I agree with that for sure.
All multi-protocol systems do that. Nothing new here.
2 Likes
I bought a smartthings hub (latest version), and google home. I wanted to control so many things, my fans (which are wireless but can be converted to bluetooth), my pioneer stereo (accepts simple telnet commands), my TV (its a Samsung connected via ethernet), etc.
Cant do any of it. Its horribly frustrating and disappointing. The technology is SIMPLE. Its PURELY a matter of support, lack of basic partnership and integration, and market positioning (legal crap).
Its a shame. I have a feeling the industry will pass smartthings buy. Google will partner with device manufactures and provide integration.
1 Like
The technology is pretty simple but not inexpensive. You can get a reliable fully connected smarthome that combines security and Home automation and home theater now from control 4. But itâs likely to cost $50,000 and up plus an annual fee.
If it was simple to do this cheaply, there would be hackers out there now with systems based on raspberry piâs that did everything everybody wanted. The fact that those donât exist (there are lots of hacker systems based on one or two protocols, but not all the options), when those donât have to worry about marketing or legal or any of the other factors that you listed is a good sign that itâs not quite as easy as it seems.
The pioneering aspect of SmartThings was trying to do several different protocols with a $99 hub. They donât hold any patents that Iâm aware of. Z wave and zigbee were both already well-established home automation protocols. The cloud piece was new, but itâs still evolving to try and address issues of scale.
If youâre interested in what people are doing from a hackerâs perspective, take a look at OpenHab. But there are still missing pieces there. So again, not quite as easy as it might seem at first, even for those with a lot of technical skills.
2 Likes
The technology is cheap. A raspberry PI can do it all for $34. Telent is open source, has been around since the dawn of man, and bluetooth can be implemented for less than $5, samsung has all the code to control its TVs as does every manufacturer. They are not mysterious new commands, they are using open source protocols.
âIf it was simple to do this cheaply, there would be hackers out there now with systems based on raspberry piâs that did everything everybody wantedâ
If they had access to all the APIs that these devices use, then yes. My smartphone (android) can control my samsung TV, can control my pioneer AVR, my BD player, etc. It is not sending out mysterious commands. If an app on my phone can do it, ANY computing device capable of sending out TCP/IP and whatever base encryption is being implemented (if any), can do it.
It is easy, from a technical perspective, the issue isnt technology is lawyers, patents, IPs, etc.
If all you want is Bluetooth, sure. If you want Bluetooth plus zigbee plus Z Wave plus Wi-Fi plus IR all from one hub, then there are engineering issues to address as well.
Your phone doesnât have Z wave or zigbee antennas. Itâs not just a legal issue.
1 Like
âYour phone doesnât have Z wave or zigbee antennas. Itâs not just a legal issue.â
and yet I can control all my ethernet connect devices, why is that? In the end, its data. Which is transmitted via tcp/ip. My phone can transmit the data and so could the hub.
I am not saying the hub isnt necessary, im sayin its UNDERUTILIZED. It doesnât do half of what it could. Take telnet, its the simplest communication protocol there is. The smarthub could definitely send those commands, it could also send the web commands to control the TV (which is a Samsung for petes sake).
The ONLY hurdle is knowing what those commands are (exposing the API).
Not quite. Raspberry Pi price does not include SD card, housing and power supply. Add those and youâre looking at ~ $60 price tag. But thatâs just barebones hardware. Now add Zigbee and Z-Wave radios and the price will shoot over a $100. And of course, we havenât event touched the software development cost. So no, itâs not as cheap as you might think.
With respect to Telnet, yes, the Community (including yours truly) have asked for this feature for years. At some point it looked like SmartThings were going to enable it, but later on they backed off. My guess they were mostly concerned with security aspect of it and also probably had development resource constraints. This would be a great feature to have as far as Iâm concerned, but their internal priorities are likely different.
2 Likes
If youâre asking why all home automation isnât run over Wi-Fi or Ethernet there are two reasons:
One) energy usage. This is been a huge driver for the development of new home automation protocols such as zigbee and zwave. If you want battery powered devices, and many people do, a Wi-Fi battery is typically good for a couple of weeks at most. The exact same sensor run instead with zigbee or zwave based communications Should last at least a year and probably two on the same battery.
