HOMEY PRO, BABY!!! I absolutely love this hub and we're integrating it more and more into our channel as well. They are the first hub that seems to actually care about the user experience, which is so refreshing. If they can convince people to spend $400 on a hub, the world is their oyster (whatever that means). Home assistant shall remain king for tinkerers and total connectivity. Everyone else is just falling behind.
Man, I've been thinking about some of these issues recently, and this video is very timely and really hits home with me. I'm also taking some time to weigh my options right now. I would really like to see this smart home rebuilding series idea you floated.
Interesting video and I’m glad to hear it’s not just me having problems with it! I’ve spent years building up my setup, making sure every device I bought would work with ST, then last year they just completely flattened the whole setup. I’ve only just now got the motivation to essentially start again and re-add the vast majority of my devices - some of which aren’t even supported anymore! The issues with the Hue integration are driving me mad as well. They won’t update status at all meaning that half my automations don’t work properly. Also don’t even get me started on trying to use action tiles without virtual switches!!! I think I might make the switch to home assistant…
Looking forward to seeing a deep dive into Homey Pro and head to head comparison with Hubitat. Currently running Smartthings, Hubitat with Alexa voice control. My new Homey Pro arrives today! Definitely want to maintain local control. Keep up the good work Brian!
FINALLY Brian! It took awhile but you finally saw the light. You concentrated so much on Smartthings you were blinded to their direction and more notably the direction of other smart home platforms. I personally love Habitat. I find their community one of the best. They have so many programmers join the community AND lend a helping hand to ANYONE. I don't tunnel my views and keep an open mind and I'm glad you too have done the same. I feel this will make your channel much more appealing to everyone no matter what platform we use. All the best in the New Year.
Yep! Sometimes it takes me a while. I really like to give people/platforms a chance to come around to the potential they have. It's probably an Achilles' Heel, honestly. :) That's ok, we'll go forward and I'm glad you're interested!
Wow Brian is on a terror. I’m here for it, for years Samsung was able to do whatever they wanted because of their name. Take the edge driver migration, this was a 3 + years process. Promises made were never kept. Way to go Brian 💥💥💥
First time I’ve seen you and you channel and I’m impressed by your honesty. I have some smart plugs and echo devices so that I can light my way in the morning and make sure everything automated is off when I’m ready to sleep but that works out to about 6 strategic lights and my TV. What i don’t like about smart homes and actually believe is really dumb - is the use of them to create routines where certain lights come on and off at certain hours or your system wakes you with the news or something at the same time every day. It all feels very “Stepford” to me and like I’m now allowing the “smart” tech to control when and what - possibly even how I do things. I don’t live my life “exactly” the same way every day and I’m not giving up manual control of my decision making process to automation just because I can or it’s “cool” that tech can automate lights on or off, up or down, music or news etc. when my “routine” shuts off all the lights and music in my home at 9 because that’s my programmed routine and I have a house full of party guests and can’t find where I left my phone to fix that - its a problem. One I created when I dumbly decided to automate my life and let tech tell me what to do and when to do it. I’m not saying it’s all bad - but it’s a very long way from being all good. 🤷♂️
You just have to be more creative with how/when your automation is triggered. Easy option would be to simply use manual triggers for your automation. For example, I have a bed sensor which can tell if I'm in bed or not. I run an automation that if I'm in bed for longer than X amount of time, shut off all lights and lock the front door as it's assumed I'm either going to sleep for the night or taking a nap.
really.. I have Home Assistant, and I can't get Smartthings Vision to work in Home Assistant without Samsung Smartthuings Hub.. do you know how to do that? ( I want to dump that Smartthings Hub, it is seriously useless..)
I agree completely with your assessment of Samsung. Apparently I'm not as patient as you because I dropped SmartThings a couple of years ago because of devices suddenly disappearing, automations just stopping working and other issues that you mentioned. The final straw for me was when I contacted "Support". No response at all for a month and then what I got was clearly boiler plate with only a peripheral relationship to the problem I was having. After three back and forths with "Support" (which took four months!) I just said to Hell with it and got rid of SmartThings. It simply was not worth the hassle. Unfortunately one of the things I got to go with Samsung automations was a TV. I've about decided to junk it too because it has "quirks" that sometimes, not always, cause Routines to just not work and then mysteriously start working again. Really looking forward to seeing what course you take in re-automating your home.
To be honest every platform has disappearing smart home products, at least one a month I have to fix one of my 50+ automations for no known reason... smart homes are still for geeks only as the average person could not possibly manage one!
For me it's always been about the broken promises and missed dates. I just wish they would come even close to delivering what they have promised. Great content as always, I'm really looking forward to watching your journey!
Brian, thanks so much for the honest video. I have many of the same problems you describe. Especially the frequent self-disabling of routines drives me crazy. I don't know how often I have changed batteries of Zigbee devices that stopped working, only to find out that the real problem was a disabled routine. There is simply no excuse for that! Devices "falling off" the network for no comprehensible reason is another thing I constantly fight. These are local Zigbee devices, and they just go offline anyway. I would like to switch over to Home Assistant, but I am afraid this takes too much time to set up. I sure am a nerd that wouldn't have problems with it, but I also have a full-time job and a family (both of which the typical HA freak apparently doesn't have, so he can invest all of his time on HA...).
Absolutely interested in a series on rebuilding your smart home. As someone who has been heavily invested in the Google Ecosystem since it's inception, I would love to see what Google products you still have that you are able to incorporate into these other platforms, especially Homey.
I did it. I dumped Google last yr! I had enough of the Nest integration failures. The lethal combo of Google Home and Google Assistant made it a deep hole of confusion at times. I was experiences camera failures on all my Nest Hub Max units in both homes. Last time I checked it’s been over 2 yrs since Google announced they were aware of the issue but no solutions are refunds and their costly subscriptions! That was the last straw. I waited for sales in Alexa products, and I will NEVER GO BACK! I think I have had 1 wtf moment and it was quickly resolved. Multiple screens, speakers etc. All my lights, outlets, and bulbs operate with zero issues. I do want to completely get of the cloud however. This will be something that may very well require an entire overhaul again! But I will never go back to Google. They had it all, and threw it all away. I recently discovered Alexa app for IOS was updated and it was a pleasant surprise.
After watching many UA-cam home automation reviewers, I purchased the Aeotec/SmartThings system. Shortly after my purchase, I was surprised by this ditching video. Even so, I kept and continued with my system setup. Honestly, it works great! It's nice to know that I can integrate it into Home Assistant - if I ever decide to go in that direction. I like that Aeotec/SmartThings easily works with my Wifi, ZWave, and Zigbee products. Like many of your followers, my home is no longer a simple automation and it is extended on a regular basis. Regardless of the ditching video, I still watch your channel. I'm hoping that Aeotec does a better job than SamSung and that you could review this system and compatible products in the near future.
