After a few months with this all I can say is “smart things, dumb architecture”. The concept is terrific, and many facets of it as independent items are great. But the insistence on the cloud is the fail point. It is plain foolish that ST makes updates to the firmware and you hve no option but to receive it. If things are working for you, why should you have to accept new programming that does not work? Likewise, memory is cheap… there’s no reason a lock on your door should have to be subject to the vagarities of Internet connectivity. It should run locally. PERIOD.
That said, I’m nowhere near ready to abandon ship. It’s interesting. And it does work much of e time, and is very cool when it does.
On paper their offering is very good: Z-Wave, Bluetooth, Zigbee, Wifi & 433MHz
This means that on paper all of the following (consumer facing rather than DIY) devices match the criteria that most people are looking for in a home controller / gateway… however so far I have not seen anyone claim that any of these actually deliver on their promises in reality!!:
Smartthings V2
WigWag
VeraPlus
Cozify
Homey
CastleHub
TP Link SR20
N Cube
Oomi
Wink Hub
Animus Heart
It would be great if we could somehow keep track of all of these devices to see how they progress and see who actually gets there first (delivers on the promise of off the shelf home automation). Obviously I’m hoping that it’s ST, especially as they have finally started addressing the core instabilities with the platform, and that I’m heavily invested in their devices and the time that I have already spent coding in groovy - however, I am a consumer and whoever does get there first will get my vote!
Thoughts?
mdawson
(Different Computers. So happy with Indigo.)
208
If you’re going to include ST, Vera, and Castle in that list, you should also include Indigo.
I was considering - but it’s not really an off the shelf solution because it involves having a spare computer that is always on and buying various dongles for the protocols. To me its a more consumer friendly version of OpenHab or Home Wizard… but its not a low power consuming box that any joe blogs can buy, plug in and build a system around - it requires more faff (obviously, currently they all require more faff, but that’s not by design! just that they all fail to deliver!)
I run it as a secondary to ST. Easy to use conditional programming with almost unlimited flexibility. PC based that requires a Zwave USB controller. They have plugins for 3rd party systems like HUE, WEMO, Nest and Amazon Echo.
I actual solved most of my issues with HA however… I stand by my comments on HA complexity. THis product is not and will likely never be useful for the average person who quickly want to get a device of two up and running. While what I have working within HA is working very well I will continue to look for better alternatives. Thanks for the link to AxialControl. Might give it a try in the very near future…
[quote=“Tom2, post:211, topic:35465”]
If you can do without zigbee I would give https://www.axialcontrol.com/ a try.
[/quote]If only I didn’t have all these zigbee devices…
I wouldn’t say one is going to die before the other any time soon. I went all Zwave because they have the most flexibility between control systems. Zigbee tends to have a proprietary nature to it. I know it’s not proprietary but the individual manufacture can make it hard to use on different systems. Example: ST zigbee devices don’t work on other control systems without a lot of tinkering. I don’t like being walled into one system, just incase one craps out or fails to keep pace with the competition.
