Viable alternative to ST

Samsung announced this in Oct 2015 and repeatedly afterwards at IFA, CES’s and SDC’s.

2 Likes

Do we know of anyone in the community that has the HomeTroller S6? I would love to see an up and down review of this and then a side by side comparison of ST capabilities with “cans” and “cannots” with Homeseer from someone that has an ST hub and knows all.of the current functionality. An insiders review.

We’ve had a couple of community members who had homeseer and moved over to SmartThings, but I don’t remember anybody in the last year and a half.

The most obvious difference is that there is no zigbee support with homeseer for ZHA devices. They can do Sylvania through their gateway or Hugh through the hue bridge, but no ZHA sensors.

Also, the Homeseer IFTTT channel has some strange restrictions on it, read the docs carefully, particularly since that’s their main way for doing some of the third-party integrations

@ITMorgan and a couple of other community members have gone the other direction in the last year or so, they might have something to add.

1 Like

Excellent. Since you mentioned that member, I found this thread that goes all the way back to 2015 and that individual updated it in August past year.

1 Like

:rofl: True but it does feel like things are different this time. Only time will tell… but I think they are finally realizing the traction this platform has. The fact that they are putting smartthings integration in their family hub fridges is huge. Once they put it front and center in the home like that with their name on it, ignoring the platform becomes less of an option. Thats of course assuming they deliver the fridge with all announced features working.

Again, they aren’t actually putting the technology that is currently being used with the SmartThings hubs into the refrigerator.

Instead, they are using the SmartThings name with everything. And they’re combining all of the mobile apps into a new one under the SmartThings name, but which appears to be based on the Samsung Connect Mobile app based on early screenshots.

And the cloud itself, although still called “SmartThings” is going to be a different technology and the one used with the current hubs is going to be migrated over to that one, with quite a few changes.

You can find detailed discussion, including by some staff members, of the planned changes in the following thread:

I think it’s clear that they are putting some resources into what is essentially a new platform. But that doesn’t really have anything to do with the issues that people have been seeing over the last three years.

1 Like

I was strongly considering Indigo as I recently built a Mac HTPC (don’t ask why, beyond the scope here) so Indigo was a natural pathway for me. I found the options to be way too limited. Impressive software on the trial run…but no Hue, no Ecobee, nothing outside the pre-approved list of vendors and it seems the entire platform community is handled by a single guy. A better platform if you can design around its limitations rather than taking an already established system with you.

1 Like

Understood I didn’t mean to imply they are putting the hub into the fridge or that it will be based on the smartthings technology or app only that they will be putting what amounts to a control panel for your smartthings devices. That is why I linked the article it does not say anything about a hub in the fridge or really any details of what the control interface will be like. We will just have to wait and see for now, and hope they don’t screw it up. I’d like to be optimistic that they will deliver something awesome but…:roll_eyes:

1 Like

Again… This was already promised when the fridge was originally launched… a long time ago.

Everytime is “different” — until it isn’t.

2 Likes

Where is the optimism :grinning: I just hope they don’t ruin the work you and others have done to fill the current gaps. If Samsung screws up my action tiles and webcore…

I know they say they aren’t going to but consider me worried based on history of delivering.

2 Likes

Honestly, I have actually been hesitant to initiate either of those as I don’t want to see any effort wiped out in an not fully thought out upgrade. I have had it happen in other platforms. Sometimes what is best for the companies bottom line is sadly not best for the users who have already purchased into the system. You don’t have to read too far back in these forums to find president.

I did transition from ST to HomeSeer and am fairly happy with the change. The biggest issue I had with ST was that it was not available when the network was down. I upgraded to the newest hub on ST when it came out but even that did not do the trick. I have a Zee S2 which is essentially a Raspberry PI device running linux. The Homeseer software is available to run on Windows and as a trial so I would highly recommend getting a zwave usb stick (about $40) and give it a try before committing to HS. I am seriously considering moving it to a PC anyway only because the Zee S2 has a fairly low amount of resources and I have a lot of devices. The amount of devices and granularity of rules were also part of the consideration of moving to HS from ST. As to the Zigbee support, that can be added as an interface on HS.

2 Likes

I have to wonder if these outages are due to changes they announced at CES and trying to consolidate this with Connect and other things. It might be a lot of prep work.

These outages are a major reason why I am not going to Webcore. I do not want 100% of my functionality going over the Internet to yet another system in the cloud.

