My lights work as advertised. There are ST glitches. My sonos setup stopped working and supposedly they’re working on it (I liked my weather report as soon as I got up). I’ve had some smart alarm glitches and presence sensor issues. (Back to working again- for awhile we would set off our our alarms despite standing in our home) At one point it was my phone stopped registering as a presence sensor until I reset it and one point, the delay in sensing us was too long so the motion sensor set off the alarm. But I consider ST as a half way serious cheap alarm. If I really wanted a alarm system probably would use something else like simplisafe (got that for my mother).
I think the most important functions of smarthouse hub are for safety. The fire alarm, water sensors seem to work fine and don’t require millisecond or second response time. The lights do. No one wants to walk into a room and it stays dark. I already prepurchased v2. The way I figure it, it’s interesting and fun and sometimes useful. The major cost is sensors. If I ditch ST, the majority of investment is not wasted.
Oh, Benji. If you don’t remove ‘always’ from your vocabulary when speaking of ST, then you will end up with a referral to the ‘smart’ rehab. I think @tgauchat is looking for one to recommend.
Throw me a penny whenever you use my alias. Will help me get some new devices and pay my medical bill… 
PS: just meant as a joke… Not to be taken seriously…
I’m late to this post, but maybe my point of view will help you. I’m a current Wink hub owner and I’m too considering switching to ST. Mainly, because of the great community, apps and power of the app.
As of right now, I mainly own both ST and Wink compatible devices, with a few exceptions. My Wink setup works and my wife likes it (please keep that huge factor in mind). Main issue is, I would like to create some “scenes” or “modes” for my HA setup. So that I would just tap a button for the “Vacation mode” and my lights would go on and off at different times everyday, and stuff like that. Currently with Wink, I can’t do that. I could go with some LIFX bulbs, which do that through their “Works with Nest” program, but they are expensive and I prefer having smart switches than smart lights.
Other thing I like about ST is the wide variety of products that are compatible. Mainly, Aeon Labs compatibility. Some of the Aeon Labs products work with Wink via the generic Z-Wave option, but it’s difficult to know which ones (again, the community).
Right now, since I’m not in a rush and people have lived without HA for thousands of years, I decided to wait and see. This is why:
- The new V2 hub seems promising, but I prefer to jump later than having to try out all the quirks myself.
- My setup works fine. It’s not like I have a debacle here at home.
- Wink is allegedly coming out with new partners and a new update in the next month or so
In summary, I’m going to wait and see. Maybe Wink comes out with something amazing, maybe it dies as a company. Maybe the V2 hub will solve many things from the ST V1 hub, maybe it won’t make a gigantic difference. For now, I’ll continue to follow different HA forums and communities to make a better decision later. Hope this helps.
Everyone,
I want to thank all of you for the great responses. They have been very enlightening to say the least. What all of you have done is this:
- I’ve decided that I will buy the V2 Hub.
- I’m going to incorporate it into my current system
- Since Echo is my main control of the HA system, things are a little more complex
- My system as it currently is, Echo voice control, Hue hub, Wink hub, Philips lights, and GE link Lights is extremely stable. I have very little problems out of it and it works 99% of the time.
- I am going to wait a bit before getting the V2 hub, I want to see what kinds of problems there are going to be. I prefer to let the bugs get worked out before I jump on board.
- I see no reason to abandon the Wink system when I can just Incorporate the ST system into it, especially since I’m using Echo to control all of it.
- And finally, incorporating the ST hub into the system with the Wink hub allows me to use the most stable parts of both systems and what’s not compatible with one, is with the other.
My main concerns are all about reliability and stability. My kids love the HA systems and my wife puts up with it simply because I want it. But, I want it to work as much as possible, especially when I am away from home.
Again, thank you all for the responses.
The point is that I don’t build up the expectation that Smart Things will always be reliable, because I know it won’t ever be and that’s not necessarily ST’s fault.
You’re certainly not late You just put things into perspective for me, as far as how much my HA setup evolved since I made the jump from Wink to ST.
Not only that I have the option to “just tap a button” to set my home in away mode (short term) or even vacation mode (long term), but our home actually “knows” when the family comes and goes and automatically runs sets of actions which include: turning on/off AV devices and lights; starting/stopping video cameras and event based notifications; locking/unlocking doors, setting different temperatures on multiple zones to efficiently and comfortably cool/heat only the areas that are occupied. And it has been doing so 99.9% of the time since the initial set up.
Same goes for the daily routines. When we go to bed, the house switches automatically to “night” mode, so it checks to make sure the doors are locked, the lights are off, the cameras are on, and turns on the lights - on our pathway to the bedroom - dimmed at 20%, to save a buck or two on the energy bill. The best part is that my wife doesn’t even realizes the complexity of our HA system, just because it integrates naturally into our lives – she does like the security features, though, and the fact that she doesn’t have to check each door in the house to make sure it’s locked. Another fact, is that none of us touched any of our thermostats since we’ve got the V1 hub.
