SmartThings Hub Version 2.0

Thank you for making an official post. Is the UI delayed as well? I feel like I hate launching the app, I’d rather use @625alex’s Dashboard app I’ve installed to monitor and control devices due to:

  • Speed of app launch and usability
  • Confusion of layout and Dashboard vs. Things page (I like things from both…)

Thanks for any info you can divulge!

I don’t think we’ve provided a public timeline for our new UI/UX. If you’re asking if it’ll be ready in April the answer is no.

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Ok @Tyler , Give us a picture of the rear on that V2. It’s April’s fool day. pretend it’s a joke. We won’t tell.

Y’all could have seen it in Palo Alto at the Community “Happiest Hour” party last night.

I actually had my hands on it … and I popped off the back cover. I was told that it was @April’s actual working hub…


I have a photographic memory, but no network connection from my brain to make prints.
What do you want to “see” from the back?

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everything from the back LOL . well unless all the whistles and bells are on the sides.

:blush: you touched my hub.

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Coming up.

(20chars)

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That’s disappointing. I was hoping we’d have one last thing to look forward to this month. Good thing I’m busy with my home addition. Maybe it will keep me occupied this summer… and the mud pit left in my backyard from the heavy equipment. Here’s looking forward to the new UI as soon as stably possible!

Now that look a lot like the competitors. “MeCasa”. But the USB support and the battery pack are promising prospects for near field pairing. Will the USB be able to attach a Wifi dongle?

Sad day… was looking forward to the v2 Hub

Big bummer on the delay. Pressure will be on for ST to absolutely nail this release or I can see a lot of people jumping ship to Wink.

There’s really not much attractive about that platform other than a cool wall switch… The automation and customization aspects seem really lacking and haven’t changed at all since launch.

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Not sure why people would, Wink reportedly has even more reliability issues, including at the individual device level. See pretty much any published review. And IFTTT for only a very few devices. But a high fun factor in their physical designs, definitely.

Staples Connect is certainly more stable and has local processing now. But they bought that stability by having a very limited set of devices, most at the high end of the cost range for their group. No geofencing, no voice control, no IFTTT. And no ability for custom apps. A good, if stodgy, choice for their target market of small businesses but not a fit for everyone.

Iris seems to have good stability and a lot of device choices, but is still cloud based and has a monthly fee. And as some reviewers have said, they went “broad rather than deep” being not bad at a lot of things, but not great at much either.

Vera has stability issues with each new model for awhile, but then straightens it out. Good for custom coders and especially good for those in Europe. But zwave only, no IFTTT, voice control gets tricky.

Others out there as well, most more for DIY types but without IFTTT.

So lots of competition but each with strengths and weaknesses, no clear winner yet. It really comes down to what your own priorities are.

There’s customer traffic flowing in all directions right now, but I expect to continue to see that for another year or so.

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Glad I didn’t wait for v2, knew it was going to get delayed but that is so they can release a great product. I’m glad I went with the staples connect, so far it’s been rock solid, every activity fires everytime and haven’t had to reboot the hub once. Local processing provides for instant notifications. Pretty sure it has IVEE support which is voice control. I have a few “non supported” devices and they work fine, I also got a Lutron caseta switch with a pico remote and that thing is badass and sexy, I might be hooked on Lutron switches, I don’t think ST v2 will have the Lutron chip in it.

IVEE works with Iris, Staples Connect, and SmartThings, among others, but the voice recognition sucks. Many people end up returning it.

Since I’m quadriparetic, Voice control is really important to me, not just a fun feature, so I follow the technologies pretty closely. There’s a good discussion of various options in the following topic. Quite a bit of discussion of IVEE there.

If it can understand your voice, it’s a good solution for those people. But that just turns out to be a pretty small population.

I know 3 people that jumped to Vera 3 because they got tired of waiting. Some people are really opposed to things running in the cloud so the V1 hub just doesn’t cut it.

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I got tired of waiting and tried out OpenHAB. It’s Open-source and can run on a Raspberry Pi or on a full PC or Linux box. It supports lots of stuff including Insteon/X10, Z-Wave, Philips Hue, etc. And it’s all local.

Loving it so far. Just make sure you get the latest version, 1.7. The learning curve is high, but the potential is even higher.

OpenHAB

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*** This is meant to be a general comment.

Wait for the SmartThings team to release version two, home automation is a luxury. SmartThings is a business and I’m sure if it were your business you would not be in the business of providing handouts. People always feel like they are so special and things should just fall at their feet. The Sun rises and sets on them. Why not let the team develop and release the product when they feel it is ready. I don’t want to be a beta tester and I’m pretty sure that the majority of the SmartThings community would like to wait and support the next hub. The SmartThings staff have provided a lot of information that they did not need to. If you are one of the ones who decides to leave the SmartThings community we will be here when you return :slight_smile:

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JD. Add Fibaro Home Center 2 to the list. Though not available in US as of now. 749$ and the lite version is 279$. Not sure anybody in US is running these.