And they don’t know when it will release. Sorry Miss Jackson.
Official announcement here. They did give us a few more details about local processing, which does sound good. They’re talking about Q3 now.
Meanwhile, some staffers have posted that they’re now beta testing the V2 hub at their own homes, so it exists, even if it’s not market ready yet.
Also, there’s no transfer protocol yet from V1 to V2.
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Ah, good. Disappointing to read that they “expect” sometime in Q3. Sounds like they’re not entirely confident of that timeframe.
<rant>There seams to be a lot of disappointment (read: whining) about the V2 hub not being out yet and how unhappy users are due to cloud processing and blah, blah, blah. I find it “interesting” that i’m finding more and more posts about smartthings issues being resolved by the ISP fixing their connection.
Either way I can only imagine how happy the user community would be if the V2 hub had already been released as a complete turd, untested and w/o a migration path for all the devices and smartsapps we already have running.
Respect the idea that thorough testing takes time and patience and a crap ton of both. If you want a half baked product now, there are plenty of revolv (now defunct) and wink(forgets its own devices) hubs available online for cheap to free.
If you are more interested in a mostly to completely stable solution that is well thought out and might be slightly too geeky for its own good with an amazing developer community… then sit back, relax, and enjoy the interest on the $100-$300 you haven’t already spent on the V2 hub… Cause Q3 or possibly Q4 is right around the corner and then SmartThings/Samsung will happily shutup and take your money. </rant> 
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Call it as you see it. It is disappointing to read of the delay because the current product is the half-baked hub you describe. Sure, it’s great for coders, but for the everyday consumer it doesn’t deliver as advertised. That is why I am anxious for V2.
If another company beats them to the punch with a more robust solution that company will get my money. I’m no brand loyalist. I’ve stuck with it because the money is spent and there isn’t a better alternative that I’ve found. Hopefully they’ll get it released before a competitor bests them. A lot can happen between now and the end of the year…and I’m reading Q3-Q4 into that press release.
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Maybe its a matter of perspective. I have crowdfunded over 50 projects and there are only 2 that i have been completely happy with. Smartthings and Pebble. On the smartthings front i feel that they have over delivered what was promised from their original campaign. The hub looks way cooler and supports all sorts of devices never promised. No i not saying its been 2-3 years of home automation bliss. I’ve had all the same issues everyone else has had. Some I’ve fixed by harassing my ISP and others by harassing smartthings and others still by tweaking my setup with community recommendations. Considering my previous home automation solution was X10 and ran completely local, yet it still managed to be less stable than smartthings and thus got ripped out after a much larger investment and i’m a million times happier with my smarthings setup than i ever was with X10. Revolv, was a much more robust solution that never worked out, and there are several others that cost plenty more with out the flexibility of smartthings and have the added bonus mandatory of monthly fees. I’m not brand loyal cause i’m an idiot, Ive seen plenty of other products over promise and under deliver or simply fail in the same time frame of smartthings and some even took my money with them. I’m loyal to smartthings cause my little $99 hub has worked better, longer, and does more than any other home automation product i have used or researched for at least a third of the price. In the words of Steve Ballmer I’m loyal to smartthings because of it’s “Developers, Developers, Developers, Developers, Developers, Developers, Developers, Developers” , support is responcive and the hardware happens to work better than the rest. 
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I do appreciate some clarity, and honest with the latest announcement. Developing products is hard, and you either have to cut features or shift dates at times. I appreciate the openness with the announcement, the silence was the biggest thing that i didn’t like.
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All good points. To be clear, I’m not bashing the product. For the cost it is okay, but I would not trust it for anything other than geek factor things at this time. Certainly not elder care or security and definitely not for a remote property. I also respect what the developers are doing and this community. However, that won’t in any way prevent me from buying an equal or better product if it releases first. I’m a consumer looking for a reliable home automation product for a reasonable price. I’m not the developers’ or Samssung’s friend.
I’m sure there’s a bunch of people at ST that feel bad about it too, like lost your lunch bad about it.
The little bit of silver lining I get out of it is that I didn’t wait for an April release like I had wished I had after CES.
I think everybody at ST heeded the wakeup call and things are rolling in the right direction now.
Sorry, not sure how a local processing hub changes the experience any… They didn’t say the v2 experience was going to be “So different, and wouldn’t require coders”. This is the next step in the evolution, but by no means changes the processes of how things get accomplished…
I hope that you’re not their marketing guy.