Great stuff Brian. I had the exact problems you were describing with smart things. Most notably the broken promises (and the impact this was having on the community!). A lot was promised from the switch to edge drivers but it just created more problems and delays- eventually I took the plunge with home assistant and am incredibly happy with my smart home now.
I'm interested to see where you land. I'm still doing ok with SmartThings, but can see what you're talking about. My biggest fear/peeve is that I started on Wink, and I don't want to have to keep hopping from platform to platform, which kind of hurts Smart Homes in general. If you can't stay on one platform and have to redo your home periodically because of it, what good is a smart home?
I don't blame you Brian! As a long term android user, but currently not a Samsung phone user (but I was previously), I was disappointed that Samsung Smart tags were not available and that some of their newer Samsung devices required users to have a Galaxy phone to unlock all their features. I'm still on my V2 hub and I was hopeful that a new version (v4?) might someday fix my Phillips problems, resetting dropped Z-Wave devices problem and double Smarthings/Google device issues. As you are to us, many of your followers are the "techy friends" that others look for our advice on smart homes or other techy things etc. As per our previous conversations, I've never been an iPhone/Mac fan boy, because of their "locked in" Eco system strategy. I'm seeing Samsung going down that same hole. I'll be looking carefully on buying future Samsung devices in general. I'll be following your progress, with an eye to moving myself to a new platform in the future. Thanks for your bravery in posting this video!
You and the Channel took me from zero to Automated Hero and while I have managed to develop workarounds for the current state - I am with you on your Journey to Homey Pro. I will hold off a bit before converting but am looking forward to the videos you share.
Contemplating doing this change to Homey (from Samsung) while trying to circumvent some issues using IFTTT. Would love to hear your progress along the way. Thank you
Well this is a surprise, Brian! I have indeed noticed some mysteriously disappearing automations in recent months (I thought it might have been due to all sorts of Matter-related software updates) and I do mostly use Smartthings for some (mostly WiFi) devices while using Hubitat for others (mostly Zigbee devices). (I have no Z-wave devices.) I've been busy with two major home renovations this year (NOT relating to my smart home) but will be going back in the new year to managing my automations (including those in my new kitchen and backyard deck). I generally like my Samsumg galaxy phone and have a few other Samsung products in the house, so I'm not planning to ditch Smartthings just yet. My household is also what seems to be in the small minority that makes no use at all of smart speakers ("No spies in the house!", my wife insists...). All of our automations and interfaces are done using a screen (on phones, tablets, computers) with room-by-room controls. Most of my automations, etc. use SharpTools (and their Rules Engine that mostly works well for me). They currently integrate Smartthings, Hubitat and Home Assistant, I believe, so if - in the end - I do need to move my old WiFi and new Matter-over-thread devices to an alternative platform, it's likely to be HA. But do keep us informed about Homey Pro (and any potential alternatives by way of more or less "one stop" interfaces that can help span multiple hubs while we wait and see if the promises of Matter ever get realized). I'm especially keen to see if I'll be able to incorporate all my new Govee products (and also my new TP-Link Kasa/Tapo Matter devices) into a single interface.
Very interesting David! You have this interesting mixed bag of stuff, but it sounds like you're bringing it together pretty well. Advanced stuff and I'm glad to hear you're going to be automating much more this year! No spies in the house...ya I have heard that! You should tell her about those phones. On second thought...maybe don't! 😂
Excellent. I agree with you 100%. I would love to dump Smartthings for all the reasons you say plus a few more. I think they have NO IDEA what a terrible customer experience we have. Its like living with pre beta solutions. The unreliability is terrible and the customer support has deteriorated dramatically. I will watch your transition with interest as I cant wait to dump Smartthings in the trash. Samsung have treated their customers terribly the last 2 years and they don't deserve our loyalty. Gradually migrating a live customer base who had paid for and set up a stable smarthome was a decision which showed utter contempt for their customer base. Withdrawal of features, random device disconnections, buggy software and no viable presence sensing make Smartthings unusable now. I cant wait for this next series from you Brian.
Wow, Brian, you really did that? You've been a long-time proponent of SmartThings. I dumped 'em two years ago and never looked back. Now...about Homey Pro...a $400 hub??? Really??? Seriously??? If it was Apriil 1st I'd understand, but as I've said before I'd like to see one single automation that would be important to more than a handful of people that can't be done other ways with more universal platforms. I don't buy platforms to make my poor device choices (I've done a bunch of them) seem workable. I try to buy proven devices that already work with everything...like Lutron and Aqara for example. I really liked this video!!!
Yep... really did that. Obviously it's too much to deal with and get a reliable smart home, so yeahhhhh Time to try some drastic things. $400 hubs, total DIY, white glove pro setups. We have to find the best for real.
Started with smartthings, even though a non tec , could do many things watching your videos. Even virtual switches. Have ended up with hod podge lately, not using smartthings as much. Lost me with transition to edge and got to be too confusing to find solutions like before…….use alexa for some automations when smartthings got too weird . Use yolink for some things. Needed distance and only one that work for my freezer and outdoor stuff. They have been super . Just got a couple of aqara and transitioning to some matter. Had google smart displays from beginning. Need to consolidate i guess but nothing perfect. Homey too expensive but look forward to info on aqara and hubitat to help make a streamline decision.
My experience with SmartThings has been mixed. My set up is pretty simple, mostly plug-in switches, I have about 60 devices connected. My constant, never-ending battle is with water sensors/leak detectors. I can't find a single one that's reliable. A big advantage with SmartThings as a very active user group. I can ask a question and I get multiple good answers within 30 minutes. Shocking that Homey Pro requires an adapter/dongle to have an ethernet connection. I can't believe they didn't build that important feature right into the hub. I enjoyed your video. When I see all the things you're automating, and all the difficulties you're experiencing one has to wonder if home automation is worth it AT ALL.
@@AutomateYourLife Well, like you, I enjoy this type of stuff. I'm a little frustrated right now. I've spent the last four days trying to get a. Aeotec - Flood Water Sensor 7 Pro to work properly. My current one is stuck on "wet". At least Aeotec does wright drivers for SmartThings. Unlike Fibaro, that says they will not write a driver for SmartThings. I have their leak detectors, they have a nice design and work reliably. But every time I would change the battery, it was a brand new day, having to start over pairing them. The Aeotec leak sensors have a QR code. This QR code doesn't help much. I've set up Wi-Fi cameras that have QR codes. I do it in 30 seconds with my iPhone.
