We’re looking to get views from the SmartThings community — are there any smart devices you think are missing from the market, or where the available options are just not great?
Could be things you’ve had to make, import from another region, or use workarounds for.
We’re especially interested in the UK/EU area, but open to hearing from everyone.
To be transparent, I’m with a smart home company (Candeo), and this is part of some market research we’re doing. No sales pitch — just hoping to learn directly from users, what they are looking for.
I’d say that my smart home is finally complete now (thanks, midlife crisis!). Now I’m sitting here waiting for all the LG and IKEA Matter over Thread devices (sensors), so I can replace everything that’s not M/T. I’m also looking forward to the Philips TVs with their Matter media cluster, because I really want to write an Edge Driver for something that hasn’t been done before.
Smart locks for windows (not doors). I only know of one (Siegenia) and while it’s a good one, it’s too large for many windows.
automatic door openers for both swing doors and slide doors that work with the smart voice assistants. (Alexa, Google, Siri).
Olide has some good models at reasonable prices, but they are quite complex to install.
Tuya has some models which are pretty much useless because they just aren’t powerful enough for a typical exterior door and they lack a lot of safety features.
a smart pressure sensor Mat in two sizes. One small enough to put a coffee mug on, say 15 cm square. And one about doormat size.
Sure, power users can make their own and do, but something that worked with Matter out of the box would have a lot of interesting applications.
But there are more as well. Everything from tracking if the dog has been fed to. If the trash cans have been put out to all the various use cases around whether someone is sitting in a particular chair…
I realize this is potentially a smaller market size than the first two because you may have to explain the use cases a little more to help people understand the value proposition, but it’s definitely a missing piece in the market right now.
So a UK +1 for pressure mats with a sub-topic of bed occupancy sensor…
Tilt sensor (mercury style)
Both things I have cobbled together in the past using ST devices as a base but are no longer feasible (for me) as the base devices need specific drivers to not register with thier native functionality - I wrote custom groovy for them but couldn’t be bothered with edge … Also:
Vehicle battery level monitor
Outdoor battery powered IR beam sensor
Probably think of more but these 4 I could use now
Thanks for all the suggestions so far; it’s been interesting reading them all.
I can definitely see myself wanting some of these.
We’ll be reviewing all the suggestions internally to explore any we might develop. Many of the ideas are great. For now, we’ll see where these internal conversations lead us.
Thanks again for all the input - if you think of any more please do post them, we’re always open to new ideas.
What about a non neutral smart wall switch that fits in 25mm uk backboxes? One and two gang options and even a maybe a 2 gang one that has one dimmer and one regular switch. Could be a challenge to make it small enough but would definitely be great to have
Want to turn your regular ‘dumb’ appliances into smart ones? HS-FS100-L is a Z-Wave light sensor that’s designed to report back to your smart home hub when indicator lights turn on, turn off or change color. Use to monitor dehumidifiers, water softeners, washers, dryers and much more!
It used to. Quite a few community members were using it that way. I haven’t looked to see if there’s an edge driver that supports that, but I’m not sure why there wouldn’t be.
Yes, there is an edge driver (iquix). But the sensor lost connection with the ST after some time. I started looking again after your message. Came across that you have to turn off the “zigbee secure mode” with this edge driver. I am going to connect the Hue outdoor sensor again with the secure mode off and I hope this will work. In any case, thank you for your message.
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