- scalability. The most popular smart lightbulbs are using zigbee for a very simple reason: a Zigbee network can have literally thousands of devices on it. Z wave network is limited to 232, including the hub. A Wi-Fi network practically may be limited to about 75 because signal is shared in a way that it is not in a mesh topology. If you are a lightbulb company and you want to sell your solution to a hotel or an apartment building or an office tower, neither Wi-Fi nor Z wave are going to work.
Now itâs possible that in the future Bluetooth mesh (which is different than the Bluetooth in current phones) Will meet the requirements for low energy and comes standard in mobile phones, in which case everything will change again. But for right now today, telnet just doesnât work for many of the most popular home automation scenarios. It works fine for controlling two or three televisions in a home. But not for running sensors plus light bulbs plus relays all on the same system.
Iâm not saying it wouldnât be great if the SmartThings hub did more and the customer had more access to what it did â â Iâm 100% in agreement with you on that. Iâm just saying itâs not simply a matter of having the message structures exposed. If you want battery powered sensors, and you want more than a dozen or so in one home, you have to look at some of the low-power protocols to accomplish that.
Submitted with respect.
2 Likes
A raspberry Pi cant be had from Amazon for $49 (with PS and case), and an SD is practically free now (if its even required). However, all this is moot, since I already bought a Smarththings HUB for $75 or whatever, that has the technology to do everything I thought it could do, but doesnât.
âwe havenât event touched the software development costâ
True, but I suspect its already built in but not enabled. The code is modular, you can have button X send telnet command using 90% of the same code as button X send zwave command.
âMy guess they were mostly concerned with security aspect of it and also probably had development resource constraints. This would be a great feature to have as far as Iâm concerned, but their internal priorities are likely different.â
Security is a non issue as the device has it enabled 24/7. I can do it with my phone, are they getting sued?
âbut their internal priorities are likely differentâ
BINGO. Its all marketing, financial positioning, etc. It is NOT technology that is limiting the functionality. Thats my point.
Smartthigns cannot even control my Samsung television. LOL. Really? Cant even integrate a televison they make? WTF
1 Like
Iâve answered your question about Telnet in another thread. Yes, there are technical reasons why itâs not been enabled. Iâm not saying it could not be done, but itâs definitely not trivial because of this and would require significant design and development effort. Which in turn, boils down to priorities because thereâs tons of features thatâs been promised and not delivered, and most of them would be higher on most userâs priority list than Telnet. Think local processing, Bluetooth, configuration backup and migration, enabling USB ports, etc.
Yes, itâs a shame. But I think thereâs a deep schism between SmartThings and the rest of Samsung corporate structure thatâs at least partially responsible for this. Just my uninformed opinion, of course. 
1 Like
These last few comments actually answer the question of the OP. HA is not ready for prime time in the least.
The main reason is the lack of standardization. Every company is pretty much doing its own thing. They choose which protocols they will support and how its implemented. And many decisions HAVE been made based on market strategy, and not consumer convenience.
This actually reminds me of the headaches of the pre-PnP (Plug-n-Play) days. There was actually a time where people HIRED random dudes to come to their house and setup printers. Nobody would believe that these days with the levels of convenience and standardization that we enjoy.
HA and the notion of âSmartâ devices is pretty dumb right now. Itâs the wild west of Bluetooth vs BLE vs RF vs IR vs WiFI for most consumers, then thereâs the step âupâ to WiFi vs Zigbee vs Zwave/Zwave Plus. Letâs not even mention Weave+Thread, HAP and the numerous proprietary implementations.
This hodge-podge of connected BS is bound to annoy the average consumer who decides to even consider the concept of HA/âSmartâ for anything beyond cute control of disconnected âconnectedâ devices controlled by a âsmartphoneâ.
No matter how much techno-babble, engineering speak and business cases/priorities that gets tossed around, it will always come back to the simple, âBut my phone can do itâ argument. And, that is very much a VALID argument.
The first company to value consumer convenience and broadest integration without regards to business alliances, market share and corralling their customer base will be the company to control the home. Apple and Microsoft were streaming media 10 years before Roku, but Roku made its platform more accessible to consumers, partners and content creators. Now, Roku has approximately a 50% share of the STB/OTT home devices.
Until accessibility, compatibility and usability become the utmost priority, there will be a huge barrier to entry for the majority of consumers. They will be confused, frustrated, and most importantly disappointed when they find out that âAlexaâ and âOk Googleâ canât do what their phones can with their RF/WiFi âsmartâ bulbs.