Even with the platform’s hiccups that I experienced in the past month or so, our home “went to sleep” every night without “fussing.”
The features that are annoying - when they “go wrong” - are the more advanced, often times community based apps, which ST is capable of supporting. I am running some of these apps - mostly during the day when my wife is home - and those have created angst among the family members. That’s not to say they cannot be fixed. So far, both the ST support and the community members have been very responsive and extremely ingenious in finding solutions or workarounds. However, it seems to me that V2 kind of stole the show and things have slowed down a bit?! Maybe I am wrong, or maybe it’s just me waiting for the V2 hub to arrive so I can continue tinkering with my system.
Ok, so one probably last question here… And by the way I’m just waiting for my V2 hub to ship!
When I have the GE link bulbs connected via the hue hub I can tell Alexa to dim them. The hue hub supports this via echo.
When I have them connected via the wink hub I can not use Alexa to dim the bulbs. I have to use the wink app.
Now, once I get my ST Hub and connect the link bulbs, will I be able to dim them using Alexa?
It’s really important that I can. That is my wife’s favorite feature which allows me to spend more money!
Yes. Dimming works.
20 chars
Just to clarify… If I tell echo to dim my ge link lights that are connected via ST hub will dim?
Yes.
Twenty characters.
Thank you.
ten characters
Alexa, set living room to 100
Alexa, dim living room to 10
Works the best for me where living room is a group with some lights.
That’s exactly what I’m looking for. The Wink hub has proven to be extremely stable for me with the lights and working through Echo. I just want the dimming function that I had with the bulbs connected via the Hue hub and controlled by Echo.
I connected one of my Link bulbs back to the Hue hub tonight to see if maybe the problem of the Link bulbs dropping offline had been fixed… I’m hoping.
… but I guess it doesn’t really matter… I’m waiting my V2 anyway.
With v1 or V2. Alexa is everybody’s darling!
I received my V2 Hub today, and I have to say, I’m very impressed.
The first thing I did was connect the 3 GE Link Bulbs in my foyer along with my EcoTech door sensor. The lights turn on almost instantly and go off every time after 2 minutes (which is what I set it to do).
Setting up the lights is very easy. I just deleted them from the Wink hub and from Alexa and reset the bulbs. There were no issues connecting the bulbs. It was quick and simple.
The app is good, but I would have to say it’s only really good for people that have spent some time in this forum. There are some things that are not very intuitive for the novice user. I was able to zip around it because of the time I’ve spent in the forum.
So far, I find the ST V2 hub to be a huge improvement over the Wink hub.
Oh, and you just can’t image how happy my wife is that all of the lights are now dimmable. And that reminds me, The ST app gives me options on the dimming of the lights. Normal, Instant, Slow, and Very Slow. That was a great idea ST team!
There are several connected devices I have that SmartThings does not support, August Door Lock, Ring Doorbell, Nest Thermostat and Ranchio Irrigation controller are among a few. For that matter, no hub supports them (or at least not well). These devices not only work well by themselves but are the leading sellers in their respective categories. These items, for the most part, can only be controlled by their proprietary apps. Getting them to work intelligently with other smart devices usually takes a 3rd party method to bridge the gap (such as IFTTT). In my mind this is very inefficient and very cumbersome.
I’ve had the SmartThings v1 hub for about 3 months and my v2 hub is expected to be delivered Monday. Despite the lack of SmartThings support of some of my favorite smart devices, I can comfortably say choosing SmartThings over Wink, VeraLite, Almond+, WeMo, Insteon and Iris was a great choice. I’m not saying this to kiss up to SmartThings or anyone else for that matter. I’m saying this because the openness of the SmartThings ecosystem allows me to get the needed support from a community of developers that the other systems do not allow. This openness has provided great support for the Nest Thermostat and with the inclusion of Bluetooth in the v2 hub, I would expect the August Door Lock to be next (Ring needs to get onboard quickly).
Don’t get me wrong, native support would be better. But with the strong developer community that SmartThings has, it makes the wait less painful.
I agree with you completely about the community… It really is what makes this system the best.
I have tried to keep all of my hardware purchases to preferred hardware list. I did this just for the ease of use and the stability. Though, I do have two Honeywell thermostats that are wifi. I have seen a lot of talk about then on here. So, I’m working on my brush up of the programming and learning how to make the virtual switches as well as the smart apps work from the developer side. That was my other reason for choosing ST, the open source allows for incredible flexibility.
I’m sticking with Wink due to the fact that it has 5 radios vs ST’s 2. I have no bias towards ST’s hub at all. It’s just that I’ve invested a lot of time and money in Wink and everything is stable and working great now. This technology is growing exponentially. What doesn’t work today will probably be implemented in a few months.
Not trying to start anything, but what five radios does wink have versus STs three? Let’s keep this to facts, I’m platform agnostic, just happen to love my ST setup compared to the X10 and then Insteon I had and wonder what other radios there are.