I was chatting with a guy at work about how I’m switching from Wink to SmartThings and he told me that he does all kinds of stuff in his house directly through his Amazon Alexa without any need for a hub. He says he controls all of his outside lighting (landscape lights, exterior house lights, spotlights) through Alexa and he even has his landscape lighting to come on automatically at 30 minutes after sunset each day.
He also controls his thermostat through Alexa and his interior lighting as well. He told me that he’s using smart bulbs, smart switches, and even a few plug-in smart receptacles to control stuff inside the house.
So this had me thinking—in my house, I control mostly lighting and thermostats. If I can do everything that he does with his Amazon Alexa, do I really even need a dedicated hub? What are the advantages or disadvantages?
There are indeed many people who just use an Echo, and that may be all you need. With some Echo models you can also use some Zigbee devices, which lets you use Some sensors as well. All good.
The main reason to use a dedicated hub rather than just an Echo is if you want to add Z wave devices. If you had a bunch of those already from Wink, then just using Alexa wouldn’t be enough.
The other reason is because you will be able to create much more complex rules with smartthings then you can with just Alexa. But maybe you don’t need more complex rules.
It depends on the devices you may eventually want to have part of your home automation system. If you stick with devices that are assured to work with Alexa w/no hub, then you’d be fine; BUT…
If you plan or want to do a lot of automation, like turn off valves, lights, etc based off of complex scenarios, then you’ll want a hub that can do that for you.
EDIT: I was typing as fast as I could, but @JDRoberts’s voice control and the shortest reply from him I’ve seen in a while, beat me again to a reply!
@johnconstantelo , you know speaking is faster than typing. Every time.
Speaking of John’s setup, One more thing I forgot to mention…
If you are depending just on Wi-Fi devices, most residential Wi-Fi routers max out at under 50 devices connected at one time, and that includes all of your regular phones, tablets, streaming boxes, echoes, etc. If you want to go higher you have to invest in a more expensive router.
One of the big advantages of using protocols like Zigbee and Zwave is that you can have literally hundreds of Home automation devices attached. You might not think you’ll ever reach that number, but if you start replacing lots of bulbs, switches, and adding sensors, you’ll get past 50 quicker than you might expect.
John himself has hit even the smartthings limit more than once, I think he’s at 300 devices now, so that’s an advantage of a dedicated hub as well.
Also, WiFi devices have a higher power draw than Z wave or Zigbee. It’s the main reason there aren’t more battery powered Wi-Fi devices. Just as one example, the august Wi-Fi version of their lock has an expected battery life of 3 to 6 months. The same lock in a zwave version has an expected battery life of 6 to 12 months.
I did start out pretty basic, but as our family had more use cases for automation and notifications of events, the more and more devices we added. Here are just some of mine and why I have so many devices:
Teenage daughters don’t know how to turn off ANYTHING when they leave to go anywhere. Motion and contact sensors everywhere, as well as power reporting switches/outlets come in very handy.
Have you ever had a cat or a dog get stuck in a closet or room? We did, and it’s wasn’t pretty. Contact sensors for all doors helped a lot. We had a dog chase his toy behind a door and it closed as he got it, but the problem was it was a door to a room with no water or food. Poor guy was never so happy to see us. The cat on the other hand was very creative in finding a litter box. Now we know when door is closed that shouldn’t be when we’re gone.
Catching water leaks. Alexa won’t help you much there yet closing a valve or letting you know you have one. Every penny spent on setting that up is worth it if you’ve ever had to repair a ceiling or replace flooring. Been there, done that.
Hmm…okay. My co-worker claims to use z-wave switches for all of his lighting and he says his Alexa works fine controlling them.
This really has me considering abandoning a hub for now and seeing if I can get everything I currently use controlled by my Amazon Echo. I didn’t think it was possible to have my exterior lighting turn on every evening at sunset, for example, without using a dedicated hub. But he apparently does his using nothing but his Amazon Echo.
None of the Echo devices can control Z-Wave devices directly. Some Echo devices can control Zigbee switches and dimmers, as well as connect to Zigbee motion and contact sensors (as mentioned by @JDRoberts and @johnconstantelo.)
Perhaps your co-worker is using a lighting system like Lutron Caseta, which has an Alexa Skill. While not z-wave, Lutron’s Clear Connect protocol is a radio frequency based system. Perhaps he is confused as to the underlying technology his switches use?
If he’s using Z wave, he has to have a Z wave hub. Of some kind. It could be the ring alarm system, that one’s popular with Alexa users.
Or maybe as @ogiewon said his smart switches are Lutron Caseta, which isn’t Zwave, they use their own proprietary protocol. But then he would have to have the Lutron smartbridge as well.
So it all comes back to the first rule of home automation: “the model number matters.“
Or maybe he has Wemo switches and thinks that those are Z wave. When they are Wi-Fi.
A lot of consumers don’t know the difference between the different protocols, and it’s easy to get confused.
But you could definitely solve all of the use cases he mentioned with just an echo and some smart switches. But not just an echo and Z wave switches.
The Echo Plus is the one that controls Zigbee devices - see if your coworker is using that one.
Personally, I’ve got both. I use ST to control just about everything, because I can tie in the weather, old motion sensors, all kinds of nutty things.
But Alexa, with her Skills, really comes in handy too. I’ve got a few generic smart plugs that ST can’t/won’t pick up. So I have ST “turn on” a virtual switch, which in turn triggers a routine in Alexa and that turns on/off those plugs.
I’d say, if your family likes to talk to robots (I know I do), then there’s no harm in Alexa. She can do your basic stuff. When you want to turn on the living room light when it’s below 750 lux outside due to clouds at 7:30am so you can see your shoes for work, then you’ll want to upgrade to ST.
Yeah, forgot about Phyn and Moen as a standalone solution. Ask This Old House just ran a segment on these and other leak sensors/valves that I still have on my DVR.
Alexa Routines are limited vs what you can do with SmartThings. Actually, SmartThings is rather limited, in my opinion, when it comes to complex rules. However, the ability to use 3rd party apps and device handlers makes ST a gem!
ST is my central HUB and from there, I connect everything else to it. Price is super cheap with no monthly subscription.
Noticed after the fact that this thread is a year old. May 2020, not May 2021. Got right by me. Where have I been for the last year???
I’ve got SmartThings but have been leaning away from it for awhile as I picked up some Wyze Cams and various Wyze sensors, outlets, bulbs that are mostly wifi or piggy back onto their cams which then provide a wifi backlink. I did begin to hit the router device limit mentioned in other posts here due to wifi bulbs and outlets. I got around that by moving most of those low bandwidth devices to an already in place 2.4 GHz wifi extension network I had setup to support reaching my remote garage. That moved those devices off the router’s direct device list and its limits. But that is all a bit painful if you don’t want to work through connection issues.
I also have Echo Plus with its embedded zigbee hub. It’ll do some devices but not all. In particular I was disappointed that when I directly connected a SmartThings motion sensor (not using the SmartThings hub), it connected but lost ability to see Temp & Battery Level. Same with a SmartThings contact sensor. It shows Open/Close but not the Temp, Vibration Detect, Battery Level, or Axis info. An old Iris SmartFob is connected but seen as a switch by the Echo hub and is basically worthless. I expect an older SmartThings outlet will work but I won’t be able to see the power draw using Echo.
So, yeah, SmartThings has a lot of functionality that is available to everyday folks. But it boils down to what you want to do. I’d start with Amazon if you have invested there already and see if you need to grow. The router device count might be the first thing to bite you but a network extender can be useful to mitigate that problem.
