@JDRoberts While some of what you say there makes sense, some of it doesn’t - as someone already said “apples and oranges”. Thread isn’t an AllJoyn competitor. It’s a ZigBee/ZWave competitior, and I am excited to see what Thread can deliver - it sounds like the best of both worlds (open spec like zigbee, interoperability that actually works like zwave). Neither of these are IP capable, or offer any means for bringing together multiple standards. Actually it only makes the need for AllJoyn even bigger, since there’s now yet another set of devices that can’t talk to all the other sets. Exposing your devices to IP is important so your phones, tablets, PCs etc can interact with them.
What AllJoyn does is ensuring all these specs can work together through Device Service Bridges. I want the SmartThings hub to act like an AllJoyn DSB. This would greatly open up the app development world to build apps that works on any home automation standard. I would be an idiot to spend lots and lots of money on building an app that only works on one single ecosystem - my user base would be heavily limited - or I would have to build an app that can do all protocols, have a device that can speak all the standards etc - basically duplicating what AllJoyn tries to do - and very expensive and time consuming.
Saying the AllSeen Alliance is just LG and Microsoft is quite an understatement. I mean look at this list: AllSeen Alliance - An Open Source Project for the IoT “ADT, AT&T, Cisco, Sharp, Philips, Canon, Qualcomm, D-Link, Honeywell, HTC, IBM, Insteon, Iris, LIFX” just to name a few more.
My ultimate point is: We need local access APIs, and lots of developers in this community site are asking for it. So what I’m saying: Make it a standard local access API, and enough with the Samsung smart home protocol and what else proprietary protocols you have that makes it uneconomically for developers to bet on. On your website you brag about how the SmartThings hub is “the only hub to implement SHP”. Yeah no wonder - It’s your own Samsung “standard”, and it’s absolutely in no way a good thing you’re the only one, nor is it a good thing that there isn’t an open board that controls it.
The SmartThings hub with all it’s device support has an amazing ability to be a great AllJoyn DSB for other apps and devices, and anything it doesn’t support it could also consume and control through other AllJoyn DSBs.
AllJoyn is the ONLY open IP spec I’ve seen that tries to solve the problem of multiple protocols while realizing we still need many of them for various scenarios.
I understand that it’s in your best interest to completely lock in customers to SmartThings and Samsung appliances/devices. But it’s in no way in the best interest of your customers, and sooner or later your customers will realize that.
Simple scenario: I need a new smart light bulb - I can use the older more expensive SmartThings compatible one, or I can use the amazing new bulb that does more at half the price - but I would need to replace my entire existing HA system to use it. So I end up not buying it after all and going incandescent and go home grumpy promising to give up on this homie automation crap thinking about how I used to just be able to buy a bulb with the right socket, and it would just work - I had literally 100s of different bulbs to choose from - but somehow we ended up in this dystopian society where no one talks to each other. But if I could use bridges to expose new technology to old and vice versa, I can start migrating seamlessly to the new fancy smart bulbs, and still use my existing smart things all without running different apps, separate controllers etc. No need to worry about any sunk costs.
There are no significant devices currently available for consumers to add to their home automation set ups that require AllJoyn.
This isn’t about devices - it’s about apps. And yes there aren’t any apps, because there aren’t any hubs apart from a single expensive Insteon hub. I’m sure if there’s some great Home Automation apps out there, they would list the hubs they are compatible with, and you would be looking really good on that list. But you are not going to see the next big home automation killer app until the developers building it has the user bases required to make the effort worthwhile. Building for just one ecosystem in the current fragmented state of HA just isn’t feasible today, and that’s why your statement above is self-fulfilling and completely meaningless. Be the egg instead of waiting for the chicken.