I’m thinking iris might be able to if you have signed up for the addon cellular notification option. But then you would also have a monthly fee.
Several of the mid tier contract-based security systems can do it, including FrontPoint.
So the problem has been solved, just not necessarily at this price point. But I’m not seeing it solved by the suggested three device package in the tweet. What am I missing?
tgauchat
(ActionTiles.com co-founder Terry @ActionTiles; GitHub: @cosmicpuppy)
22
SmartThings effectively pivoted from that use case once Hub V2 launched in Sept 2015 with serious shortfalls and no resolution a year later.
Ideally, SmartThings should bury that founding story. It’s disingenuous.
Oh… And the Tweet really makes me wonder if Alex truly understands the current limitations of his company’s product. Honestly, I’m trying not to be disrespectful or challenging; but Twitter isn’t the place to ask for details to satisfy my genuine curiosity… And I presume that many of the customer community is equally curious or confused…
You have a point, but what his message says, is that he still dreams about SmartThings, he is still in charge for the time being and maybe he is referring to the work that has been done for the offline messages. Getting a notification of the hub at the remote location being offline would have saved his home 5 years ago.
Abode has no contracts for monitoring but the mobile backup is not free. And I understand that. The mobile service is not cheap and $10 is more than reasonable to have the peace of mind that your home always talks.
For me, home automation is about solving practical problems with a low maintenance solution. It’s not about filling my house with gadgets and then trying to figure out what I can do with them.
So I look at that tweet, and I think one of two things is going on:
Alex doesn’t know how his own system works or
Some marketing person who doesn’t know how the system works is tweeting under Alex’s name.
I’m hoping it’s the second.
But maybe I’ve missed something and there’s a reason to sell somebody a smartplug when what they’re concerned about is burst pipes at an unoccupied vacation home. At this point I’m just really curious about what that would be.
@alex isn’t really paying attention anymore, he’s completely disengaged from “his” company and community.
It’s a bad crop, he’s trying to say that you can get a hub and a moisture sensor now under 100 bucks, but that plug was in the image and took prominence in the twitter grab of it.
he’s really trying to advertise that the hub is now $49.99
he’s also apparently really bad at photoshop.
browsing his twitter posts over the last months, he also might be a bit upset about the election results.
However, the merits of protecting a vacation property with an always on internet dependent hub will never be viable with this platform. Cell backup is a must. Local execution mandatory. But hey, you can now do this with Control4 for under $500, so its a lot cheaper to do it correctly thanks to ST.
This assumes your internet also dies, you v2 batteries deplete, you have no ups, etc.
By that time there could already be extensive damage. The solution story implies there is some sort of environmental monitoring, not that you get some possible indicators by happenstance.
The weird thing is that part of smart home monitor which does run locally can close the valve if there’s a leak alert. But that would require a third device, a valve actuator, so it would cost more money. And I’m not sure which valve actuators are eligible to run locally.
Ok, ok, throw a fish in the pond and all the sharks will tear it apart I snapped @alex Twitter post as response to @Navat604 stating that founders are gone. I know most are, but @alex is still the CEO.
SmartThings is based in Palo Alto and operates independently as a wholly owned subsidiary of Samsung Electronics.
tgauchat
(ActionTiles.com co-founder Terry @ActionTiles; GitHub: @cosmicpuppy)
34
Indeed. Alex’s Tweet is focusing on the accomplishment of a sub-$100 retail price point (with no ongoing fees), for the basic components (though if the package included a Z-Wave whole home water valve, it would be somewhat more accurate… But then exceed the magic price.).
SmartThings needs something in order to get through the ongoing inability to deliver on promises. Apparently that something isn’t higher initial sale margins, since there’s a clear trend of lowering prices.
The short-game is rapid market penetration at loss-leader pricing, apparently. That can definitely lead to some sort of profitable strategic long-game, which is still unanswered.
Just how efficient can the economies of scale be? Or does a huge customer base lead to incredible revenue opportunities that so far have not materialized?
As a SmartThings add-on app venture, I sure hope the latter potential really exists.
Not to beat a dead horse to death here, but I posted something earlier in another thread that Smartthings actually has a little niche here in that 99% of their users have a cell phone. That being said, if your hub hasn’t communicated with the server in a specified amount of time, or if there is a major server outage, they could certainly send a text or email to your cell phone. I understand that it’s not an immediate response, but my guess is that had their been a ST hub at the “cabin”, that hadn’t communicated in a couple of hours, and the process of sending user notifications was in place the damage would have been substantially less. I certainly would consider that functionality as a feature to the system…maybe even a selling point.
This seems like a reasonable solution or feature, that would not represent a major effort to implement…opinions?
SmartThings [quote=“TGreenway, post:36, topic:63648, full:true”]
Not to beat a dead horse to death here, but I posted something earlier in another thread that Smartthings actually has a little niche here in that 99% of their users have a cell phone. That being said, if your hub hasn’t communicated with the server in a specified amount of time, or if there is a major server outage, they could certainly send a text or email to your cell phone. I understand that it’s not an immediate response, but my guess is that had their been a ST hub at the “cabin”, that hadn’t communicated in a couple of hours, and the process of sending user notifications was in place the damage would have been substantially less. I certainly would consider that functionality as a feature to the system…maybe even a selling point.
This seems like a reasonable solution or feature, that would not represent a major effort to implement…opinions?
[/quote]
They already do this. You will get a notification that “your hub is off-line” anytime the cloud cannot communicate with the hub for five or 10 minutes. You will get another push message once it’s back online again.
That said, the hub being off-line tells you that the power is out, but not the pipe has burst.
The off-line message comes from the cloud. So the cloud doesn’t have the sensor information from the leak detector.
Some competitor systems, as mentioned above, will send you a cellular message from the hub with information from the local sensors. At present, SmartThings can’t do that – – The hub’s only method of communication is to send a request to the cloud that it send out a message.
You know, i could give a rip about ‘respect’ for the CEO of the company when they couldn’t give two pisses about us. Here’s the fact: ALL of these issues and problems SmartThings has are very easily fixed and have simple solutions that only smartthings themselves can provide. The mere fact that the problems still exist is a VERY clear statement that we don’t matter and they just want our money. Think differently? Prove me wrong. Show me how Alex gives a damn.
I do see the notifications, but I don’t get a text when my internet drops…will have to research other threads and check my settings.
Yes I do understand that the leak itself can’t be specifically noted, but knowing the power is off, or that the internet is down would prompt me to think about the consequences…especially in a second and/or remote home. With as much as I depend on the internet I would consider receiving an “alarm” just to it being unavailable for a period of time as a plus.
I know this isn’t the thread for this discussion. I will do a little research, maybe create a more dedicated thread, and ask for more input.
Pretty sure it’s not as simple as we like to think. The only way to cut down plenty of problems is local processing. I think there is complication behind the curtain that ST doesn’t want us to know which I think is not a simple fix. It’s not perfect but it’s so much better compare to 6 months ago. I was close to switching to Vera but lost interest in HA.
I snapped 