I'd like to see some videos on the Homey Pro. Having a hub where all my smart home actions would be performed locally is kind of a grail for me. Speed, reliability, access during outages -- it would be worth the $400 if it can be set up reliably and with a minimum of fuss.
Agreed. Homey Pro looks pretty awesome, but I think any home automation needs to strike that perfect balance between techies and every day users who don't want to delve into the why's and how's and just want things to work. I tend to categorize people into 2 groups, Apl users and Andr. users. Bringing both together seamlessly in a hub would be the grail to me...I suspect AI voice integration / coding devices within a hub is the likely end result that might accomplish it.
I like your videos and I am a recovering home automation geek 🙂. I have had ST for a while now and had Homeseer and Hubitat. Was wondering why you chose to review the ones that you did and not include Homeseer? The only reason we went away from it was the time and frustration of my better half, that I think most people who do home automation may have some experience with. That being said, I thought ST would be an easier more stable platform, turns out, not so much. I am about to move everything into Amazon and call it done, since most of my kit is so old I will have to start over anyway.
Homeseer's fine, but it's a bit closed off for me. They just don't seem to have a lot of momentum in terms of growth. Again, nothing wrong with that but I have to choose!
Hey Brian, great video. I left smartthings back in January because of a lot of the same issues you mentioned. The mishandling of the Edge driver program was a huge turn off for me. Also taking away the IDE, and the lack of functionality of the Windows app/ browser. Even going back to the classic app vs the "new" app, the classic app was better in my opinion. You had the best Smartthings tutorials and news. Speaking of news, it makes sense to hear you say it was lacking. There seemed to be no voice from Samsung ever giving any news on new features or anything. I made the switch to Home Assistant and it's been great. Way more options to tinker and ways to troubleshoot if an automation isn't working. I wouldn't be concerned about the time commitment. The GUI of Home Assistant has gotten really good and you'll be able to do everything that smartthings can do within the HA GUI. Also a great thing about HA is that if your smart home gets too big for your HA Green you can easily move your configure to more capable hardware. Best of luck to you and your channel. I think your upcoming content will have more viewers because it won't be smartthings focused 😀
Thanks so much for the message. It helps to hear people say that the content felt a little off. You don't always know these things from this side of the desk, ya know?
@@AutomateYourLife Hey it wasn't off from your end. It just seemed like there was no news to report but there should have been (if Samsung cared about growing the platform in the same ways it was started). But seems like they really don't so the whole product, even though it has the same name, is really not what it was created as (a hub to pull in all of your devices from different manufacturers). Things change 😉. Smartthings was great (for me) from like 2015-2020, then it wasn't and naturally there were other products there to take Smartthings' spot. For me, I thought I was going to switch to Hubitat, but in the end ended up dipping my toe in the Home Assistant water (with a very small Raspberry Pi investment) and was able to figure it out. If I didn't like Home Assistant I would have gone to Hubitat but the way you can ease into Home Assistant is nice. For about a year I still used my Smartthings hub as an input to Home Assistant, which kept me from having to buy Zwave and Zigbee dongles. There was really no commitment to Home Assistant while in this phase because all my devices (wifi/Zwave/Zigbee) were still attached to Smartthings while being able to be controlled through Home Assistant. I think that is a major plus for people thinking about moving from Smartthings to something else.
I can't use the humidity sensor on my aircon to trigger an automation. The Samsung aircon measures humidity, and displays it on my SmartThings hone screen but that's as far as it goes. I've tried contacting them, but the feedback is tedeous and a generic process which doesn't allow you te get in contact with a human to analyse what you're experiencing and add it to the Dev team's backlog. I'm also looking at moving away from the SmartThings WiFi as the WiFi performance is dated and need to redo my entire setup. Been quite an issue trying to figure out what combination of hub/s and WiFi aps are the best options to go for.
You have been my Jedi master on this journey. I started with Amazon, you taught me to to branch out and truly showed me that smart homes are more than just cool features, it can actually save you time. I went headfirst into SmartThings. Over the last year, too many incompatible devices, issues with drivers, and all the broken promises you mentioned, I made the move to Home Assistant. I even emailed you about it and you responded to me in one of your viewer question emails!! I felt like I was cheating on you leaving SmartThings. lol. But your last two videos have shown me that you are feeling the same frustrations I am with Samsung and the smarthome industry as a whole. I love your honesty and the way you talk to us. It’s like we share your channel with you. You’re always keeping us in mind, and we appreciate it. I have a feeling I’m gonna be tempted to move to Homey after a few of your videos, but after two hub switches in one year, and lots of money, I should wait a while before I start fresh with a new system. You’re the best
Thank you so much Jay! I'm glad you tried it! I hope it's working out well and just gets better for you. Maybe next time I'll email you for some help 😃
I ditched smart things about 4 years ago and have been using Home Assistant ever since. I don't have any issues like I had with the Smartthings platform. Well, the only issue I had with HA was to keep my HA certificates up to date so I can access it remotely. But now you can use Cloud Flare to manage this with no user interaction. That was a game changer. I didn't want a paid subscription for something that I could setup and manage myself. I rarely have to reboot or restart HA. Yes you have to update it but I think that can be done automatically. I have it running on a Proxmox VM (Full HA OS) and have a USB extender hub in the middle of my house for my zwave devices. Automations run as expected. I know my setup isn't for everyone but I feel that HA has came a long way over the past 4 years of using it. Looking forward to seeing what platform you decide to go with.
I don't blame you for leaving Smartthings. After being a loyal user for years, I had to do the same earlier this year after virtually all of my devices disappeared from the App. And the solution from Samsung Support was to reconnect/re-add them all. So I bit the bullet and reconnected them all to Home Assistant. Don't worry, your loyal subscribers and members will not abandon you. Keep up the great work and I'd be especially interested in your HA content!! Merry Christmas to you and your family!!
I've just recently started using the SmartThings ecosystem with my everyday devices. That is until the Aqara M3 hub launches. I bought an Aqara window/door sensor and realized that it doesn't connect to the Aqara M2 hub. It uses Matter. I tried using the Home Assistant Matter integration and the sensor kept going offline. I turned to my Samsung SmartThings Station I had lying around and attached the sensor through matter with it and added the hub into Home Assistant. It's been working flawlessly ever since. I'm in the US, so maybe that's why it's working well for me?
Sigh, this is so frustrating. I mean, I get it, I really do. You have to do what's best for you, and Smartthings has been a real mess this year. My smart home is Smartthings and Alexa, the two that all my favorite smart home channels are bailing on. Smart Home Solver talks about very little besides Home Assistant these days, and just posted that he's dumping Alexa too. I'm probably not going to bother with his channel anymore, but that's been coming for some time. He hasn't been relevant to me for a while. Craig's Tech Talk, I usually ignore... and so on. Anyway, I'm glad to hear you're not abandoning us entirely. I'm frustrated too, and Samsung needs to hear this!
