I currently use Yonomi to mainly control my whole home Hue setup. I have it on my phone for location-based and manual lighting control (with tiles in my iPhone widgets screen) and on a wall mounted tablet. At the press of a button, it activates hue scenes across multiple rooms, and can turn off the whole house when I leave. It also controls Sonos.
Yesterday, Yonomi emailed to say they are going to close the app in 30 days, so looking for a replacement, and SmartThings seems to be able to do everything I need and more. But I am confused, so need your expert help
Please could let me know if SmartThings:
Can control Hue Scenes via one action (e.g. âWatch TVâ activates Hue scenes in the Kitchen, Living Room and Hall). If not, how can I do this?
Can do things based on my location, such as turn lights on when I arrive, if its after sunset at my location.
Do actions based on time and location, i.e. if I am home at sunset, activate particular Hue scenes (for a gold star, do not activate IF the lights are already on/in a different scene)
Can be controlled remotely, such as turning off lights from my phone when away from home.
Do I need a ST Hub? If so, any recommendations? I donât see one on Amazon
I like the look of Action Tiles for my wall mounted tablet, especially as I can pull in more than I can with Yonomi (such as weather, Ring cameras etc). Is this the way to go or are there better options?
Can it work with Sonos and Tado? (not particularly important but a nice to have)
Yes to everything in your list. Some requirements require custom drivers or special configuration on your part.
Do I need a hub? Hubs are primary used to connect to ZWave Zigbee or Matter over Thread devices. @jkp can clarify the connection to Hue for you.
If you have those kinds of devices yes you need a hub. SmartThings stopped making the hub themselves and instead partners such as Aeotec make the hub for them (the Aeotec SmartThings hub is just a rebrand of the ST v3 hub)
It does not. You do not NEED a ST hub except I the scenarios discussed above.
I BELIEVE the new edge driver for Hue can speak locally to your Hue hub (and why a referred to someone to clarify) so you might WANT a hub for that (if local is possible you do. Avoid cloud connected for your primary bulbs)
You can absolutely get the SmartThings app and set it up now without a hub to see how much you actually can connect to.
Again id refrain on configuration of Hue in ST until you make the decision on the hub. But you can start now.
Alexa only matters in the fact that understand when yoh connect Alexa and SmartThings Alexa will âduplicateâ any device both connected direct to Amazon and SmartThings. Youâll have to disable the one you donât want Amazon to use on Amazons side because ST does not allow a user to filter whatâs exposed to Amazon. Itâs all or nothing.
Tado btw doesn´t work with ST but I can recommend Sensibo, which is cheaper and by far better alternative to Tado if you use with ST or not.
Hue works much better and has lots of extra options if you buy yourself a SmartThings (Aeotec) hub and use community edge driver rather than official ST Hue integration.
I hate to hijack others topic, but how you can disable/block ST devices from Alexa? I tried removing, but they always seem to automatically pop up again as new devices?
you canât. You can only disable them IN Alexa once theyâve been discovered. Filtering the list has been a feature request for MORE THAN two years - ST dev originally agreed it was a bad design and a change was âcomingâ but they never agreed to ta timeframe and most of us assume the effort has been abandoned.
All edge drivers require a SmartThings/Aeotec hub. (Edge Drivers run on the hub.)
Right now the only way to get access to hue scenes from SmartThings is with the community edge driver from @blueyetisoftware , so, if you want to access Hue scenes within the smartthings app, youâll need a SmartThings/Aeotec hub.
Of course you can still use Hue scenes with other third-party integrations, including Alexa, so that might be all thatâs needed. It just depends on the details.
I myself do not have a smartthings/Aeotec hub and do use a hue bridge, but while I could connect the hue bridge to my smartthings account, I donât because I get all the functionality I need for Hue through either Apple home or Alexa. But I donât mind using multiple apps, and I know some people do.
All true until they decided to go back into the hardware business with the SmartThings Station, their newest hub that supports Zigbee and Thread, but not zwave.
So the current hub choices are the one from Aeotec (which also supports zwave)
As far as custom dashboards, both ActionTiles and Sharptools are popular in the community. They have different features and business models, but both work with the 2023 smartthings architecture. SharpTools includes a nice rules engine, but you might not need that. Which one you get, if either, is just a matter of personal preference.
You know how I feel about that device JD, wonât recommend it to anyone. Especially with the new vendor picking up ZWave Chip supply licensing and the ID problems with Matter. I til that shakes out im not giving up ZWave. And that device design is just poor.
I understand. I think itâs a nice device for someone who has a galaxy phone and no Z wave devices. It may also end up being a good budget choice for people who are using the smartthings app and want to add matter devices, since it will run the matter edge Drivers and itâs also a Thread Border router. Choice is good.
I have people like that in my family - weâre a Galaxy household. You dont put a magnetic induction charger on top of 2.5Ghz Antennae. - I wont buy one.
LOL! Ok, fair enough: I had exactly the same reaction when I first saw the specs.
I am concerned about a recent forum report from one community member that every time they had a power outage, the zigbee radio inside the station failed to reboot when power was restored. But I donât know if thatâs an individual defective device or a model design issue. I guess weâll hear more eventually.
Iâve had to help two people locally with zigbee interface issues with that thing. Itâs not as bad as a Zigbee stick in a Pi but itâs worse than a v3 hub. (relative ease to kill the signal) incidentally while helping these people I did drop my phone (S23+) on top and when I did we lost some bulbs.
To add insult to injury I canât (couldnât when I looked) change the zigbee channels now so we had to re-engineer the 2.5 Ghz WiFi around it. Thankfully it was not an Orbii - as I understand it making it consumer friendly means you canât change the wifi channels there either.
Did I mention I do not like that device? It shall remain unnamed like the 4th Indiana Jones movie and the 9th star wars flick that also donât exist.
Thanks for the help everyone - I have been been fiddling with a bunch of different tools in a ST hub-less setup and seem to be making progress. For instance:
Using the premium IFTTT to setup triggers from virtual switches (created here: https://api-browser-plus.pinsky.us//) which when activated, triggers one or multiple scenes on the Hue hub using the IFTTT integration.
Setup Action Tiles to replace the Yonomi interface with switches and routine buttons from SmartThings.
Iâm getting there - but have a few more questions:
I have a number of scenes stored on my Hue hub. My home is open plan, so when I want to watch TV, the action of pressing the TV lighting mode changes scenes across multiple rooms. I could set this up as a routine in ST, but with so many lights to program, it will take ages. I would far rather create a virtual button that then connects to Alexa or IFTTT to set the Hue scenes. I cannot see how to make a button in Actiontiles, only a switch. The issue is the switch has an âonâ and âoffâ state, but calling on the scene will set the state to âonâ and it will never turn off. This is a problem, for which the only way round I see is to make a ST routine and program every bulb. Any way round this?
Is there any way for ST to read the scenes stored in the Hue hub and copy them as a scene/routine setting in ST? For instance, could I set the scene using Hue, then open ST and tell it to save the current settings as a scene/routine in ST? i.e. a roundabout way to get what I want.
I canât see how to get a virtual button in ST to work on Actiontiles - it only seems to understand switches.
Is there no way (without a ST hub/premium subscription to another service) to have a button on ST trigger a routine on Alexa?
If I get some help to the above, I think I should be able to muddle my way though to the perfect setup.
