Sell me on v2 Hub

Devices & Integrations Connected Things
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I don’t want this to be taken extremely negative, but is anyone else on the fence about buying the v2 hub? I think love SmartThings, but I’m starting to wonder if I just love the idea of Smartthings. The IDE is crippling slow most of the time, I can’t edit device types I create. My hue lights never turn off properly through the app, but always when I use the Hue Tap. I got woken up at 5am the other morning, as the cat set off the motion alarm, and instead of playing the weather forecast my Sonos started blasting Bruno Mars.

How does investing more money in a hub fix any of these issues? Will apps still not fire when scheduled? Will the IDE remain difficult to use?

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Two words: local processing.

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I can see that solving the events not firing problems, but what about the IDE or incredibly slow/stagnant updates?
Foscam integration has been weeks out since October as an example.

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The IDE is slow, but as I understand it, they are working on a major redesign of the IDE.

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Keep in mind that the new hub will come with the new set of problems. I’ve been using ST for over a year and it still feels like a beta-quality product at best. But with current architecture, where the hub is just a ‘dumb’ bridge, most issues can be solved in the cloud, without updating hub firmware. Not so with the new hub. I hope I’m wrong, but it wouldn’t surprise me if initial launch were quite rocky.

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SmartThings is hoping enough of us here in the Community are tenacious enough to do a thorough live Beta test,… At least that’s what I would recommend, and hope and take advantage of.

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I should change my avatar photo to a guinea pig.

Edit: Done :smile:

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It seems ST is only focused around HubV2, which it see no real gain for the average user, I’d rather see them get a few standard device types locked in like remotes and garage door integrations completed before a new hub. I myself am ready to bail from ST, community fixes are great for new devices, but ST needs to fully integrate these items a lot better than worring about a new hub; once you loose a customer, they are hard to get back.

The only thing I’m holding on for is for Samsung and their leadership to step in and get some support where needed. Watch some of the ST developer discussions on YouTube, I think you will get a quick sense of how out of touch ST leadership might be with their customer base. Can we now get some solid integration on remotes and garage doors, an promised at the CES? All they are smelling is April and HubV2 release… The discussions on YouTube seem like the community has more knowledge than ST, very fustrating…

Checkout the youtube discussion on HubV2, kind of unimpressive, battery backup that only lasts a few hours then have to replace the batts, why not rechargeable batts? New HubV2 to boast a memory size of 512 Meg? Really, Meg, can’t even get us up to a Gig or two? Sorry for venting, but hard to standby while a system with potential continues to fade away…

ST needs to give some of our top community folks the ability to add Beta DeviceTypes and SmartApps so they can easily be selected during device setup, not to have to go through the process we do now. Then they could push updates to the codes easier too…

This is not what you want new customers going through (going into IDE and copy and pasting code)… Unecessary pain… Consumers will take the easiest path, I was a heavy programer, but the average consumers are not and will loose intrested fast.

The average customer is not too worried about hue support or whether the action is in the cloud or local, they just want it to work. As for their BT, they are not even sure what to do with it, it will be in the hardware and sit there untouched for months, it’s not even going to be the latest v3, last discussion on youtube I heard it will only be bluetooth v2. To me BT with a 30 meter range (unblocked) maybe worthless in a large house with walls and other obstacles, not to include devices in metal wall boxes, at least zwave systems get stronger when you add more devices cause they act as repeaters.

Again, just get my garage door and a wall-mounted remote functional, NOT V2…

Wink and others offer a Hub for almost nothing ($9.99-29.99), yet you can get your already installed MyQ (Chamberlain/Liftmaster) or Assurelink (Sears Craftsman) controled garage door opener up as quick as you can logon to it, this includes full integration in their app. These brands probably cover 80-90% of the garage units in the world. Why pay $100 or more for a hub that can’t do that or even have a fully functional and stable set of remotes. Humm, let’s create a new Hub that has promised none of these fixes? But it will have local processing and work in a power failure for a few hours, but will cost several dollars to replace the batteries; not sure what it matters if the Hub works in a power failure if there is also no power to run half of the devices?

Priorites? Maintain customer base? V1 will quickly become useless unsupported artifact… with V2 offering no real upgrade… Future???

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With SmartThings I had my garage opener that was made in 1984 working within 30 minutes. I would have had to buy a new garage door opener with wink. I have a two wink hubs that I will send anywhere in the world for free if anyone wants to pay the shipping costs.

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Wait… but that’s 1000(!) times more that the current hub. I’m not even sure they know what to do with this cr@pload of RAM! :smile:

Seriosly, memory is not an issue and adding BT is a good thing. What does worry me though is that most engineering resources will be dedicated to the new hub and the current hub will fall by the wayside. Lets not forget that there’re tens of thousands of users (by our estimates) many of whom have no interest in upgrading their hubs.

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Ram will eventually be an issue with everything running and loaded locally vs cloud.

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Me included. Unfortunately the new hub appears to have one major thing in common with the original; it is built to an unrealistic price. Seriously! the battery backup uses throw-a-ways… in 2015?

But the main thing for me is that SmartThings will have to demonstrate that they can get everything right before I invest more time and money in this platform. I don’t see that happening any time soon. The cloud is not the problem… their design is.

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Yeah, I certainly don’t see people camping out in front of SmartThings store to get the latest hub at the break of dawn. Oh… there’s no store, iForgot. :smile:

BTW, seven month after the acquisition Samsung could not broker a deal to sell StartThings through one of the major electronics retailers? C’mon show us some commitment!

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You forgot to mention the cost of the sensor(s) you paid for to keep your old unit running, may have been better to put your money towards a new fully integrated unit. There are several kits to do the same for Wink and all other systems so not seeing your point? Not true that you would need to buy a new opener… 1984 opener, about at your service limit…

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Eventually will become an issue, as the plan is to not build V1 and V2 simultaneously, thus they will eventually phase out support of V1 to force users to V2. I see V1 death very soon, I’d estimate 1 year and they will drop cloud and support… Legacy support cost $ and none coming in from it…

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Why worry about the internal battery when you can get a rechargeable usb power pack for dirt cheap on Amazon. Unless ST changes the hub input voltage. I am using an anker 16,000 mAh with hub v1 and it seems to last quite a while.

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What? … you don’t consider Amazon.com to be a “major electronics retailer”? I’m betting their electronics sales put them in the top 5.

But seriously: A huge chunk of SmartThings sales must come from their Hackathons. Get them hooked young…?

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Last I saw is the v2 input will not be usb because they are over 2000ma draw, switching to a round plug, so forget the small battery packs. You can buy a cheap UPS for less than a usb batt pack.

Most users have a ups for their pc, just plug it into an empty plug with your router/modem too. Again, why so important? Most devices require power, so you can’t turn the lights on or open a garage anyway… No cloud, all processing local, so again, why non-rechargeable batteries?

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Refer your question to @April … and she will refer it to the designer(s) who made that decision. Of course, they may choose not to answer for competitive or other reasons. But you can ask.

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You know that I meant B&M retailers. Samsung sells its products everywhere - Sears, BestBuy, Fry’s. It’s hard to find an electronics store that wouldn’t carry Samsung brand. They could, if they wanted to, get some shelf space for SmartThings. Apparently, they don’t think it matters and I wonder why. If you want to position your product as THE mainstream Smart Home solution for the masses (as it was touted at CES), Hackathons just won’t do it. Something doesn’t line up here.