This is also why I have very carefully planned what devices I am using in my home. My use of smart bulbs is very limited (hall and 2 sconce lights). Everything is on smart dimmers or switches so if the whole thing comes crashing down, I can get up and flip a switch. That includes the plug-ins. My plug in dimmers come on if I cycle through the on/off on my lamp. I am running the Ecobee and it will work if the cloud is down. I would lose my Ring cameras but the door bell would still work.

Never 100% invest critical systems into a third party without a very good SLA (Service Level Agreement) that has some teeth if it fails. SmartThings is a low cost but very customization solution. I have a friend who does high end installed home automation and audio systems. You are going to fork out lots of money for the stuff he has. I have played with Crestron. It is expensive and they don’t let you get involved in the programming. It is how these companies make lots of money coming back to reprogram things for you. I like to tinker so I do this.

I do what I can. UPSes on critical devices. I am looking at a cellular backup in case my Internet goes down. Not only does Samsung have to worry about its platform but all the other connectors to other platforms out there in the cloud, like Ecobee, Ring, Amazon, Google, Harmony, etc. Their outages affect the perceived up time of SmartThings. And, yes, it runs in Amazon and Amazon will be the first to tell you that you will not have 100% up time. I think they only say 99.99%.

So what if the system goes down a few hours? I have to hit the light switch instead of my motion detector controlling it. I have my code for my door. I carry a key. Tougher prospect for someone who is disabled. I get it. I was unable to walk 6 months of last year. But, for what I paid and what I am asking it to do, it works great. But, the reason is that I am very picky about what I use and ask it to do.

1 Like

I would have to say home assistant
But again, for those who are jumping ship its not always greener on the other side

I just recently bought a rpi and the installation of home assistant was extremely frustrating
It might be that i was out of luck but HA was under going a upgrade process and lot of things were being broken in the process, i was locked out for 2 days waiting for them to update HA bug fixes before being able to really able to use it

With all that being said, I do not think i will be jumping ship just yet. But if i had critical automation to manage, i would prolly be putting its on 2 platform just to be safe

1 Like

My experience has been OK. Not really bad to be honest.

In general I tend to integrate other systems (wemo, ecobee, nest, HomeLink, August, etc). The advantage this approach is that these systems are popular and typically integrate with other systems (like Google Home, and Alexa) and also generally come with their own apps. Basically I hedge my bets…

So, I am not strictly tied to ST I can always go native if I need to.

I suspect what we are seeing is churn related to Samsung gradually incorporating ST into their ecosystem (or vice-vera). Hopefully it stabilizes.

1 Like

Very good example of how different things will work for different people. :sunglasses:

SmartThings will be an excellent product for many people, particularly those who like to tinker, and who place low cost support of complexity above a long MFOP. ( maintenance free operating period). Choice is good.

5 Likes

I agree with you on not having 100% of your Automations defined in webCoRE (Pistons).

When it comes to lighting and taking advantage of one of only a couple ways that allow local processing, I encourage everyone to setup some or all (where they can) of these rules in Smart Lighting so they have some sort of control when the cloud begins raining cats and dogs.

As for the rest of your Automations, there isn’t any difference between Routines and Pistons as they all run in the cloud.

I totally get what you are saying about not having/wanting an additional layer (another cloud based system) alongside ST also being cloud based, which would be a great question for the webCore team as to how their environment is setup for redundancy / load balancing / automatic fail over and how often they experience downtime on their own.

@anon36505037 @ady624 - Any details / insight around this?

2 Likes

If there was local processing that would solve 90% of my issues with platform outages. Thankfully I was still able to use the Aeon Minimotes with this most recent outage, so was able to change from armed to disarmed and not trigger the alarm even though the ST app was not loading. This was not the case in some previous outages.

As others have said, would pay for an add-on (USB ports available on V2!) or a new hub with local processing if it could work through most of these outages.

1 Like

The local processing was what I liked most about Vera, Indigo and Homeseer. What you give up in local control though is the maintained compatibility with other devices that require their own ecosystem.

1 Like

Yep. This is why I have made ST “one component of many” rather than putting all my eggs in the one basket. Ecobee, Hue, Alexa, Tasker, tp-link and now smartlife etc. all function on their own as well as with each other. So if ST drops off my nice rules die out a bit, but the functions remain intact.

1 Like