Hi all
Recently purchased the v-home starter kit from Vodafone during Black Friday. Comes with the SmartThings WiFi/hub, SmartThings camera, zipato indoor siren and a SmartThings multipurpose sensor.
With Vodafone, you are expected to sign up to a v-home monthly plan subscription. As far as I understand it, it just gives the capability to have cloud storage for the camera recordings, 24/7 alarm assistant if you miss any alerts and a v-home monitor(?).
Would I be able to use the devices (camera/sensor/hub) without the subscription?
I assume it would just give me standard video capture/live viewing and alerts if there was motion?
I assume no, however you have to register initially to the 24 month plan - but there is the option to cancel within the first month or 14 days (as with most contracts ordered online).
Anyone actually knows if the Vodafone subscription is mandatory? I’m thinking on buying a Vodafone kit that I found online but I don’t need the Vodafone service, I just want the Hub and the sensors.
By logic the Vodafone service it’s not required because the hub and sensors box are the originals, don’t have any Vodafone branding, so, the products are not “locked” by any means, but it’s just my assumption.
The Vodafone versions all require a Vodafone subscription. Because smartthings is largely a cloud-based platform, they can and do both region lock and model lock several features.
You have to connect to the SmartThings cloud in order to set up the hub the first time, and if it is a Vodafone model it will check for your Vodafone subscription.
There have been a number of posts on other boards of people who bought a Vodafone hub used and were then unable to get it to work because they didn’t have a subscription.
Hi. I recently bought a ST hub/wifi in Spain. He needed an Vodafone subscription and I did just for testing (4€/month). After one week I unsubscribed and two things happened. First, the hub still works. I lost cloud storage for the cam offered by Vodafone. Second, the good bye page when I unsubscribed, showed me that I just canceled the free one year subscription…
After extensive support tickets to Vodafone on this subject, they confirmed that after the mandatory 24 months subscription the device is left in an unlocked state for you to use as you wish, all your devices will continue to work as will the hub, all that you lose is the V-Home monitoring and cloud storage. They told me that even if you cancel the subscription after 1 month you will still be billed the full 24 months in one go. You cannot add a 2nd hub as a wi-fi mesh extender if it is keyed as a Main Hub, they apparently do sell extender Hubs which are keyed as Subs but which you have to pay full price for from day one at ÂŁ99. I bought 4 Main Hubs and managed to set one up as a Main Hub and one other as a Sub - the other 2 failed to configure as anything other than Main Hubs.
Also, Plume confirmed to me on a support ticket that Vodafone have NOT bought Plume licenses for these devices and I can confirm that you cannot configure Plume on them.