I'm sorry Brad! I get it. We will do what we can, and maybe Samsung comes back and lays out all their plans and they're amazing. I'm definitely not saying for you to tear down your smart home. :)
Hey Brian, thanks so much for this video. I have been using SmartThings since 2017. Mostly with good results, but I have had some issues. I was debating on waiting for the new Aeotec with Thread/Matter but now..... not sure what I want to do. I was also considering Home Assistant since I have seen so many UA-camrs talking about it, but I also watched your unboxing video on the Home Assistant green, and not sure if I really want to spend so much time learning it. I liked what you said about Homey, but I just don't think I can fork out $550 for a hub. As a teacher, my funds for smart home tech is limited. I really miss the early days of smart home tech because it was so exciting and looked so promising. Then with the Matter alliance, it was like "yea, these companies are going to help us make this easier" but now, its soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo frustrating. My whole family wants me to dump it all. Which I'm not ready to do.......yet. I'll be interested in your upcoming videos on the hubs. Thanks for being so informative and so transparent about your journey.
We gotta find easier stuff too Buddy. I think that's the key for all of us going forward. It'll be fun to showcase Homey Pro, but I'm not going to ignore the need for simple, effective, inexpensive automation. :)
I am physically disabled and I need technology to enable me to be independent. I am aware that vital devices should not be connected for obvious security. But when it comes to lights, fans, curtains, and other aspects of daily life, I'm extremely disappointed with Samsung and their development team. I'm proud to see your message coming up, Brian. I'm behind you and I'm confident that the best structure will be presented to us soon, hoping that Samsung will still be part of it.
I have no idea why edge devices often goes offline without being able to reconnect them unless I factory reset my ST station. No issues with devices imported from Hue bridge though
FYI Brian. I have 2 identical wake up routines, one set up as a Google Home automation and the other as an Alexa rouiine. They are scheduled to run mintues apart. The Alexa routine wins on reliability. The Google automation runs some days and not at all on other. Today it worked after doing so for a day or 2 but not all the actions were performed. I have no hubs, except Hue, other than the alexa hub in my echo device and the one in the Nest Hub gen 2. Both are running Matter and are up to date. So Google clearly has sime reliabiliy issues with their automation.
I've been disappointed with my ST since they dropped the Groovie IDE. Ive had to many issues and been contemplating starting from scratch just to see if anything works better or even like it should. Although this would require just as much effort to switch platforms and in some cases much more ie HA. Is the extra effort really going to make that much of a difference in the end. It seems they all have issues of some sort. HA has my attention at the moment, just not sure if the ROI is sufficient enough to make the change.
I’m finding that my Google hub is doing the same thing. I have several Leviton switches and plugs that have always worked. Now some of my automations loss connection randomly. They are fine in the Leviton app on my iPhone. Getting frustrated with smart home equipment. 😢
I had never heard of Homey until this video. I look forward to seeing more of what it can do. Having one hub that can work with everything is a dream and if the automations are stronger and more stable that SmartThings just another win.
I've shared a few over time on the channel and a few in the comments below. We'll see how it plays out and I'll share a full set when I'm ready. Most things are good of course :)
@@AutomateYourLife since you replied to every comment, which is a good thing, I'm having a hard time finding a single comment you made addressing my question. I'm genuinely interested in your opinion, but I am also not going to spend an hour scrolling through comments or watch all your old videos just to find an answer for my question. I'm sure you can relate ♥
I think the question is which platform will be the first to let you 'do it all'? Control4? Home Assistant? Homey? Homekit? Alexa? Google? All close but not quite doing it like the USS Enterprise ship's computer. So we are stuck with a mishmash.
I’ve been noticing irregularities on smartthings but thought it just me originally as,up to that point my smartthings and Alexa combo seemed ok for what I currently have. I have been thinking about expanding my smart home and may try Hubitat as an alternative as I don’t have time for HA. Don’t get me wrong , I think the idea and autonomy of HA is great but unfortunately it’ll take more time than I can juggle. I’m not sure about HomeyPro, mainly the huge expense but I feel as they will, after a few good years and every penny you have, will tie you in somehow. Definitely not going to jump ship with the channel though as I always use yours as my main “go to” channel each week. Looking forward to seeing what your journey can highlight for us all mate.
This is exactly what i'm planning to do, as I'm not as happy with my smartthings, as I was a year ago. I just moved a couple of months ago and did a total reboot and even though I now know a lot more than 2 years ago when i started my smarthome adventure, it's now much Haarder to make it work right and be consistent and easy to pair new (or even old trust devices) and linking hubs (Hue for exampel) to use cross platforms, but I have to use a hue outdoor sensor inside, to tigger my Philips Hue, as I can't get my Hue or ST plugs in Hue to work from smartthings as I used to 🤔 So im thinking of buying myself a Homey pro and a couple of Homey bridges to use as satelites, so everything is going to be optimal from the start, but I can't wait to see what your experience os going to be and how you do it, as you seem to be very in depth with the stuff, but still keeping it very simple to both understand, but also not just buy everything from the top shelf, but mingle to make stuff work how we all would like it to do. I do have a Samsung Galaxy phone headbuds and tv, so I think i might stil be using my ST hub for automations or maybe even buy the new ST station for triggering scenes when charging my phone etc., if Homey can't do those things by itself, with ordinary wireless chargers and a smart plug perhaps :) Keep up the good work Brian! Best Regards here from Denmark.
You gave me something to look into here. Can I use Homey Bridges as satelites for the network? Very interesting! Anyways, thank you and I'm looking forward to our next steps together. :)
I bought a Smartthings Station over Thanksgiving on sale and could not get a single Matter outlet to connect. I already have them paired and connected with my Echo Dot over Matter and used that setup code it generated, didn’t work. Factory reset the device multiple times, it forced me to connect to HomeKit, didn’t work. It finally connected over Matter after multiple factory resets, the Samsung app says it’s disconnected. I returned it and I think I’m going to get a HomePod mini instead.
I left SmartThings when they bricked my V1 controller. Mostly due to the idea that they were eliminating the old IDE and pushing you to a new Samsung IDE which at the time had zero documentation and also certain features were limited to Samsung partners only. I moved to hubtitat which has a lot of nice features, but the dashboard was not one of them. I now have a hybrid where my Hubitat handles the Zigbee and Zwave, my Amazon Echo interface, and some of the more basic automations including modes. I then have Hubitat integrated into a home assistant instance. I primarily use it for my dashboard(100x better than anything Hubitat or SmartThings ever thought of), my smartphone presence detection, and my more complicated automations. When evaluating Home Assistant, I would check out Node Red. It’s essentially the flows you were describing. In fact it looks like the flows in homey are a polished version of Node Red.
