My father is interested in automating his home (keeping up with the Jones… obviously he wasn’t interested in it 5 years ago when I showed him my setup… but I digress)
I’m going to do the install for him. Since I’m not sure how long he’ll stick with it, I thought I would give him my old SmartThings V1 hub to try out. My question is… is the v1 hub still supported? Still in use? or is he just better off getting the v2 hub? He obviously needs to purchase bulbs, switches, sensors, etc, so I thought I would help save him some money.
Note… I live 900 miles away, so stability is key. (Maybe I shouldn’t have stopped him when he called me from Best Buy in line for the Geek Squad, ready to pay the to do the install & setup… no… I did the right thing)
I wouldn’t do a v1 new install. Many reasons but the main reason is…it’s old and will be obsolete before any of the newer offerings will be.
3 Likes
tgauchat
(ActionTiles.com co-founder Terry @ActionTiles; GitHub: @cosmicpuppy)
3
I think this is a fine idea.
I’m still on Hub V1 and, anecdotally, I have fewer problems than lots of Hub V2 users.
Keep in mind that there will likely never be a migration from V1 to Vn; so if you are setting up a complex environment with a lot of devices, automations, etc., then using a “deprecated Hub” has that built-in extra cost.
But, well… even a Hub V2 and/or Location Record can fail and require manual migration.
Me too, although I’ve always wondered whether that somehow has more to do with which cloud shard a user is on than which version of the hub. Most users that have a V1 hub are probably on the original North American shard.
It would be fine for a proof of concept in this case, since you are testing his acceptance factor.
As a general rule for others doing a new deployment that you really think you’re going to use, don’t worry about the cost of the hub. The spend in switches and other smart things makes the initial hub purchase but a small fraction.
3 Likes
tgauchat
(ActionTiles.com co-founder Terry @ActionTiles; GitHub: @cosmicpuppy)
6
Hub V1 has less risk of instability because it no longer receives any firmware upgrades - it also has a substantially simpler firmware because it has no “local execution engine”.
Hub V2 firmware revision numbers still start with “0.x”; which indicates that someone thinks it should remain marked as pre-production (i.e., still in beta) .
I would give him the V2 as a late father’s day present with the stipulation that you are tier 3 support, meaning he needs to learn how to fix the system when it breaks.
This forum should be tier 1, and manufacturer’s tech support for Tier 2. If you do it for him he will never learn how to do it himself.
Wow, I got philosophical there for a moment…with emphasis on Dr. Phil
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