ST Alternative?

Not that I WANT to leave ST as I love the fact that we have access to the IDE and some seriously advanced features; but the reliability of the system and inconsistent nature of it (works one day, doesn’t the next, etc.) is just too much… especially since I have it implemented at my house to use fully, not just as a toy/hobby.

Since Wink is dead or dying out; is there anything else out there that is comparable to ST but actually works? I know this is probably not the best place to post something like this however I love what ST in theory should do… just tired of waiting endlessly for what seems to be a one man support show to fix. It’s sad that Samsung doesn’t fund their dev/support better because it’s clearly VERY lacking and I’m sure that poor guy or poor guys are just completely swamped.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!

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IMHO now is a very good time to wait and see. It’s very possible the likes of Google and Apple will establish a much larger presence in this space in 2016.

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I really doubt. If they had something up their sleeves, they would not have missed to showcase it at CES.

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CES is a mess. Google and Apple have long since learned there is simply too much noise there for any major announcements from them. Check the history.

Google already has two OnHubs on the market. Apple has the new ATV platform, capable of running complex apps. There is little doubt in my mind “if”, only when.

The timing of the OnHub suggests to me that we’ll see something soon.

Plus, where else is there to go? Another small start-up? Vera? The stuff from the little guys has not been good. And the bigger guy’s stuff is pricey and usually proprietary. This nut is ripe for cracking

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If you mean consumer, off-the-shelf systems, Vera is more reliable than SmartThings in my experience and it works with or without the Internet connection. Vera Edge ($99) is Z-Wave only though (no Zigbee or BT), but soon-to-be-released Vera Plus will have both Zigbee and BT. Vera also provides a way of writing custom plug-ins in Lua language, although it’s a bit more complicated than writing SmartThings “apps”.

There’re also several software solutions that run on PC or Mac worth considering, for example OpenHAB (Windows/Linux/OSX), HomeGenie (Windows/Linux) or Indigo (OSX).

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We are still in the “experimental” phase of Smarts in our homes. I cannot speak of Apple, because I don’t own any of their gadgets so don’t really follow their company. Maybe Brillo and Weave are the answers, but their adoption seems very slow.

I think the Home Automation market is solidifying but we might see reliable products for specific use cases that will not require communication with other devices. So we might end up using one hub for lights, one hub for security and a bunch of independent devices that manage themselves w/out our interaction (I think this is Google’s direction today).

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I am not sure what we are discussing. OP asked where to go from SmartThings; I answered “Wait… bigger and better things are coming” and that it does not make a whole lot of sense to migrate to a different, existing platform at this time.

Although I suppose, if pressed for an answer right this minute, I’d recommend a Mac Mini running Indigo if reliability was the main concern.

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Thanks for all of the suggestions and insight. I may put things back to “normal” so not to be frustrated on a daily basis by things not doing what they are supposed to do and making it more of a “toy” again rather than trying to run important main lights and such off of it. In any event, thank you for the replies, I do appreciate it. Maybe I’ll just hang on for them to either get it together and/or something bigger/better to come out.

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I’ve not tried SmartThings. I was planning to import one until I saw all the issues people were having. That, combined with the fact that I don’t want to have to rely on a cloud and Samsung’s commitment to a system to run my house.

I already have a homeserver and after some research it turned out Domoticz works with a simple package, but if it didn’t you can have it run from a Raspberry Pi too. All very cheap, all open source and reasonably simple to setup. And so far it has proven to be reliable and it all works locally. Don’t know if it’s a viable option for you as it’s more work than SmartThings claims their platform is and so far I’m not running more than 10 devices, but you could have a look at it.

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:arrow_up: This.

I’ve been saying for over a year that my personal expectation was that by the summer of 2016 there will be several good plug-and-play home automation systems in the under $5000 category that would meet my own needs. But i’ve had to revise that to summer 2018. It could still be another year or so before we see a Full thread option, but that’s another story.

(edited to note that it’s clear my original Summer 2016 target date was way too optimistic. HomeKit has moved much more slowly than I expected, and consequently there has been less pressure on competitors. The earliest I now expect to see multiple plug and play systems under $5,000 is summer 2018, and I expect them to fall into two categories: Full feature systems like SmartThings and limited feature systems such as I expect HomeKit will now be.

