UPDATE: 2016 Samsung TV Smartthings Integration = BEWARE it's False Advertising - Update: Not anymore!

Devices & Integrations
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Last year, Samsung has announced in all it’s glory, that all 2016 TVs will be enabled for Smartthings…
The feature is advertised online and part of their TV specifications on Samsung web site… yet, the feature is still not available, even after some products have been launched back in May 2016!

Over the weekend, I bought a Samsung KS6510 TV which is, on the spec “Smartthings Things Support = Yes” and “IoT Client app = Yes”. As I already have a Smartthing Hub at home, this swayed my decision to go Samsung rather than LG (being able to use the LG TV as a wireless connected speaker when the TV is off, is a neat feature!) …

  • How do I connect the TV to my Hub?
  • Where is the IoT client App ?

I now realise that this is all a massive marketing lie ! I had a chat with Samsung support who blankly confirmed that the TV is Smartthing ready, but this is not available and he has no idea if this feature will ever be enabled !!!
In short, he told me that I have bought something which was announced last year, a feature I paid for in the price of the TV, but I can’t use it as Samsung has yet to enable the feature!

To me, this is false advertising, pure and simple!
This is like you pay a premium for a smartphone which support 6G LTE when 5G is not even here ! You still have paid the price for that feature now, which you can’t use… in this case, any product can be “future ready” on spec! Why is Samsung advertising and selling a feature which is note implemented ???

My question to Smartthings / Samsung staff is simple: WHEN? ( I am in the UK, not US!).

When would I be able to connect my TV to the Smartthings Hub (Receive notification on the TV for motion detection on external camera/sensor, etc, is the use case I am most interested in. For the TV control, I have an Harmony Elite)

Lets’ see if we can get some status update on the TV integration with a firm timeline…
Smartthings/Samsung? @slagle ? @alex ?
Please clarify the situation. Thank you.

BR

Tony.

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I have to agree, Samsung is getting really bad for false advertising. :imp:

I was going to buy a 2016 Samsung TV in the January sale. Here’s what they advertise in store:

image.jpg3225×2419 2.35 MB

The official Samsung rep in John Lewis told me that the TV’s would be capable of supporting both control by SmartThings and vice-versa. He’d even seen this functionality in his training. When I pushed to see a real-life demo of this he couldn’t. When I re-visited the store a few days later another official Samsung rep admitted that these features would require a firmware update, for which they have been waiting a long time and still have no release date.

My guess is they’ve run up against some major issues (perhaps hardware or legal) and can no longer deploy.

Note, the small print in the image above, which gets them out of any trading standards / trade description action.

Basically, you never trust any marketing information from Samsung. If you buy one of their products, test it thoroughly at home, and if it doesn’t do what you want, return it.

Same thing happened with official Honeywell Evohome support for SmartThings (though I was able to code around that).

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On the same support article you viewed there is a link to another article called Samsung TV as a Thing:
https://support.smartthings.com/hc/en-us/articles/210766566-Samsung-TV-as-a-Thing

This should walk you through adding your compatible TV to your SmartThings hub.

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Thanks David…

Yep, I also saw that board mentioning which products are Smartthings Hub (7,8,9 series) and Smartthings Things (6 series). I also printed the online spec for the TV from Samsung UK site! The spec clearly states “Smartthings Things: Yes” and “IoT Client App: Yes” (not “Smartthings Things: Ready” and “IoT Client app: Ready”)!

After having a chat with the TV support, I then had a chat with the Smartthings support! Going in Circle !
it seems that Samsung are pointing fingers internally, playing the “blame game” (nop, it’s not the TV firmware, it’s the smartthings guys… nop, it’s not the smartthings platform, it’s the TV guys who need to update the firmware" etc…
Not a good sign when technical teams of the same company are “pointing fingers” to transfer the blame rather than using their energy to get the feature implemented and released… during that time, more frustrated and disappointed users like us are losing faith in what was used to be a great technical brand!

Wow, Evohome was next on my shopping list!
Indeed, this is another officially “supported” product (on the smartthings sales website) that has not yet been integrated despite the fact that Smartthings clearly announced the system support a few years back !!!
What is going on? Is Samsung so much in trouble?

Regards,

Tony
PS:On a different thread / PM, I would be interested to know more about your evohome workaround, since it seems that the community has to do all the work to honour Smartthings official promises to their users !