Ready or not, it is prime time today. SmartThings may not be the best example, but Philips Hue is certainly prime time-ready. Theyâve made it extremely easy to set up and it works with both Siri and Amazon Echo out of the box. It does not get easier than that. I think Hue sets an excellent example for the whole industry to follow.
1 Like
Itâs hard to say. There are a lot of potential market niches.
People who wouldnât buy a SmartThings hub at $99 and did buy it at $49 are one market niche. But the fact is there are literally millions more people who have already signed up for home automation using either the very simplest form, the Phillips hue bridge plus echo, or the monthly contract âmanaged servicesâ version available from their local Cable company. Xfinity home plus AT&T digital life plus whatever Rogers calls their offering are already around 3 million home automation subscribers paying $40-$50 a month for what most SmartThings customers would consider a very limited system. But itâs reliable, the customer has to do very little maintenance, and it does solve some real use cases, like âturn the lights on when I get home.â
Smartthings is trying to offer a very powerful, very versatile system at an extremely low cost. And thatâs a huge challenge, itâs hard not to disappoint customers.
But they arenât really representative of the current home automation market. Based on company comments and reports from industry analysts, there might be 300,000 SmartThings customers. Maybe. And thatâs being pretty generous.
There are 10 times as many paying a monthly fee now for a very limited set of devices from cable companies. But that number keeps going up, not down. Xfinity home just this month released its own first self branded devices for its system. And of course it bought a big piece of icontrol.
It is undoubtedly frustrating for everyone that SmartThings doesnât work with the Samsung television. They announced that it would back in January, but they havenât been able to deliver yet. The date has now been pushed into 2017.
Meanwhile, The other market niches for Home automation continue to grow. HomeKit is finally becoming practical. Google home is introducing competition for echo. Thereâs a lot happening.
Iâm not trying to dismiss any of the frustrations with SmartThings, or the idea that thereâs a lot more that could be done. Iâm just saying that struggles in the very low cost end of the pool are pretty common in any technology offering. And they donât represent struggles at other price points.
Personally, I donât think thereâs any need for a single universal home automation standard any more than there is one for home security or video streaming or mobile phone operating systems. Choice is good. What matters is whether individual consumers can get satisfactory solutions at prices that theyâre willing to pay.
And thatâs often much harder to do for the customer is willing to pay the least.
.
1 Like
Very true @JDRoberts. Being a technologist, Iâm used to dealing with integrations and disparate technology. Most consumers, however, want PnP ease which pushes them towards solutions like Hue, as @geko pointed out.
Iâve seen some absolutely ridiculous numbers projected for 2020âish when it comes to HA and in-home adoption of âsmartâ devices. The projections are for around a 50% growth per year over the next 4 years when the industry begins to enter mass market critical mass and begins to escalate with the âsmartificationâ of everything you can possibly imagine.
I would probably put a paycheck on the wager that Amazon/Apple/Google/LG/Samsung will end up being at the center of this growth, and I donât mean Samsung Smartthings as we know it today. The TV, phone or new personal assistants will manage the home, functioning as hubs or merely cloud controllers/relays/gateways
Things will really start to get interesting when TP-Link, Netgear, et. al. begin to push WiFi routers with integrated hubs supporting Zigbee and Z-wave, which will probably happen within the next 18 monthsâŠ
1 Like
Projections are always hard to make and they did look a tad optimistic, but who knows? Nobody predicted huge success of Amazon Echo two years ago. It came out of nowhere and took smart home to a new level. Thereâs still 3 years before 2020 and I would not be surprised if those projections were actually quite accurate.
2 Likes
Anything is possible. But if the new Bluetooth really does start appearing in new mobile phones beginning in 2017, then as the saying goes, âeverything changes.â 
1 Like
Totally agree with @JDRoberts. The key to mass adoption is for the radio to be built in into everyoneâs smartphone or tablet. Z-Wave and Zigbee have no chance. Only Bluetooth and Wifi can.
1 Like
I think zigbee will persist, but not in low end home automation for the same reason there arenât that many ZHA devices now. But if you want to put 500 devices, or 10,000, on one network, then Zigbee still has a lot of advantages.
For sure, Zigbee is here to stay, particularly for industrial and commercial applications. For consumer applications, if a new technology will emerge that does not need a hub (e.g either low-power WiFi or longer-range Bluetooth) they will displace Zigbee simply for economical reasons.
1 Like