I just bought a Switchbot Hub 2 and the Switchbot Universal remote. I have been using SmartThings for years and have numerous RF devices that I want to use the Remote for. Using Matter, hub or SmartThings interface, can I control my SmartThings RF devices with the Switchbot Remote or does it only work with IR devices? I can see the Switchbot devices in SmartThings, but I can’t see the SmartThing devices in Switchbot.
RF Just means radio frequency, and covers many different protocols. There’s no universal remote anywhere that can handle all of them even though the manufacturers describe them as “universal.”
As far as the SwitchBot remote…
There are two ways to use it.
If you use it via the SwitchBot app, you are limited to devices that can show up in that app, which means no zwave. Only switchBot’s own devices.
If you want to use it via the SmartThings app, you can bring it in as just a regular button remote, and it will expose 4 buttons to SmartThings. Then you can use those buttons as the “if“ in a smartthings routine and you can use anything connected to your SmartThings account as the “that.“ so that’s how you can use it to control a Z wave device that you have connected to your SmartThings hub.
There was a good technical discussion in the forum previously if you’d like to see more details.
SwitchBot Universal Remote and Smartthings?
But the short answer is, you can bring it into your SmartThings account via the matter bridge functionality using the SwitchBot hub, and it will show up as four buttons.
You can then use those four buttons as triggers in a SmartThings routine.
But that’s it. You can’t bring zwave devices into the SwitchBot app. You can’t bring more than four button options into SmartThings for the remote. And you have to have both a SwitchBot hub which acts as a matter bridge and a SmartThings hub which acts as a matter controller to use the integration.
@Automated_House has one of the remotes and might have more to add.
JD summed it up well. The switchbot hub and universal remote can only directly control IR devices. Using Matter, you can expose 4 buttons from the Universal remote to smartthings. In smartthings you can use those buttons to control any other SmartThings connected devices via routines.