Aqara M2 and Home Assistant (I use Yellow) are where I'm sticking. Easy quick configs in Aqara and they have devices for most any kind of control situation although I use Lutron switches & plugs because they're just solid and I don't worry about burning my house down. HA is great for doing almost anything with almost any device but it is more complicated. It's never let me down once I got something connected and running. You can simplify it by doing almost everything on Aqara and only using HA for the devices that Aqara doesn't have/support but that's getting to be a very small set of things - their offerings keep growing every month.
I have a bunch of Smartthings door sensors and buttons. I bought a Hubitat hub. Will I be able to remove my Smartthings sensors from my Smartthings hub and connect them to my Hubitat hub, or am I going to need to replace all my sensors too?
I currently have SmartThings integrated into HomeAssistant which I think says it all. My home automation platform was in the state of "if it aint broke, don't fix it" but then ST upgraded to edge and my simple automations stopped working correctly (motion sensor turn on light). Only thing left to buy to finish my transition to HomeAssistant (already had the pi) is getting a zwave stick.
@@AutomateYourLife Yep, Inoveli and Home Assistant have lists of compatible sticks. Was leaning towards the Zooz 800 one but I wish that I was able to wait it out for the first party home assistant zwave stick similar to the skyconnect one for zigbee/matter.
I'm considering leaving SmartThings to go to home assistant. It's a lot more complex, but I am running into issues with SmartThings like Govee or Wyse for example missing from the list, more local routines are needed as well.
I'm moving into a 20 year old home soon and plan on doing a complete smarthome from the ground up. I've done SmartThings in my new home for the last 5 years and am so done with ST. I like a possible hybrid approach (smart hub (HA or Homey) and Google). If you didn't have any legacy constraints and were also moving into a 20 year old home (may not have neutral wires), what would you recommend for the smart hub (HA? or Homey?), still use Google for front-end/dashboard? and what about light switches (Lutron?), thermostat, cameras, etc? Appreciate y'alls input.
Google assistant/nest seems to have got rid of mode control too - screwed all my light routines. Now having to set scenes in smart life to reset into correct mode.
I have been thinking of ditching smartthings as well. The unreliable automations are a real annoyance.. I have home/away routines that quit working reliably. Sometimes the system switches to armed/away sometimes it doesn't and I can't get the home routine to run properly at all. Logitech integration is also gone, which was very disappointing.
Ever since I bought the Samsung SmartThings hub, I knew something was wrong. So I did not even use it at all. First of all, the integration was tedious. So I resort to using various hubs that control my vast devices around my house. I know it's kinda silly not to integrate all the devices into a single hub but I think there's a silver lining in that. For one thing, if there's a failure in a device I can isolate where it lies and I can rectify it directly. For example, I have Ikea Tradfri hub to control all of the Ikea smart devices, Vera Edge hub to control my Z-wave devices and Broadlink to control my RF and IR devices. So if one device were to fail, I could troubleshoot that particular area. But all of them will still be controlled via Alexa. So the bottom line is, SmartThings is not so smart after all. And that's the irony of it. My conclusion here is that Samsung may be a great company for many devices like TVs, watches and phones. But when it comes to home automation I'm afraid it's not their strongest point.
I'm just glad I made the switch when I did (2019 or so). It seems nothing has changed. When smartthings was it's own company, it rocked. As soon as Samsung bought it, it started going downhill. I switched when the new app came out, and so so so many promises with that transition were broken. Tough to see it it is still a problem. Home Assistant was the right call for me, and I've had SOLID reliability for years. Best part is I run it as a VM on my server, so I didn't have to buy anything except a Nortek USB combo ZW/ZB dongle and usb extension.
Partly in response to this video, I went through my SmartThings setup. I too had a lot of frustrations, particularly with devices disconnecting spontaneously. But you know what? A lot of the problems I had are gone now. I'm sticking with it.
I am just getting into home automation. I automate every day at my job using Power Automate and was overwhelmed with home automation. I am going with the Homey Pro as the advanced flows are the best apples to apples for my brain. I realize they don't have all the devices for North America yet, but hoping to be a 'semi late to the party early adopter'. Glad I'm starting now and don't have years of legacy equipment! Would definitely appreciate more Homey content!
I'd love to see remake of your smart home. You'll get a lot of good advices on how to do certain automatization better or be more efficient. Your community will support you on this journey :)
I am completely with you Brian. Smartthings has been my main hub ever since starting smart home. But there are so many things that stop working! I would expect that in Home Assistant, but not smartthings. I've tried to get Samsung to play nice with matter products and it just hangs like you showed in your video. My problem is that I COMPLETELY RELY ON MODES and I don't know what platform I can switch to that has the same thing. I don't have the time for home assistant. Are you able to help?
And you're right, you'd expect things to break on a system made by a ton of different developers...but nope, it's the system that's owned by one company and one set of devs.
I'm on the brink too. I have had the Smamsung ST from day 1. Out of no where, things stop working and its almost impossible to troubleshoot. So dang frustrating. I am not sure where to turn. I have many Iris motion sensors and door sensor, a few ST mention sensors, MyQ garage and front door. Tons of Phillips Hue lights. Very few things work at this point. I am not sure what to do. Auuggghh..
Sorry Monte! It's a rough go. The good news is you're likely to be able to use that stuff in another system if you move. Hue and most of the ST sensors should be just fine. MyQ's a bit of a crap shoot and Iris can be too...but you should be OK with minor costs to move if you decide to.
I only had ST to monitor door and motion sensors. The battery life of the sensors was really odd, with new batteries showing at 1% charge within days, then working for months more. When a firmware update killed my hub they replaced it, and I disabled firmware updates.
I think smartthings is crap, I used to use samsung A/V cams to see footage outside, my garage, and around the side of my house. Within 8 months or so, the plastic became yellow, they would go offline intermittantly, and a "upgrade" blocked externally viewing footage on my Blue Iris recorder. They provided no help at all, other than suggesting I buy yet another samsung camera. I'm glad I dont own any smart thing products anymore. Smart Things has really gone downhill.
