Thank you Smarthings

General Discussion
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There is always lots of negative things that are said on here and I just wanted to take a minute to say how thankful I am for Smarthings.

I’ve been using it for home automation and security for around 2 years. In this time I merged from V1 to V2. I have around 40 things and growing. I use a lot of smarthings handlers and apps but I also have lots of custom ones. I use core for most special automations and it provides a lot of flexibility without knowing how to code.

Im always amazed about all the devices we are able use. The possibilities are just about endless. If you can think it up, you cam probably do it.

I have been having less and less issues as time passes. It seems clear Smarthings is working hard to improve stability and I commend them for their efforts.

In addition, customer support has been quick to respond and is eager to help.

Thanks Smarthings for making my house so cool!

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I concur, I also feel ST has been steadily improving, as well as customer service.

Thank you ST, too.

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Yes, it allows you to do a lot of stuff. i.e. alarm panel talking to esp8266 which talks to Smartthings which talks to a raspberry Pi which talks to Apple TV which talks to my phone.

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Funny - for all of the growing pains, I really do like what it allows me to do. The open platform and this awesome developer community make it a mostly awesome experience. Mostly.

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I know there have been a lot of complaints lately, maybe I’ve been lucky but with the exception of the normal mobile presence issues and two contact sensors that quit responding (fixed with a battery pull), it’s been pretty solid for me. The only failures I have had any time recently have been my own doing :slight_smile:

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How nice to hear some positive things being said about, in my opinion, a very adaptable platform.
I don’t think there are many platforms out there that would let the user write and upload code that could, and I did say could, have an impact on the platform.

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I’m sure someone will throw their egg later watching :laughing:

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I am generally critical of ST. I don’t do it because it is fun. I do it because of my expectations based on their promises. ST has almost zero real competition, so one could argue that our complaints may have lead to some of the recent improvements.

In honor of this thread, I will not complain in it or all of today.*

*I reserve the right to b(#ch if my lights don’t turn on. :slight_smile:

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Ha, I was just telling @bamarayne in PM yesterday:

“the things you can do with ST without too much effort are limitless, no matter what people are saying this platform ROCKS!”

ST is NOT perfect. BUT nothing is for perfectionist fanatics like most people roaming this community ARE…

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I’m not a perfectionist. You never hear me complain to @ady624 when I have issues with CoRE.

I do expect ST to live up to their promises.

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Agreed. It’s the open platform and the strong developer community that separates ST from everyone else.

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I am thankful to SmartThings for having enabled my dream of an affordable automation solution for my home. I work for a test, measurement and industrial automation company so as you can imagine I have always had the dream to automate my home but there never was, until recently, an affordable solution and something that did not require massive changes to the house making it undesirable to any future buyer. I have automated my home in such a way where if you unplug the hub everything is usable just as in any other “dumb home”. Also, another major benefit of SmartThings is that you can avoid the proprietary nature of old school high end home automation systems thus allowing you to easily upgrade or move to another solution at a much lower cost. Imagine what it used to cost if you had fully outfitted your house with a proprietary system that was locked down to only support specific devices by the same vendor if you wanted to upgrade or change system… With ST we enjoy (nearly) total freedom. To be fair, it is not 100% all about ST… as Zwave and Zigbee enable this but ST is promoting this opportunity and we all seem to value it very much by being passionate in our creative home automation solutions (shows in posts on this forum!).

Constructive criticism is probably a good thing and a sign we care and want things to get better. This type of criticism may even help ST figure out its issues… but I certainly can do without the zillion gripes on this forum as they add nothing and waste lots of time for those reading the forums in search of ideas, solutions or ways to contribute back to the community sharing ones passion.

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I too am very grateful to what SmartThings can and does do. It is powerful and (generally) reliable, but then again I came from the world of Lowe’s Iris which on a good day was still worse than SmartThings on a bad day. Literally, I dumped Iris and replaced over a hundred incompatible devices when I made the switch. Iris was that bad!

I agree with the assertion of a general lack of competition to ST. Sure, there are other systems with similar functionality, but they all lack the scope of device support and integrations. All goodness aside, I do believe the frequent criticism here is necessary, it will drive the needed improvements and innovation to grow the platform and make it a long term success.

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