Don’t underestimate the number of people who (like me) are currently using another platform like Wink and are waiting to jump ship over to Smart Things.
I’ll do it but I don’t want to spend $100 on the hub, set it all up, only to have V2 released two weeks later. That’s why I am personally chomping on the bit.
But there seems to be two parts that people are waiting on:
Hardware - V2
Software - Local control
Will one arrive without the other is another question and whether or not local control will come for V1 users.
As I understand it you’ve put back the release a couple of times so it’s a bit understandable people are starting to lean towards vaporware . It’s possible you never categorically stated release dates but from what I gather people on the forum were under the impression on several potential release time frames that have been and gone.
“a matter of weeks” is still non-committal, a year is a matter of weeks, 52 of them to be precise…
There’s a few things we’re bucketing under “V2” that are launching soon, but not necessarily at the same time.
We’re launching the second version of our hub. Some of the main changes include more processing power, local storage, local SmartApp and Device Type execution, and battery backup.
We’re launching new versions of our SmartSense Multi sensor and our SmartSense Motion/Temp sensor. These have been referred to as our “Micro Sensors” as they are about half the size of our existing sensors.
We’re launching a newly imagined SmartThings mobile app for Android and iOS (WP coming after).
We’re launching new platform features. Combined with the new app, we’ve referred to some of these changes as our “next-gen UX”. This includes us reworking a lot of the basic functionality and the layout of your SmartThings system on your phone and in the cloud.
So there’s lots going on here. The new hub has been great at my house for a few months now, but ultimately you shouldn’t notice a difference in your day to day experience just by swapping the hub out. When you take the new hub with the new mobile app and an unimaginable amount of platform work - you’ll get the “V2” experience that will be markedly improved over what’s out there today.
If we are just talking about the hub - you probably won’t see much of a reason to upgrade, as Ben was saying, unless streaming video and battery backup are killer features for you. Video streaming is really important for my use cases so it would be a no-brainer, but that might not be the case for everyone here on the forum.
Finally - the new app will show you the names of your devices without having to stand on one foot while shaking your phone up and down. You can still do the SmartThings Label Dance if you wish though.
What about issues like sunrise / sunset (or schedules in general), where there have been load issues in the cloud. Are schedules handled locally in the V2 hub, or still in the cloud? If in the hub, do the load issues go away?
SmartApp scheduling will be handled and executed locally. We’ve seen issues in the past related to our cloud-side handling of scheduled events with hub v1. Those issues should not be present for our upcoming hub.
8 Likes
tgauchat
(ActionTiles.com co-founder Terry @ActionTiles; GitHub: @cosmicpuppy)
574
Genuine thanks for sharing your opinion on those foreign expansion activities, Ben.
As of the UK launch activities, I’ve been concerned to see effort diverted to international expansion can’t help but put more workload on apparently strained resources. This is frustrating when there seems to be a lot of disappointed current Customers at “home” in North America.
I’m not in Samsung’s shoes; if I were to be an “armchair manager”, though, my strategy would be to pull way back on marketing and geographic expansion, with the belief that stabilizing the product and preserving/improving reputation is a priority over expansion. As an engineer, expansion at this moment in time seems like poor risk management and resource allocation. Life in the trenches is hard sometimes.
I think you and @Ben are downplaying how important local processing is to the proper functioning of ST for a user. Of all of the reliability issues I’ve had with ST, most were cloud performance related. They weren’t new bugs in the platform, although those have happened too, and could happen with V2 just as easily.
From where you guys sit it must seem that there are lots of disparate issues complained about, from the mobile app design, to architecture complaints, documentation shortcomings, support of integrations, etc. etc. Those issues won’t be touched by hub v2, and you’re right to point that out.
But for my daily uses of ST, removing the cloud as an intermediary in SmartApp execution should, in theory, make a noticeable improvement in day to day functioning of my ST system.
I’ve been stalking smartthings since kickstarter… And I don’t mean stalking occasionally. I mean I have been a full blown weekly follower for too long. I never could make the leap for v1 as I saw so many growing pains and was currently building my new home. But my home is finished and still v1 seems “unfixed” to be blunt.
The idea of local processing seemed to be cure all for the majority of complaints I saw that I felt would affect my user experience. So, I side with @bruce when I say… V2 and local processing will be what begins my build as it seems to be the fix for the issues that are important to me! So downplay it’s release all you want, but for me… It’s big! I plan to make one of the initial purchases of v2 for that reason alone. Waiting patiently…literally for years
OH! One other reason I waited for v2 was the fact that I now live in a very rural area. No broadband Internet service is available. So i rely on a satellite provider with limited bandwidths/total traffic. Keeping most processing local was important to me for this reason as well…
That’s what I’m wondering as well… is Local Processing with the new v2 Hub being downplayed for a reason? Perhaps it’s extremely limited on what can actually be ran locally with the hub?
I can understand the sentiments of everyone here. Not to forget a lot of people on the community devote a lot of their time in helping others, identifying issues, providing suggestions etc, which in my opinion is very valuable for smart things . I cant hold back my optimism and believe that smart things may have taken into consideration all the valuable feedback from all of us and may have addressed lot of thise issues, while some may be in the pipeline. At the end of the day its prioritization and I hope thats being done properly. Would I rather fix some key user percieved issues or expand to other countries, like highlighted by @tgauchat ? May be there is a balance somewhere - I fix top 10 of my issues and only expand to 2 countries instead of 5. And I think thats what ST is doing. Its business at the end of the day and it has to grow. These are tough decisions to take if I were in their shoes, especially considering the fact that samsung has to drive its strategy. I have seen a lot of criticism in this thread… So I thought some optimism may help towards motivating ST … What say @Ben?
3 Likes
tgauchat
(ActionTiles.com co-founder Terry @ActionTiles; GitHub: @cosmicpuppy)
580
Unfortunately, though my assumption may be wildly inaccurate (I have no insider information); I suspect that total bandwidth / traffic will actually increase in the Hub V2 hybrid architecture. Hopefully only minimally, but still…
Reference for details, please …
Based on my understanding, the “processing of the event”, in the context of the Event being subscribed to by a SmartApp that, in turn, can trigger another device (e.g., a motion sensor turns on a switch) will be handled entirely locally if the Device Handlers for all the involved Devices are locally cacheable (i.e., have no cloud-cloud or other complex requirements that Hub V2 is not able to manage).
The Event will be also sent to the Cloud, and any non-cached or non-cacheable SmartApps / Device Handlers can then act upon it.
Unfortunately, the latter case applies to all uses of the Mobile App for the foreseeable future: The Mobile App will not be served directly from Hub V2 (as far as I know) … but certainly possible, eventually.
Technically, therefore, overall bandwidth usage will increase, since all Events still need to eventually flow to / from the Cloud, and, additionally, any changes to Device Handlers and SmartApps need to be pushed out to the Hub V2.
Don’t go here unless you want to enter a dark place:Novelty Item - #4
tgauchat
(ActionTiles.com co-founder Terry @ActionTiles; GitHub: @cosmicpuppy)
582
I think it depends on your expectations. To the best of my knowledge, with no insider information – just the public Developer Calls, … your concern is not justified. The Hub V2 can and will cache and run the majority of “stuff” locally (i.e., all your Device Handlers that are not cloud-cloud, and all the SmartApps that interact between local Device Handlers).
The Mobile App requires the Smart Cloud though, and all events eventually must travel to/from the Smart Cloud.
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