Limited feature Systems will only work with a few specific devices and may be limited to lights, locks, HVAC, cameras, and probably garage doors. But very few sensors other than those built into other devices like motion sensors built into security cameras. The limited feature systems will basically be a smarter thermostat, a smarter lightbulb, etc. that will replace your existing dumb devices, but you won’t buy devices in categories that you didn’t already have. (Even a voice controller like Echo or Google Home could be considered a smarter music player.) Rules will be simple, about the equivalent of IFTTT, maybe with Geopresence as an additional “and.”

In contrast, full-featured systems will add several different kinds of sensors, a hub, maybe some relays – – devices that you only need in order to make the automations work. They will also offer much more complex rule mechanisms than HomeKit and other limited feature systems.)

Right now there are a number of home automation candidates, but they all have pluses and minuses, and they’re all going to feel a lot of evolutionary pressure once HomeKit is actually established, even if Homekit itself is a limited feature system.

As far as what’s available right now, different ones will work for different people, they all have noticeable weaknesses as well as noticeable strengths.

(This list is only for home automation, specifically lights, locks, HVAC, presence indicators, and control of AV equipment. The candidates list for home security would be different, as I don’t personally consider SmartThings a competitor in that space.)

1) (US) Lowe’s Iris. This is the most similar to SmartThings in terms of the devices and rule setup. Zigbee ZHA 1.2, zwave plus, and some other protocols. I don’t think there’s any custom programming unless you hack the device. You have to pay a $10 a month fee in order to get access to their rules engine, which is probably the biggest downside from the point of view of most people choosing SmartThings. In the summer of 2016 they added echo integration for voice control and an optional cellular backup for security monitoring. But customer satisfaction seems to be down over the previous generation. This is one where we’ll have to wait and see if they can pull everything together now that they’ve added echo.

2)a) (US) Insteon with HomeKit. The proprietary Insteon stuff has been around for a while, and is showing its age. But the company has committed to updating pretty much everything, and already has a hub out that works with HomeKit and has promised additional new hubs, one for alljoyn and one for thread. So this opens them up to additional devices beyond the proprietary Insteon protocol, but not all on one hub.

They’ve also put a lot of effort into voice control, so you have a choice between echo, Cortana, or Siri (with the HomeKit version).

This is intended as a full-featured system, but The biggest negative right now is that there just aren’t enough HomeKit devices yet. In particular, as of June 2016, none of the original Insteon sensors can act as triggers in HomeKit, and there are still no battery operated open/close sensors. You can open the app and see how many times the door was opened that day, but you can’t use the door opening as a trigger for anything else, not even a notification.

(Note that the proprietary Insteon protocol is a completely separate protocol than the ones SmartThings uses, so very few ST devices transfer, although if Insteon does eventually release a Thread hub it’s possible that ZigBee devices might work with that one. But no announced plans for Zwave with any of the new Insteon hubs.)

I had thought this would end up being a market leader, but it’s just ended up looking like something designed by committee. Not very useful for anyone. The original Insteon is a better choice for a full-featured system, and HomeKit on its own looks like a better choice for a limited feature system.

2b) HomeKit on its own (US and UK). This is a good limited feature system. It won’t necessarily have many sensors capable of triggering events other than those built into the other devices. It comes with a rules engine, but it’s a very simple one. No multilevel conditionals. Triggers are limited to Geopresence, time of day, and a few device events like thermostat setting. Devices are limited to lights, locks, HVAC, cameras, and garage door openers, with only a few brands in each category. Plus a few sensors that can trigger HomeKit scenes

You can use an iPad as the Internet gateway to allow for remote control, so you don’t need a hub.

I’ve now adopted this for most of my own needs. I use the Hue motion sensors to control Hue lights . They can only trigger Hue lights, but I can have the Hue like coming on trigger something else in HomeKit.

The battery operated Elgato eve motion sensor works fine as a touchless switch, although at $50 , it’s a little pricey.

I prefer the Voice recognition on the echo, so I still use both that and Siri.

I find I get enough functionality out of homekit’s limited features to solve most of my lighting and HVAC requirements, and I can use echo/harmony for the AV controls.

It’s not a perfect system, but if it’s reliable and stable and it may work well for some people, particularly those who want a “set and forget” symptom system and only need simple rules. But it’s a very limited system when compared to SmartThings.

As an example, with HomeKit, I can use the Elgato contact sensor on the closet door to have the light come on when the door is opened. I can also receive a push notification if someone else opens the door.

With SmartThings, I can can go farther and receive a push notification if the door has been open for ten minutes, which probably means someone left it open by mistake. HomeKit just doesn’t offer that level of complexity.