I’m looking for stability from the platform. If you’re suggesting that V2 won’t be any more stable for those without coding experience then I will surely jump ship at the next opportunity. My expectation is that V2 will be very reliable and have a wider officially supported product list that would also be made significantly more useful by a strong developer community. V2 needs to be stronger thanks to its community but not dependent on it. Otherwise, it’s a super niche product.
Samsung doesn’t seem to be a stupid company given their success. I would find it hard to believe they made such an investment expecting a developer community to keep the product afloat. It must appeal to a broader market for long term viability, and that means it has to work consistently and as advertised.
But hey, if that’s the plan best of luck to them. I think it would be difficult to compete against products that will surely be available at brick and mortars by this holiday season.
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Gee… thanks.
I was commenting on your wording, and your argument, not the bigger picture of Hub V2. Your argument was ease of deployment, customizing, etc. Specifically your comment “Sure, it’s great for coders, but for the everyday consumer it doesn’t deliver as advertised. That is why I am anxious for V2.”
Your words… No marketing efforts, just questioning your comment.
Local processing will hugely change the customer experience for both coders and noncoders alike, and they’ve said as much in the official announcements, just without the word “hugely.”
Less lag, more stability, things work even if the Internet connection is spotty, sunrise/sunset should fire correctly.
When the company CTO takes the time to publicly say:
You’ll see a significant improvement in response times, and automations with the V2 Hub will be a whole lot faster.
that directly ties V2 to improvements in the user experience. 
That doesn’t fix the UI/UX in itself, although ST staff have posted that they’re working on those issues as well (an official rules engine and a new mobile app have been mentioned). But no timeline on those.
Of course any improvement other than “works when the Internet is off” depends on good engineering for the new generation. You can have local bottlenecks and drop offs too if the local device isn’t powerful enough. So we’ll see what actually arrives.
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Seems I misunderstood your reply. Sorry.
Just trying to say that I don’t think V1 delivered for the non-coder like me, but for those who like to get deep into the system it seems to be a better product. From my perspective, the platform cannot survive in the long run if it remains dependent on the developer community to accomplish simple tasks.
The new hub should be able to switch a Hue bulb on and off consistently and report its state without fail, and it should do this without requiring two other community smartapps retrieved from Github. The everyday consumer has never heard of Github.
I’ve seen the ST welcome to the future video, and there is an awful lot of exciting things teased there. IMO, ST has to deliver these promises in a stable format that doesn’t require a simpleton like me to cut and paste code. If it does it won’t last 18 months before Samsung cuts its losses. I don’t think that will happen, but I do think they might get beaten to the punch if the delay continues beyond Q3.
I leave it at that. Surely enough said by me.
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[quote=“pd_, post:11, topic:13690”]
Samsung doesn’t seem to be a stupid company given their success. I would find it hard to believe they made such an investment expecting a developer community to keep the product afloat.[/quote]
Samsung’s success comes from shear manufacturing might. It exists due to simply having more boxes of cereal on the shelf than any others. They have continually demonstrated poor design skills, and an ‘everything but the kitchen sink’ attitude in lieu of any real confidence in their ability to design what customers want.
The current (and foreseeable - IMHO) market for SmartThings is chump change to Samsung, as was the sum of money they invested. I seriously doubt that the success of SmartThings as they now exist is paramount to their long term goals.
So why acquire them? IOT is a hot bed for Samsung right now, and SmartThings is one of the most cleverly designed platforms to hit that space, irrespective of whether they have the resources and expertise at this point to make it actually work. My feeling is that Samsung is not looking for the developer community to keep the platform afloat; we’re proof of concept. Beta testers if you will (or more accurately, alpha testers), enthusiasts helping to guide a half-baked platform down the road to fully baked goodness. And when that day arrives, expect to see Samsung come in and exploit it to their full advantage.
This is what juggernauts do.
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Another possibility is a knee-jerk reaction. When a major competitor X makes a move, the board of directors has to assure investors that they’re on top of things and have a response. So Apple announced HomeKit in June and two month later Samsung bought SmartThings. Coincidence?
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Probably not. Samsung has demonstrated numerous times that they are an Apple wannabe.
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I remember right before the ST aquisition they showed their own flavor of “Things” like a light bulb and appliances and nobody cared, so they said alright we tried, lets just buy somebody.
V2 local processing is very important to me. Living in Australia, the latency into the ST cloud is atrocious and wildly variable. Without a local to Australia cloud presence it will never be near the experience that US/EU users have. Majorly variable routing to the cloud presents a challenge for all. Even “some” local processing would help, but I worried about the same thing that some of the Vera users say about having too many devices or too much complex code running and memory restrictions.
So if I understand right, Samsung owns ST??