I’m pretty new to the smart home game but I like it so far.
1 - Bought a Hue bridge with some color and white bulbs. Working fine for the most part - HomeKit / Siri are working fine.
2 - I’m looking at either the Nest or Ecobee thermostat - both seem to have good reviews. I assume I would need a separate bridge to control either of these products?
3 - Looking at the Lurton Caseta in wall dimmer switch to control my existing lights (non Hue) in my living room.
Am I correct in that I would need 3 different bridges to control the above?
Am I correct that the Smartthings bridge would take care of everything and I would only need 1 bridge?
Many of the reviews that I’m reading (Amazon specifically) on Smartthings are very poor. Buggy, difficult to setup etc…I want something simple and reliable. Is Smartthings the best choice or should I be looking elsewhere?
No, SmartThings can’t take care of everything. You still need the hue bridge for the hue lights. Lutron is not supported by smartthings at all. You can get indirect integration through IFTTT, but again you would need the Lutron Caseta SmartBridge to do that.
(You won’t need a separate bridge for either nest or ecobee, each acts as its own controller.)
The goal of SmartThings isn’t to replace all the other bridges. It’s to give you a single place to coordinate your rules and automations for devices in many different protocols.
Smartthings is very powerful and versatile. But even on its best day it isn’t simple. And at present there are ongoing issues with reliability.
The company is very aware of that and has committed to improving stability and reliability, but they still have a ways to go.
If you just want simple and reliable right now and you already have iOS devices, I would just go with HomeKit. And you can also add echo, I personally use both. HomeKit is much less powerful than SmartThings and has many fewer available devices, but what it has definitely fits the simple and reliable definition.
So as always, different things work for different people. It just depends on your own priorities.
Only true in part. You CAN use Hue bulbs directly with the ST hub, but you have better results using the Hue hub. (Including local only control when internet is unavailable.)
Officially, only using the hue bridge is supported. While it is technically possible to connect a hue bulb directly to the SmartThings hub, doing so would definitely take it out of the “simple and reliable” category. ( there’s also the current known issue that attaching any zigbee bulbs directly to the smartthings hub may interfere with messages being sent to other zigbee devices like sensors.)
it’s fine to mention that it can be done without the Phillips hue bridge to someone coming to SmartThings with a maker background who is interested in all the possibilities. But when talking to someone who is specifically asking for “simple and reliable” I wouldn’t bring up methods which are not officially supported as if something goes wrong, SmartThings support won’t help them.
Good points.
If you have the hue hub, by all means, don’t get rid of it. I recently got an Osram bulb (it was cheap and available) for a project. I hope it doesn’t give me any issues, but I did get it to work.
I get such good support here (seriously) I have never considered ST support.
Thanks all - after reading through this forum and some others, I think I’ll just stick with Homekit. My hubs will be Hue and Lutron and as you mentioned above Ecobee and Nest both act as their own controller so it shouldn’t be too bad.
Looking for something VERY simple so this is probably the best approach.
HomeKit is much less powerful than SmartThings and has many fewer available devices, but what it has definitely fits the simple and reliable definition.