3) (US and EU) Zipato. Full featured. Now available in the US as well as Europe. Has a very interesting architecture, where you buy the modules for the specific protocols that you want. So you can get both zwave and zigbee, but you have to pay extra. This one requires a lot more technical expertise then either Iris or Insteon. You can do a lot of custom programming.

It also has an interesting architecture because you create your rules on your cloud account, and then they get downloaded to your local hub. So everything runs locally at your house, but it can take a while, sometimes even a day, to get everything synced up. This takes a while to get used to. You’ll see some complaints in their user forums where people think rules are broken which actually just haven’t synced up yet.

I suspect this is one which requires quite a bit of ongoing hands-on maintenance but has a lot of flexibility.

Another negative when compared to SmartThings is that they’ve done very little work on integration with third-party systems like Sonos or harmony. I don’t know if that’s because they’re in Croatia, or if it’s just a commitment to open standards. But it is something to be aware of.

4) (US) Homeseer. Full featured. Definitely requires strong technical skills. No zigbee. This one is not likely to meet my candidates list because it requires too much hands-on effort and I don’t see that changing. Plus I really like Zigbee sensors.

5) (US) wink. Zwave, some Zigbee, Lutron, Echo, more. Full featured, but no custom code. If the company stays in business, this looks like a good candidate. the biggest negative relative to SmartThings used to be the lag, but they’ve increased the amount of local processing and this has improved a lot. Zigbee devices are limited to a small selection, so you’ll probably need to shift to Zwave motion sensors. Like Iris and SmartThings, it’s cloudbased, which means if the company does go out of business the hub stops working.

It does have one odd feature limitation: it treats motion sensors the way a security system typically does instead of the way a home automation system typically does, so if one motion sensor goes off it’s treated the same as all motion sensors going off. This makes it impossible to use sensors as a trigger for lights in multiple rooms. They have promised that individual sensors will be able to be used as individual triggers sometime in the future, but the feature does not yet exist. (This is a big negative for me, since I use motion sensors as touchless switches.) No custom code.

The biggest “if” is whether it will stay in business. Home Depot seems to be dropping the devices, you can no longer buy them from their website. The parent company, quirky, went into bankruptcy in November and as part of that the primary creditor (Flextronics, the company that made the hardware) basically accepted the wink division as part of what it was owed after no other buyers were found. It has some nice integrations, in particular with Lutron and echo, but I don’t think it’s turning a profit yet. Still, they just released a new wink 2 hub in fall 2016 and it’s getting good reviews. It also runs a lot more processing locally. We’ll just have to see. It’s definitely limited in terms of both devices and logic compared to SmartThings, but I would still count it as a full-featured system when compared to something like HomeKit.

Here’s a detailed review of Wink two:

6) (US) Staples Connect. Zonoff shut this down in June 2017, so it is no longer an option. Full featured, no custom code. Zwave and Zigbee and Lutron, but each is limited to only a few devices. Their target audience has always been small businesses, so they put reliability at the top of their list. Once an account is set up, everything can run locally. Appears to be very solid and reliable. But they basically threw out anything that might cause instability. So no custom coding, no Geofencing, no voice. A good choice for some people, particularly those who just want to run lights and window coverings on a schedule and add a smart lock. Like an accountant’s office.

However, as of April 2016 Staples has dropped the entire project. They will continue to provide support for existing customers, but is clearly moving it to an “end-of-life” stage and will not be adding any new devices or features. If you want to buy a new hub, you have to get it from www.zwaveproducts.com , and the original deep discounts are no longer available. As of June 2017, the product has been discontinued.

https://staplesconnect.zendesk.com/hc/communities/public/questions/206547346-Important-Message-from-Staples-regarding-Staples-Connect

7) (US) Nexia. Zwave only, $10/month fee. One of the older zwave systems, it hasn’t really kept up. Unlike Iris, there’s no cellular option for notifications.

8) (US and EU) Works with Nest. Limited Features. This one probably requires the least technical expertise of any. It really comes down to specific use cases. This is a different protocol than SmartThings uses. There are a different set of devices in the EU than in the US.

9) (Extender is US only) Logitech harmony hub extender. Z wave and Zigbee, but not the way SmartThings customers are used to it. Very very limited scheduling, and limited reporting from the end devices. There’s an IFTTT channel, but only for “That,” no “If.” Works very well for setting up a home theater room where you want to combine motion sensors, lights, and the AV equipment. But not really home automation the way most people think of it.

For example, you can set up a sleep timer that will turn everything off after 30 minutes, but you have to manually start the timer each time you want to use it.

So this is one where it does what it says it does, but most people coming from SmartThings would read the product description and think it did something else.