I’ve also moved on from SmartThings with the last devices migrated to Home Assistant 2 days ago. I’ve disconnected it after 6 years of use. I had the same issues as you. I’m looking forward to moving past these issues!
im just dabling with smart home stuff, really just basic things like lights and tv control for now, But my god what a mess the whole thing is, already with just a few lights and switches im having to use 3 different apps which do not work properly together for every device, alexa wont pass on control of a matter bulb to any other app, alexa wont use the status of any switches passed to it from other apps as a trigger for routines, smarthings isnt showing status of switches from smart life devices nor can it control said switch state, just has the ability to toggle it. honestly the whole thing is just ridiculous, I have done a lot of programming in my time and could cry at the complexity needed to do the simplest things which a few lines of code would do in no time, Add to that the reliablilty of operation is hit and miss too and its just a totally frustrating mess, my family hate it all and just want physical switches so I also have to add those into the equation lol. Having said that I am actually enjoying the challenge and the results can be cool, but for average user it is not good at all.
I have issues with SmartThings as well. Would be good to move to another system…. But.. I would like to use the sensors I have. Would be good to know what you suggest.
What about Tuya? I use it in the garage and my garden house. It works perfectly, and there are many different products available. I use SmartThings in the rest of the house, but I’m thinking of switching everything to Tuya.
Why wouldn’t it be great if one or two of these other hubs had an integration tool, so you could just plop all of your devices and automations directly into the new system?
I use smarthings also but its becoming more and more difficult to keep track of things, and the worse part is the duplicate i have duplicates of many switches and one that i cant figure out is when i log into the webportal for smarthings its all in italian no idea why .
@@AutomateYourLife its weird. It says its on, connected to the network, but not connected to samsung cloud ! And at the same time it stills reports all activities !!!! Well hopefullg the young woman taking care of our cats did an unplug replug and now its back.
I think that's a different layer of automation. :) Those are simplistic automations that don't allow us a lot of actual automating. That's all. Nothing wrong with HomeKit, just when stacked up to these hubs it's not the same.
Brian, you hit the nail on the head exactly and pretty much summed up exactly what I've been thinking since Homey Pro was announced in the United States. I've been frustrated with the lack of forward movement with SmartThings but honestly been uninterested in spending the rest of my life locally coding and sourcing the internet for solutions. Homey Pro seems to scratch the itch of somebody who's decided to grow up with SmartThings user interfaces and solutions without being held back by the SmartThings platform itself. I am 100% interested in the future content and might end up doing the same exact thing depending on your experiences in the next 2 to 3 months.
Im all for learning about restarting. I started with google, expanded to smartthings, and got invested in their webcore system. But since then samsung bailed on hardware which seemed to trigger other failures and as you put it broken promises. Aqara has been the system i have been considering but i have been unwilling to commit to making a change at this point. I look forward to you helping me figure out what could be my new automation system, and which voice assistant works best with the new ecosystem.
Thanks Brian! I having been contemplating the exact transition that you are describing. I am trying to determine the best alternative for my situation before jumping the ship that Samsung seems bound and determined to sink. Looking forward to hearing about your experience.
I hear you. Few things have been broken (Presence on android, automations, etc), but before I give up, I am going to give them a chance to finish the full transition and execute at least majority of their vision. I can understand and appreciate that projects like this can be difficult and for sure it seemed half arsed, but their overhaul project was not simple and I prefer them taking us along rather than burning it all down and starting from scratch which they could have. My perception is that all of the platforms are still too tinkerey and it will take an apple, samsung or google to nail it down. PS I miss groovey, but running apps on their cloud was doomed from the start once too many users joined in. I did get a raspberry pi as a contingency if I am to move as well, but I'll wait a bit longer. I don't blame you at all. Communication by Samsung has been weak. Looking forward to seeing the next videos.
I have been dreading the move… it’s been 10mo since this video but I’m going to have to commit to the change. Hopefully you’ve made good migration step by step, cause I have a lot of devices and years with mine built SmartThings wifi… smart lighting is locking me out. Nothing works well locally if I lose internet. I need to move. Now to look through and choose Homey or HA… I don’t like change, but so disapointed with ST
Yeah, you're the second person to ask that. I'll think about how I want to address those. You can find some of the basics in the other comments on this video though :)
Same here with being frustrated with smartthings lately. Lots of devices just not connecting no more and the duplicate issues. The only reason I went with smartthings was that I came from Wink. I have setup home automations and smart devices for my parents. They loved winks app simplicity and that’s why went to smartthings as it seemed more user friendly for my parents, but that wasn’t the case. My request Brian is when you do your hub comparison is you take into consideration the user knowledge. Like for example this hub is good for smart home enthusiasts and this hub is good for ppl who don’t have as much experience like my parents. Now on a separate topic, have you tinkered with the ring home alarm system integrations. I have been helping a friend integrate his door lock to the system but it’s not working. I’m guessing maybe it’s might be US only and as we are in canada it might not be supported. I hate it when companies region lock their features. Thanks again for all the vids. Good luck on your smart home hub journey.
I'll make sure I compare effort/knowledge levels as we do our work! That's a huge focus of mine personally, so you should be good there. As for Ring, I've had some luck in a couple systems...but it depends what you're trying to integrate, and what with?
Thanks so much. I remember when switching from wink to another system. I was looking between smartthings and hubitat. The only reason I went with smartthings was it was much easier for my parents to navigate. If it was just me I would have gone with hubitat as I like the whole thinkering and the granular control, but it would have been a field day to explain to my parents if something did go wrong and have to troubleshoot with them. Thanks for looking in that direction. About the ring. It’s the ring security system I’m talking about. Amazon canada had them on sale a couple of weeks back. A friend of mine bought one and we set it up. The only issue we were running into was his weiser zwave smart code home connect door lock integration. Even though their description said it’s possible. I later found out it’s U.S.A. only. It would have been great if it did as he doesn’t have any hubs that have zwave. I hope ring opens up this soon rather than region lock it.
Yes, your future vids on HomeyPro will get my attention. Very interested in how it will work with "old z-wave" Is there a generic z-wave option that will allow it to pair with older devices?
Interesting topic. I am intriqued about Homey. But when I went to look at it I couldn’t tell if it supported the two technologies that I use most in my smart home: Insteon and Wyze. Do you have any ideas? Thanks for the great videos
I too am looking at domping SmartThings because I have many light switches in my home that use SmartThings, however when I enabled the Alexa skill, my light s work for about a day and then get disabled. Not sure if this is a SmartThings issue or an Alexa issue. Converting all my switches to Kassa Wi-Fi switches seems like a good choice for me as I can do away with hubs
Respect for sharing this. I personally like the platform, but my word, it has been a pain to move to Edge. I dare not purchase any product that's not proven within the smartthings community. Trouble is Samsung don't have a decent revenue stream of smartthings so why would they bother. I'm praying that they don't give up as I've spent thousands over the years on my and other's properties to give them a full smart security system... 😬
HOMEY PRO, BABY!!! I absolutely love this hub and we're integrating it more and more into our channel as well. They are the first hub that seems to actually care about the user experience, which is so refreshing. If they can convince people to spend $400 on a hub, the world is their oyster (whatever that means). Home assistant shall remain king for tinkerers and total connectivity. Everyone else is just falling behind.
ahahahah Homey PROOOOOOOOOO
Are you in the EU? or USA?