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@zcapr17
Thanks, for the good work! I will look at this.

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@ritchierich
Thanks, I will try tonight, but I could see the “Smart TV” listed as a Things in the Marketplace (I have the latest android app installed), I will try again tonight and report back tomorrow…

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You might want to look at devices…(hit add a thing, then manually add device…)…

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@SBDOBRESCU
So there is hope after all, contrary to what the support guys told me on the chat this morning…
I really hope this will work tonight…

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You may get lucky…I didn’t, I bought the J series because it was better TV than K series and … that was the end of story fir me…

Here is a thread…

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It is worth a try but you may run into a problem, as you stated you are in the UK in your original post. According to the support article in the marketplace it states “In the US, compatible Samsung TVs include the 2016 Series 6,7 UHD & 8, 9 SUHD.” It has been reported in other related topics that some of my neighbors to the north in Canada cannot get their Canadian market TVs to connect (C in the last digit of the full model number (13 to 14 digits, usually on the data plate), where as the US market versions have A as the last digit).

So far it seems that you have to have the following to get it as a thing:
1.) N (North America) as the second digit, not E (Europe) or A (Asia)
2.) 2016 UHD or SUHD Model - KU or KS
3.) 6,7,8, or 9000 Series
4.) Manufactured for US Market (A as last digit).

Hopefully they will work to get it opened up to the Non-US ST community and live up to the Samsung TV marketing information you are seeing there in the UK.

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There is already a lengthy discussion about this. Not sure why another one was needed.

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@fightingmajor
"Why another one is needed"… perhaps because none of the other lengthy discussions have received any recent attention from Smartthings staffs and are buried deep into the forum, some dates from 2015 etc…
Many of these discussions have turn towards how the users try to work around the fact that Samsung and Smartthings haven’t delivered on their promises, often by developing their own “user” piece of code as a patch work…
Nobody knows the Samsung’s TVs and Smartthings technologies better than Samsung itself, hence we (user) won’t achieve a refined end product / smartapps and integration as good as what Samsung demoed and announced last year…
We want the real thing!

IMO this is not right to “advertise”, “market” and “sale” a differentiating feature which is not even implemented…
Lying to customers should not be tolerated… The least we can ask to Smartthings and Samsung is to communicate on this and tell us WHEN will this feature, which most of 2016 Samsung TV buyers have paid for, will be released to us, Samsung customers!

This is why I believe bringing this topic once again to the top of the forum is important.

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The last post on the page was 4 days ago so I wouldn’t say it’s buried. Has 213 posts on it as well. But good luck on getting a response.

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I followed the instruction given above for a Samsung as a Thing… and failed… I have the latest Android App (2.2.7) and there are no smart TV listed in the app. The only Samsung appliances listed are a Samsung washing machine and robotic vacuum… Nothing else, no TV…

So the Lie and false advertising is once again confirmed !!!
When can we get what we pay for samsung ???
@alex @slagle ?

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Are you in the UK?
Only reason I ask is we seem to get different devices showing up in the app than they do in the US for some reason.

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Yes I am in the UK… Compare to the screenshot of the Samsung product, I only have the washer and the robot vaccumm, nothing else, no fridge, no TV, no dryer, no range oven, etc…

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Nothing I buy anymore is at all bout future integration or capability. I presume that if it can’t do something now, it will never be able to do that function. You have to buy for what it does right now.

Then again, you get weird scenarios where the functionality you purchased, which did work, gets coded into obsolescence. I’m thinking of all those folks who purchased smart TVs with Skype capability, whether via built-in camera or add-on. Either way, the Skype app was there for them.

And now it’s not.

Not only did Skype stop supporting smart tv apps, but actually withdrew their product from those whose TVs already had it! So that’s even worse than, say, ST promising eventual Bluetooth capability and deciding against it. It’s a strange, wacky world out there. CAVEAT EMPTOR, because no one else is looking out for you.

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Thanks for the info cause this thread clears my problem up. I have an 8 series suhd 2016 model and it wont connect either…the smartthings app on tv wont continue setup without the “extend” usb dongle. Hopefully they release a firmware patch in the near future.

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It’s still going to need the extend to set up. All it does is give you the options to choose routines. If you are hoping for more you will be disappointed. Once you add your tv as a thing, you can actually do everything including receive notification that the extend would do. If you have a hub already, you don’t need an extend.