10) (US and EU) VeraPlus. Full featured. Zwave and Zigbee and Bluetooth. Started shipping February 2016. Vera for Z wave has been around for several years, and offers more Z wave options than SmartThings does. But no Zigbee. Vera plus is supposed to change that, but who knows what it will actually deliver? Runs locally after initial setup. Custom programming for zwave, no word yet on what will be available for Zigbee.

It may make my candidate list, it may not. (Historically each new vera model has been really buggy for a few months when it first came out. Looks like if you’re plus is no exception – – their forums report a lot of bugs in the zigbee implementation. They are attacking them one by one. It will probably be a couple of months before we can really evaluate this as an alternative.)

11) (US and EU) indigo. Full featured except for locks. Runs on a mac and you have to buy a separate zwave USB stick to act as the controller. Zwave, Insteon (US only), X10, LAN. No Zigbee. Runs locally, rocksolid. Tiny company but since it’s running local even if they went out of business what you already bought would keep running. Requires technical skills. Does not support security command sets for zwave, so no zwave locks and no plans to add any. They support Insteon locks but only lock/unlock.

12) (US) Axial Control (formerly InControl HA). Zwave (including locks) + WeMo + Hue + Works with Nest + Sonos + Alexa + LIFX + some X10. Requires a Windows laptop to act as a server. Has an simple but solid phone app. Notice that there is no Zigbee other than ZLL via the hue bridge. Requires a USB stick for the Z wave, but they will sell you the gocontrol one in a bundle with the software.

If you just want to control Z wave devices, you can buy the $89 bundle that includes the Z wave stick.

For each of the other “+” options above you have to buy a separate plug-in, typically $10 each. so just under $200 for the whole system, but you have to supply a laptop to run it. Require some technical skill to set it up and some understanding of home automation concepts like “scenes.” So not for absolute beginners, but doesn’t require programming.

I like this. The desktop UI is intuitive, the features are excellent, it runs locally, and I think the price for the plug-ins is fair.

But no zigbee sensors. So I don’t think it will make my candidate list, but if you’ve been considering indigo and didn’t get them because they don’t have Zwave locks, this one is definitely worth looking at.

13) Xiaomi (zigbee) (from China, ships to both the US and EU). Intended as a very inexpensive standalone home automation system. Xiaomi is a huge consumer electronics company in China. Sort of like Kia in that their market is people who want to spend as little as possible, but they do throw in some cool factor. The sensors are very simple, you won’t get extra features like temperature reporting from the contact sensor. But everything is super inexpensive, typically around $10 for a sensor, and you can buy a starter kit with a hub to do scheduling that $75 for their gateway plus a contact sensor Plus a PIR motion sensor (the “human body sensor”) Plus a battery operated button plus a humidity sensor plus a pocket socket. Insanely cheap. The sensors can mostly be made to work with smartthings, although there are some quirks. The pocket socket is an unreliable repeater when used with SmartThings, but seems to repeat OK when used with its own Gateway.

It’s intended for the Chinese market, so when you put in an address for the gateway, you have to say you’re in China. And the manual is only in Chinese. But the app has an English version as well (I suspect intended for the Hong Kong market), and you can probably make it work. The gateway can also play some Internet radio stations, but you’ll have to select from the Chinese ones.

There are some additional devices you can buy as well, including a camera. At the time of this writing, the safest place to buy this from is probably gearbest. Read the returns policy carefully. And it may take a month to arrive.

http://www.gearbest.com/alarm-systems/pp_616359.html?

This is bare-bones home automation, but at a a bare-bones price. No voice control, no Geo presence, no IFTTT, very simple rules. But it will meet the requirements for some people. The individual sensors are also popular for adding to home automation systems that support Zigbee ZHA, including SmartThings.

This won’t meet my own needs because I want Geopresence and IFTTT, and I have to have voice control, but I do think it belongs on this list.

14) OpenHAB. an open source software project for the highly technical. Full featured. No Zigbee. Not on my candidates list, but if you were thinking of coding your own system from scratch, it might be a jumpstart.

15) HomeGenie. like openHAB, this is an open source project for the highly technical. Especially well-suited to C# programmers. Supports Zwave, X 10, Insteon, and the Phillips hue bridge. No Zigbee (the Hue support is through the bridge.) relies on a number of android features, so there are apps for android but not iOS. Also has a Windows phone app, I’m not sure what features it has. The voice control feature requires the chrome browser.