Oiii over priced 😂
Man, I've been thinking about some of these issues recently, and this video is very timely and really hits home with me. I'm also taking some time to weigh my options right now. I would really like to see this smart home rebuilding series idea you floated.
I'm glad it's timed well for you. I hope I can help too!
Interesting video and I’m glad to hear it’s not just me having problems with it! I’ve spent years building up my setup, making sure every device I bought would work with ST, then last year they just completely flattened the whole setup. I’ve only just now got the motivation to essentially start again and re-add the vast majority of my devices - some of which aren’t even supported anymore!
The issues with the Hue integration are driving me mad as well. They won’t update status at all meaning that half my automations don’t work properly. Also don’t even get me started on trying to use action tiles without virtual switches!!!
I think I might make the switch to home assistant…
It's not just you. I experienced a lot of what you said
Looking forward to seeing a deep dive into Homey Pro and head to head comparison with Hubitat. Currently running Smartthings, Hubitat with Alexa voice control. My new Homey Pro arrives today! Definitely want to maintain local control. Keep up the good work Brian!
Wow! You're doing lots!
@@AutomateYourLife I have Homey Pro and switching to Hubitat. Homey Pro is a big disappointment for me.
@@sedivyvlkodlakI'll be very interested to hear your impressions, since you're the first person i know going in that direction.
FINALLY Brian! It took awhile but you finally saw the light. You concentrated so much on Smartthings you were blinded to their direction and more notably the direction of other smart home platforms. I personally love Habitat. I find their community one of the best. They have so many programmers join the community AND lend a helping hand to ANYONE. I don't tunnel my views and keep an open mind and I'm glad you too have done the same. I feel this will make your channel much more appealing to everyone no matter what platform we use. All the best in the New Year.
Yep! Sometimes it takes me a while. I really like to give people/platforms a chance to come around to the potential they have. It's probably an Achilles' Heel, honestly. :)
That's ok, we'll go forward and I'm glad you're interested!
Wow Brian is on a terror. I’m here for it, for years Samsung was able to do whatever they wanted because of their name. Take the edge driver migration, this was a 3 + years process. Promises made were never kept. Way to go Brian 💥💥💥
Thanks Eddie! 3+ year migration and those promises you mentioned are disastrous.
First time I’ve seen you and you channel and I’m impressed by your honesty. I have some smart plugs and echo devices so that I can light my way in the morning and make sure everything automated is off when I’m ready to sleep but that works out to about 6 strategic lights and my TV. What i don’t like about smart homes and actually believe is really dumb - is the use of them to create routines where certain lights come on and off at certain hours or your system wakes you with the news or something at the same time every day. It all feels very “Stepford” to me and like I’m now allowing the “smart” tech to control when and what - possibly even how I do things. I don’t live my life “exactly” the same way every day and I’m not giving up manual control of my decision making process to automation just because I can or it’s “cool” that tech can automate lights on or off, up or down, music or news etc. when my “routine” shuts off all the lights and music in my home at 9 because that’s my programmed routine and I have a house full of party guests and can’t find where I left my phone to fix that - its a problem. One I created when I dumbly decided to automate my life and let tech tell me what to do and when to do it. I’m not saying it’s all bad - but it’s a very long way from being all good. 🤷♂️
Thanks so much Michael! Personally, I love a good scheduled Stepford type of automation, but you really have to think those through!
You just have to be more creative with how/when your automation is triggered. Easy option would be to simply use manual triggers for your automation.
For example, I have a bed sensor which can tell if I'm in bed or not. I run an automation that if I'm in bed for longer than X amount of time, shut off all lights and lock the front door as it's assumed I'm either going to sleep for the night or taking a nap.
Amen to everything you’ve said. I’ve spent endless hours developing a ST home and the unreliability and unmet promises has me looking to switch soon.
Sad, sorry Kevin.
Home assistant is all you need. I finally got mine setup for years I’ve been avoiding it but I’m so impressed
I'm so happy to hear that! I can't wait to truly test it out and go a bit deeper. :)
I have smartthings for years no issues so not understand wifi you are about
really.. I have Home Assistant, and I can't get Smartthings Vision to work in Home Assistant without Samsung Smartthuings Hub.. do you know how to do that? ( I want to dump that Smartthings Hub, it is seriously useless..)
@@johnp.2276 I've had SmartThings for about a year now. I agree with you. See my recently posted comment above.
I agree completely with your assessment of Samsung. Apparently I'm not as patient as you because I dropped SmartThings a couple of years ago because of devices suddenly disappearing, automations just stopping working and other issues that you mentioned. The final straw for me was when I contacted "Support". No response at all for a month and then what I got was clearly boiler plate with only a peripheral relationship to the problem I was having. After three back and forths with "Support" (which took four months!) I just said to Hell with it and got rid of SmartThings. It simply was not worth the hassle. Unfortunately one of the things I got to go with Samsung automations was a TV. I've about decided to junk it too because it has "quirks" that sometimes, not always, cause Routines to just not work and then mysteriously start working again.
Really looking forward to seeing what course you take in re-automating your home.
Thanks! And this is not the first time I heard that SmartThings support was like this. Sorry for your experience!
To be honest every platform has disappearing smart home products, at least one a month I have to fix one of my 50+ automations for no known reason... smart homes are still for geeks only as the average person could not possibly manage one!
And you're always right I hear!
@@AutomateYourLife so true,.. so true so true....
Switched to Home Assistant and haven’t looked back. Very stable and they are always adding new features.
Glad you're happy!
For me it's always been about the broken promises and missed dates. I just wish they would come even close to delivering what they have promised. Great content as always, I'm really looking forward to watching your journey!
Right? Just come close to the Sept 2022 date you said.
Brian, thanks so much for the honest video. I have many of the same problems you describe. Especially the frequent self-disabling of routines drives me crazy. I don't know how often I have changed batteries of Zigbee devices that stopped working, only to find out that the real problem was a disabled routine. There is simply no excuse for that! Devices "falling off" the network for no comprehensible reason is another thing I constantly fight. These are local Zigbee devices, and they just go offline anyway. I would like to switch over to Home Assistant, but I am afraid this takes too much time to set up. I sure am a nerd that wouldn't have problems with it, but I also have a full-time job and a family (both of which the typical HA freak apparently doesn't have, so he can invest all of his time on HA...).
