Don’t know if anyone else watched the Developer Discussion from 1/14/2015 and what your opinion was… any little hope I had of being warm and fuzzy about the V2 Hub was quickly extinguished. The meeting had a tone of a bunch of SmartThings employees who don’t talk, collaborate or have a clue where the company is going. Wow, just feeling completely deflated about any future for SmartThings. For those of us with HomeBrew Automation Systems looking to use a hub with our homebrew, I think SmartThings is out the window. Time for some research on other hubs.
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To share my own personal opinion bluntly: You just aren’t SmartThings’s primary target market.
Openness for general development is a side-effect of them being open for significant partnerships or demanded integrations; ie, for example, they would rewrite major chunks of the system and move mountains to get Nest integration, but various other development requirements and wishlists must take a backseat to STs #1 priority: mass consumer market (with Samsung doing some behind the scenes pushing too, of course).
The optimistic view is that a strong and successful consumer presence (helped in no small part by major partnerships) will give ST more resources to both stabilize the product and accommodate less visible features that are valuable to you and many of us here in the same boat.
Just IMHO.
Overall, I think they are juggling and growing pretty well at the moment, considering how quickly the industry is changing and the challenges & opportunities of becoming a part of Samsung.
I can’t say if that’s a consensus, but many in the Community feel ST is the best “live” choice… The competition is either old, even less featured and responsive to us, or too new to tell (or vaporware, Kickware, Indieware).
Respectfully,
… Terry.
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I’ve got an impression that V2 feature set is not even fully defined yet. There was too much hand waving and guessing about the product that’s supposed to hit the store shelves in 3 month. That’s not a good sign. 
Battery backup has a questionable value, IMHO, because the batteries are not rechargeable and the AA batteries will only last an hour or so. You still need a backup power to run your Internet router and cable/DSL modem, so what’s the point? I’d rather have a WiFi because that would allow me to locate the hub in the best location without running long Ethernet cable or easily bring it closer to devices when including them into Z-Wave network.
The general idea is that batteries support:
(a) locally cached SmartApps that refer to other locally connected battery powered devices (contact sensors, locks, sirens).
And
(b) GSM/4G cellular Internet fail over with appropriate USB dongle and service.
P.S. : I think the product is more fleshed out than we are told. ST must take care not to reveal any features that could be deferred, nor squash our hopes for features that are possible, but not confirmed.
Considering that many Kickstarter campaigns publish delivery timeframes even shorter than this, and change their specs on a whim, and are pre-paid… Well, the industry bar is set pretty low.
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Understood. The point is, even the best AA batteries (Energizer Titanium) supply only 1.41 Ah @ 1A. I don’t think hub the V2 + LTE modem will consume less than 5W. Probably more. At this rate the battery voltage will drop below 5V (4 x 1.25V) in about 30 minutes according to these charts:
A residential UL-listed alarm system typically requires to provide 24 hours standby backup power and at least 5 min of active alarm power. That means you still need a decent UPS if you indent to use SmartThings as a security system.
Vera Lite has batteries for inclusion only (to bring it close to the device), not as a backup power source. But Vera does not need Internet to work, so you just unplug it, bring it close to the device and turn on the battery power switch. This won’t work with ST because you need an Internet connection to activate inclusion mode, meaning that you will have to drag a 100 foot long ethernet cable behind you.
I thought the Aeon Minimote could be used to add new devices to the network, obviating the need to be close to the ST hub. Is that not true?
Can’t argue with your specs based on AA batteries!
But how do other “modern” UL-listed alarm systems function (ADT, Xfinity-Home)? They don’t seem to have big UPS units sitting beside them (usually just look like a big keypad and LCD). Do they just have really good lithium-ion batteries or something??
EDIT:
Found some links on ADT system battery specs, but not sure how up to date they are. Those use little 12v car batteries (like in your typical home computer UPS).
Since the XfinityHome looks explicitly similar to SmartThings, I wonder what specs are for the Battery Backup mentioned in their online materials:
NOT so (as far as I am know); and 100% certainly not for non-Z-Wave devices (i.e., for ZigBees…).
I don’t know enough about Z-Wave secondary controllers: Is the idea that they connect to the Minimote as a secondary and then the Minimote passes the info on to the master (SmartHub) when it gets in range and/or by using the mesh?
At the developers meeting they mentioned that they went a beefier route on the power supply (ditching the current USB interface for power), as the hub was pulling closer to 2A, so probably closer to 10W…
Batteries should last long enough for your generator to fire up…
Yeah, that’s more likely. So realistically, we’re talking about 15 min backup power, unless you go for Lithium batteries. At the dev’s call they claimed “about two hours”, meaning somebody didn’t do their math. 
DSC SCW9045, for example uses NiMH rechargeable battery pack (7V, 1.5 Ah), but it’s standby power consumption is much lower, probably less than 1W.
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I saw a non-final hardware rev do more than an hour for whatever that’s worth.
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Well… I have to trust you on this and please don’t take an offense. Any backup is better than no backup at all 
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No offense taken. I’m (clearly) not an engineer, so what do I know anyways?
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For this to work, the primary controller must implement SUC/SIS functionality and I think SmartThings hub does not. Again, @Tyler can correct me, if I’m wrong.
Edit:
I was completely wrong get here. Refer to the post below from Duncan.
When you do all on or all off it looks like the minimote is sending all of the commands and not the hub. I thought it would have to be a secondary controller to do this? Also it only turns on and off (via the all on and off button presses) only z-wave devices. This is confusing.
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It’s possible I’m confused as well but my Minimote at home is configured with a variety of devices, including our ZigBee SmartPower Outlet.
@duncan might know better.
Tyler’s wrong this time. The hub does act as SUC/SIS and you can include/exclude from the Minimote.
The “all on/off” is a Z-Wave broadcast that doesn’t involve the hub or imply anything about controller status.
We’re also planning to make it work so you can unplug the hub from internet after going into include mode, carry it around, then plug it back in to get the newly added device on the server. This functionality might not be ready yet at launch, though.
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