16) (US) PEQ. originally sold at Best Buy, now appears to only be available through their site and surplus outlets. Has a monthly fee. But it also seems like the features set changes every month. Currently looks like Zigbee only.

Some of their Zigbee devices are made by centralite and are very good quality. I’ve bought several when they went on sale. But it’s really hard to find any reviews or analyst articles on them.

As of March 2017, the company has been sold to a monthly contract company and the kits will no longer be available at retail, so I’m taking this one off my list. I don’t know if they’re going to continue to manufacture the individual sensors or not, it sounds like not.

17) (US) Abode security (new). I thought this might be a contender, and I really like their approach to security, but then when they actually released it they significantly limited the total number of home automation rules you could use. That may have been an effort to control stability that they needed for the security side. They have zwave and zigbee but don’t seem to have supported many features. It’s more on a device by device basis. So they are a home security system with a few additional home automation features.

18) (US) Piper. All in one camera and zwave controller, iControl bought them two years ago, then sold them again to alarm.com. Seems solid. No Zigbee.

updated April 2016 Piper’s IFTTT channel is out and so far it’s just at the mode level. It will trigger if there’s any alarm condition for a specific mode, and you can arm or disarm it based on other IFTTT channel. But you can’t respond to a specific sensor going off. So the IFTTT channel itself is good for some security applications, but doesn’t really lineup with most home automation use cases. It doesn’t look like this one is going to make my own candidate list.

In June 2016 it was announced that piper had been sold to alarm.com. It’s not clear if it will continue to be sold as a standalone system or not.

19) Securifi Almond series. full featured zigbee and zwave. They get excellent reviews as a Wi-Fi router, not so much for home automation. This can make it confusing when you just look at the number of stars they get as many people are using them only as a Wi-Fi router.

They have a new model coming out pretty soon but I haven’t been impressed with their delivery capability over the last year or so. Unless they do something startlingly impressive with the new model, I’m not expecting them to Be One of my candidates.

20) (US and EU) Fibaro . Zwave. Full featured. Their individual sensors and relays are very good. The new controller has been a big disappointment. The rules engine looks good. However, the controller has had a lot of stability issues even on just basic device control. It’s unfortunate, because I had initially hoped that This would be the big new zwave system. The reviews have not been great.

Updated November 2016
Reviews for the Fibaro hub have improved, but only from people who are using Fibaro devices exclusively. There continue to be reports of incompatibility problems even with major zwave brands like Aeon Labs.

21) (EU) Devolo Home Control Kit. zwave only this is what we all hoped Fibaro would be. Full featured. It’s Z wave only, but they have really put a lot of effort into making it easy to use for the typical electronics consumer. Vesternet has done A very extensive review, so I’ll just direct people there for details. (also, if you purchase from Vesternet, they typically have outstanding customer service.) it’s not a perfect system, but it’s a lot better than most. Brand-new, so there’s no telling yet with the reliability will be. But as a Z wave only system, it should be pretty good, and Devolo is a well-established company. Only available for the EU, and unlikely to be available in the US as they are using rebranded devices from companies that only make EU devices. However, if you’re in the EU this one is definitely worth looking at.

22) Homey. Like everything else, it looks fantastic in its Kickstarter video, but reports from the first people who’ve actually received it have been that there are number of bugs in the voice activation. More importantly, so far it has only been certified for Europe. No UL certification and only works on the EU zwave frequency. Potential for ZigBee through a dongle but not delivered out of the box. So at present it only really works with EU frequency zwave devices and some LAN/cloud integrations. Setting up “flows” (rules) requires comfort with Boolean logic, and it seems fairly easy to set up conflicting rules, which is a problem. See their user forums.

23) ADT Pulse and Xfinity Home. Monthly fees, long contracts, limited device selection. Home automation from traditional security companies. Full featured in the sense that they have sensors, but a very limited device selection. I’ll look at them, but I don’t expect them to be finalists for my needs.

24) Echo + Hue Bridge + Harmony + IFTTT. I’ve gotten several questions about this, so if you just want smart lights, anything that harmony can give you, and echo, you can do all of that just through IFTTT. You can put things on a schedule using Google calendar. And it’s reliable. And of course you can add in anything else that has an IFTTT channel, including Lutron Caseta. The new Hue motion sensors work very well for simple use cases. And you could add the Kumo wireless tags using their IFTTT channel if you want more complex sensors.

It’s just that it’s a limited feature set. Most notably, there are no locks that will work with this set up if you are outside your house, because harmony doesn’t allow locks to be unlocked via IFTTT.

