be ending support for z-wave devices. We will support these device until then including software updates as well as security patches if needed. After Nov. 2015 the radios will continue to work, but no support will be given beyond then.
This would give user time to migrate if they so choose to do so without locking ST into a 5 or 10 year commitment to a technology that might die out.
I honestly don’t think this would be that helpful. I suspect anything that comes out like this would be so much marketing-speak and covered in legalese that it would be next to worthless in terms of keeping users apprised to what’s going on inside the company.
Just my opinion of course, but I suspect a better barometer would be the forums here. ST has started pretty active in these forums providing info, tips, opinion, etc. If we see that start to waver… if we start to see access to some the high muckity-mucks disappear, that would be a bigger sign to me that changes are afoot.
I doubt too many of us outside of the legal profession would be able to interrupt what much of the agreement actually means in the legal sense. Lawyers, unlike good programmers, do not provide plain English documentation for their code.
What did you expect? The agreement has been official less than 20 hours at this point. I really don’t expect to see much in the way of nitty-gritty details emerging soon. It’s all going to be PR-marketing stuff initially. IF ST is going to give us any of the assurances you’re requesting above, it certainly going to be something that is gone over by the lawyers or “off the record” type stuff that we’ve already seen. We wouldn’t see iron-clad agreements of support/operation/whatever released initially.
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You are truly taking a step back with the Vera 3. I just switched from Vera 3 to SmartThings. My Vera 3 is in perfect condition with the battery pack. If your interested I will sell it for $120 shipped in US.
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All your concerns can be resolved by one simple phrase…
Smartthings will remain a WHOLLY OWNED SUBSIDIARY.
If Samsung wants to get rid of SmartThings or do something different with them then they would need to buy them again… or… sell them to someone else. Look up US Law before you go spouting stuff around that could damage a company.
Thanks to the US law that Samsung must follow STs actually has many protections… Basically Samsung can’t just dissappear them
If you actually knew the facts you would be 100% satisfied with this.
[quote=“tslagle13, post:138, topic:3461”]
All your concerns can be resolved by one simple phrase…
Smartthings will remain a WHOLLY OWNED SUBSIDIARY. [/quote]
As someone who has no clue what this means (other than that Samsung wholly owns ST), can you enlighten me? I’m not aware of any special rules with subsidiaries.
Also… if it’s ture that Samsung would need to “rebuy” ST, given that they already own them, wouldn’t that be a pretty easy purchase?
Hey me… I’d like to buy this car I own.
Should good, me! How about I offer it to you for $1… will that price work?
You’re right about that. I only have decades of their past behavior to go by. Perhaps the leopard can indeed change his spots.
So give me your word that you are certain there is something legally binding in place that prevents samsung from changing direction on this, should they choose to do so down the road and I’ll feel a little better about this.