It’s well known that we have the superior plug design in the UK and that products have to get fully tested out by our ‘guinea pig’ cousins across the pond before they are released here!
Compatibility
The SmartThings Station is compatible with Samsung and Android devices running Android version 8.0 and higher, as well as Matter, ZigBee, BLE, and iOS devices running iOS version 14 and higher. It is compatible with 2.4 and 5GHz Wi-Fi. To use the Station, the SmartThings app must be running version 1.7.91 or higher.
Note: SmartThings Find is not compatible with iOS. Z-Wave is not supported.
From
Smartthings Station User Manual
hmm, this could be confusing. On other ST hubs, steady green LED = everything is normal. On the station steady BLUE LED = everything is normal. Steady Blue on other hubs means trouble reaching the SmartThings cloud
yes, unplug your smart home hub whenever you aren’t using the wireless charger
To save energy, unplug the wall charger when not in use. The wall charger does
not have a power switch, so you must unplug the wall charger from the electric
socket when not in use to avoid wasting power. The SmartThings Station should
remain close to the electric socket and easily accessible during use
They left out Thread.
As someone who has no experience with local control. Will automations still run locally as long as they involve only ZigBee/Thread devices that are connected to the hub and matter WiFi devices?
I’m still unsure of what happens if I had this, set up automations using the Smartthings app, and then the internet goes down? Is the automation data stored on the hub, on my phone, or something else?
As of today, any Routine that references only local resources on your hub will run locally without Internet connectivity. So, for example, I have a lock on an Edge driver with a Routine trigger for that lock and Location mode as a precondition that changes the Location Mode. That Routine shows as executing locally on my hub. However, there are numerous triggers and actions that can’t/don’t run locally. For example, ST Member location or Sending Notifications are both dependent on having an Internet connection even if they involve devices with Edge drivers locally installed.
Now, I suspect we will see the same behavior from Matter devices whether on Thread or Wi-Fi, but I personally haven’t been able to verify since there is no Matter support on my hub yet.
That is real local control
Ok thanks for the answer. And yeah I figure there would be exceptions like that. But as long as basic automations like a motion sensor detecting motion turns on a light still works then I’m good.
It actually feels exciting for someone like me who hasn’t had this experience yet and always feared the internet going down lol.
Two things:
- the smartthings app always requires the smartthings cloud. They didn’t have to design it that way, but they did. So you can’t check status, use manual controls through the app, create any new routines or edit/disable existing ones without an active Internet connection. And you can’t get any notifications, not even push ones.
- smartthings staff have posted in the forum that the architecture does assume that the hub will be connected to the cloud most of the time. It is not designed to run indefinitely without a cloud connection. A few hours during an internet outage, maybe. the smartthings architecture assumes that more local control (not total local control) will mean quicker response and more reliable messaging. But it is not intended as a fully local system. They haven’t said exactly what can go wrong if the hub isn’t connected to the Internet, it appears that at least sunrise and sunset probably won’t operate correctly, but there may be other things as well. And some of the timer-based logic is still run in the cloud. Also, some of the scenes. And some of the virtual devices. Again, they haven’t given us a complete list, but that’s because they assume most people aren’t trying to run fully local.
If Internet connectivity is an issue where you live, there are other platforms which do provide systems which run pretty much locally after initial setup. But smartthings isn’t one.
I don’t have internet issues. Admittedly it’s more about envy than anything else. Once I understood the benefits of Zigbee and Z-Wave over Wifi devices I felt jealous and understood why people say stuff like my products aren’t really mine.
I want to dive deeper, but not enough to try something like Home Assistant lol. I just mainly want sensors and smart buttons to trigger lights with no internet and if Smartthings is enough to accomplish that then it’ll be good enough for me because I want to use something that’s simple and user friendly.
Sorry to everyone about going off topic on a thread about the Smartthings Station BTW.
That’s exactly what I wanted when I bought the V3 hub, although to start with the routines seemed to run slow. After changing Zigbee channel, eliminating another Zigbee network (only Hue now) and rebooting by disconnecting the hub for 20 minutes I can assure you that it all runs almost like with a wired contact. I’ve even been surprised at how fast the virtual switches run with Alexa, and there in theory it’s going back to the cloud.
Got mine setup tonight. Some things I think are interesting, even as an iOS user.
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It comes with firmware 45.11 loaded, but shows an update available. Choosing the Firmware Update button doesn’t really do anything as far as I can tell, so I assume i’ll get the update whenever SmartThings pleases. FWIW, the Matter cert for the Station was for firmware 46, so i’d expect it to be some version of that
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The button and charging status routine options are very good. The button acts like any other button with press/held/double press. You can control the hub status LED via routines, which is awesome if you’re like me and will have this on your nightstand
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you CAN install community drivers. I haven’t done any stress testing at this point to see how many, etc., but it can be done. So far i’ve paired a zigbee bulb with the standard driver and installed a community TP-link Kasa LAN driver
In the Groovy IDE, the Station is called the “Samsung MX Linux Wireless Charger Hub”
There’s two devices created for the station. One for the wireless charger and one for the hub
Interestingly, the one for the charger has a Type = MQTT
can this work or integrate into the V3 smartthings hub?
It’s a standalone Zigbee/Matter hub. For devices on a separate v3 hub to be managed or included in Routines, it will be cloud to cloud just like today’s existing hub to hub communication.
Yup, it can run alongside a V3 (like mine is), but SmartThings doesn’t have a local hub-to-hub communication. So devices in separate hubs won’t share the same Zigbee network. However, Matter over Thread is supposed to share boarder routers and right now mine are showing as two separate Thread networks with no way to combine them
can i also understand how today hub to hub works? etc if i have a philips hue devices and hub, andn add to smartthings hub 1, can i also add it to smartthings hub 2? or i can just add to 1 smartthings hub to control the lights?
what about the smartthings app? i have to switch between the 2 in the app?
thanks
6 posts were split to a new topic: Multiple Thread Networks?
2 posts were merged into an existing topic: Multiple Thread Networks?