I don’t have a hub and all my devices are wifi devices or linked to Logitech Harmony hub. In my IDE most are placeholder or virtual switc/simulated switch devices. Do I need a hub and if so what kind of hub ?
Do you intend to buy ZWave or Zigbee devices? If so you’ll need a hub. If not, you currently do not. There are a couple other fringe cases of course but it really comes down to that question.
If you decide you need a hub for SmartThings the current iteration is the Aeotec hub.
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If the wifi devices works now, then you don’t need the hub. Be warned, if your wifi or internet service stops, then your devices stop working because there is no local processing available.
The groovy cloud will start to be shut down starting September 30. At some point after that, your current virtual switches will probably stop working. ( unfortunately, we haven’t been given full details yet.)
There is a substitute available now that will work on the new architecture, but that one requires that you have a hub.
I have been asking formally since December 2020 what options for virtual devices will be available to those of us who don’t have a hub, but no one has given me an answer yet.
So I’m just not sure what’s going to happen. I know if you buy a hub, you can use the new virtual devices. But it doesn’t seem like you should have to just for that purpose.
You can watch the following official announcement thread and see if we get an answer about virtual devices there.
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One more thought: you may lose the official Harmony integration once groovy goes away and the community – created replacement does require a SmartThings/Aeotec hub.
I have a thread running to see what suggestions people have for those of us who don’t have a smartthings/Aeotec hub but are using Harmony. But no really good answers there yet, either. A lot of details are just unclear still. 
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