But you have to use a separate app for each of the brands, and the if statements are very simple, just if/then.

So this setup will work well for some households, but not all. It’s not going to let you reuse your Z wave and Zigbee devices, though.

25) Yonomi. Yonomi is an app that works very much the same way as IFTTT does, but it allows for a slightly more complex if statement because there is also a “while” condition. And, it’s an app, which frankly is easier to track and review then the IFTTT website. It does work with echo, harmony, Hue, LIFX, August, jawbone fitness bands, and a few quirky devices like Tripper. It also works with some Schlage locks. So if you’re considering option 22) it’s worth looking at this one as well. Yonomi has a better rules engine, but IFTTT has more device partners.

26) Stringify like Yonomi, this is just an app, but with a different partner selection then Yonomi, so it’s worth checking out both. In particular, stringify does have Insteon integration, although you’ll need the insteon hub, not just individual devices. But if you’re looking for ways to stitch together different existing systems, this one is worth checking out.

Summary

So lots of possibilities out there, but no clear winners yet. Just depends on what you specifically need at your own house. And your own preferences with regard to protocols and monthly fees And programming skills required.

If you can wait awhile, I do expect the choices to be quite a bit different late 2017. Maybe even a TV-based SmartThings. :wink:

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GREAT summary!!! ++20 I have personally invested a lot into zWave and am taking a wait and see approach for a better solution than ST. (or if ST fixes their issues). Right now, besides ST there isn’t a single system that can control my Somfy Blinds, MyQ Garage Door openers, SimpliSafe integration and Nests and all of my zwave and zigbee devices besides ST. I have no choice.

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I wonder if I could run that on my QNAP NAS… thanks for the info. I looked at it and it really does look nice. A Raspberry Pi would be super easy and cheap as well for this as stated. Thanks.

Wow, beautiful summary, explanation, and list. THANK YOU. I am familiar with a few on that list and completely 100% agree with your remarks and notes of those systems. I think this thread would prove helpful for a lot of people as there are a lot of options but clearly there is a difference in how these companies and products implement home automation and really, what home automation even means to them. Again, great post, thank you.

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Just a couple of additions here. Z-Wave, Insteon, x10, and LAN. If you’re using both Indigo and SmartThings out of the box, you’ll do way more without technical expertise with Indigo than SmartThings.

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I just spent 30 minutes going through all the devices on the Indigo page. Wow. This doesn’t look any more complicated than ST. Ohh and there are a lot of positive posts in the forums…Also looks like Echo support is there as well as Sonus in addons. Might have to get a ZWave USB controller and play with it on my macbook…

I just picked up a Homeseer due to issues I have had with my ST.

ST was great when it worked but the fact that time based triggers were hit or miss just made it frustrating beyond belief.

The Homeseer does have a bit more of a learning curve however once you’ve spent a bit navigating the menus to figure out where everything is located it really largely makes sense. Plus everything is processed and triggered locally so there is no question on if the cloud is functioning correctly. The downside is that ZigBee is not supported as well as the much higher initial purchase. I am going to give it a few weeks but hopefully things will continue to work well for me and I will finalize my transition to the Homeseer.

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Good luck to you! 20char

Ya I don’t really want to move away from ST, but today is a prime example of why. I have spent the last 2 weeks customizing things, training the wife, getting WAF up. etc. And then today a ton of stuff is broken. having spent 10 years of my career as a director of IT. This is a big mess. There should be a full RCA (Root Cause Analysis) published and a plan for mitigation steps to be deployed ASAP. I didn’t spend money on a beta product. I mean hell i waited for V2. If you spend time reading through the forums it is obvious the uptime/reliability is getting worse with time not better. This means that ST is not following standard Dev/QA/Deployment processes. Or they just don’t care. If you think it is bad now, wait till every smart tv users has a hub, just the simplest things will overrun their environment and make it useless.

I just don’t get it!

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Well as long as I can try to get some reliability out of the system by either offloading the scheduling portion of the routines to my Logitech Harmony and use something like Rule Machine to manage my triggers and rules… I might be able to skate on this one for now. I have a rough plan thanks to all of the advice I’ve picked up on these boards but I haven’t had time yet to re-write the whole thing to get out of smart lighting and routines. I need some time to sit down, map it out, and tweak it to see if I can get it all to work the way I think it will first and not while the wife is around getting frustrated with the system too.

You forgot WigWag!

… oh no wait, been nearly 2.5 years since their Kickstarter campaign and they’ve barely sent any BETA units to their beta testers :smile:

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