We will find a great way to do these things...that hopefully doesn't take a year to do. Family first!
Absolutely interested in a series on rebuilding your smart home. As someone who has been heavily invested in the Google Ecosystem since it's inception, I would love to see what Google products you still have that you are able to incorporate into these other platforms, especially Homey.
That's one of the big questions I have. Alexa's been great so far!
I did it. I dumped Google last yr! I had enough of the Nest integration failures. The lethal combo of Google Home and Google Assistant made it a deep hole of confusion at times. I was experiences camera failures on all my Nest Hub Max units in both homes. Last time I checked it’s been over 2 yrs since Google announced they were aware of the issue but no solutions are refunds and their costly subscriptions!
That was the last straw. I waited for sales in Alexa products, and I will NEVER GO BACK! I think I have had 1 wtf moment and it was quickly resolved. Multiple screens, speakers etc. All my lights, outlets, and bulbs operate with zero issues.
I do want to completely get of the cloud however. This will be something that may very well require an entire overhaul again! But I will never go back to Google. They had it all, and threw it all away. I recently discovered Alexa app for IOS was updated and it was a pleasant surprise.
After watching many UA-cam home automation reviewers, I purchased the Aeotec/SmartThings system. Shortly after my purchase, I was surprised by this ditching video. Even so, I kept and continued with my system setup. Honestly, it works great! It's nice to know that I can integrate it into Home Assistant - if I ever decide to go in that direction. I like that Aeotec/SmartThings easily works with my Wifi, ZWave, and Zigbee products. Like many of your followers, my home is no longer a simple automation and it is extended on a regular basis. Regardless of the ditching video, I still watch your channel. I'm hoping that Aeotec does a better job than SamSung and that you could review this system and compatible products in the near future.
As long as you're happy! I just had to be clear with my experiences.
Great stuff Brian. I had the exact problems you were describing with smart things. Most notably the broken promises (and the impact this was having on the community!). A lot was promised from the switch to edge drivers but it just created more problems and delays- eventually I took the plunge with home assistant and am incredibly happy with my smart home now.
Sad story there. Should have been simple.
I quit SmartThings too, running Hubitat now and love it.
Glad you're happy!
I'm interested to see where you land. I'm still doing ok with SmartThings, but can see what you're talking about. My biggest fear/peeve is that I started on Wink, and I don't want to have to keep hopping from platform to platform, which kind of hurts Smart Homes in general. If you can't stay on one platform and have to redo your home periodically because of it, what good is a smart home?
It's no good. You're 100% right.
I don't blame you Brian! As a long term android user, but currently not a Samsung phone user (but I was previously), I was disappointed that Samsung Smart tags were not available and that some of their newer Samsung devices required users to have a Galaxy phone to unlock all their features. I'm still on my V2 hub and I was hopeful that a new version (v4?) might someday fix my Phillips problems, resetting dropped Z-Wave devices problem and double Smarthings/Google device issues.
As you are to us, many of your followers are the "techy friends" that others look for our advice on smart homes or other techy things etc.
As per our previous conversations, I've never been an iPhone/Mac fan boy, because of their "locked in" Eco system strategy. I'm seeing Samsung going down that same hole. I'll be looking carefully on buying future Samsung devices in general.
I'll be following your progress, with an eye to moving myself to a new platform in the future. Thanks for your bravery in posting this video!
Thanks so much! It did take a bit of bravery to do this...a little scary honestly!
You and the Channel took me from zero to Automated Hero and while I have managed to develop workarounds for the current state - I am with you on your Journey to Homey Pro. I will hold off a bit before converting but am looking forward to the videos you share.
We'll go to superhero together Heinrich!
Just bought a Homey Pro and converting my Smartthings automations over. Would love to have you deep dive into Homey Pro! It’s amazing so far
I'm working on the beginner's guide, but yeah...we are gonna go deep!
Contemplating doing this change to Homey (from Samsung) while trying to circumvent some issues using IFTTT. Would love to hear your progress along the way. Thank you
Well this is a surprise, Brian!
I have indeed noticed some mysteriously disappearing automations in recent months (I thought it might have been due to all sorts of Matter-related software updates) and I do mostly use Smartthings for some (mostly WiFi) devices while using Hubitat for others (mostly Zigbee devices). (I have no Z-wave devices.)
I've been busy with two major home renovations this year (NOT relating to my smart home) but will be going back in the new year to managing my automations (including those in my new kitchen and backyard deck).
I generally like my Samsumg galaxy phone and have a few other Samsung products in the house, so I'm not planning to ditch Smartthings just yet.
My household is also what seems to be in the small minority that makes no use at all of smart speakers ("No spies in the house!", my wife insists...).
All of our automations and interfaces are done using a screen (on phones, tablets, computers) with room-by-room controls.
Most of my automations, etc. use SharpTools (and their Rules Engine that mostly works well for me). They currently integrate Smartthings, Hubitat and Home Assistant, I believe, so if - in the end - I do need to move my old WiFi and new Matter-over-thread devices to an alternative platform, it's likely to be HA.
But do keep us informed about Homey Pro (and any potential alternatives by way of more or less "one stop" interfaces that can help span multiple hubs while we wait and see if the promises of Matter ever get realized). I'm especially keen to see if I'll be able to incorporate all my new Govee products (and also my new TP-Link Kasa/Tapo Matter devices) into a single interface.
Very interesting David! You have this interesting mixed bag of stuff, but it sounds like you're bringing it together pretty well. Advanced stuff and I'm glad to hear you're going to be automating much more this year!
No spies in the house...ya I have heard that! You should tell her about those phones. On second thought...maybe don't! 😂
Excellent. I agree with you 100%. I would love to dump Smartthings for all the reasons you say plus a few more. I think they have NO IDEA what a terrible customer experience we have. Its like living with pre beta solutions. The unreliability is terrible and the customer support has deteriorated dramatically. I will watch your transition with interest as I cant wait to dump Smartthings in the trash. Samsung have treated their customers terribly the last 2 years and they don't deserve our loyalty. Gradually migrating a live customer base who had paid for and set up a stable smarthome was a decision which showed utter contempt for their customer base. Withdrawal of features, random device disconnections, buggy software and no viable presence sensing make Smartthings unusable now. I cant wait for this next series from you Brian.
Thanks Stuart! I hope we find a good solution for you.
Wow, Brian, you really did that? You've been a long-time proponent of SmartThings. I dumped 'em two years ago and never looked back. Now...about Homey Pro...a $400 hub??? Really??? Seriously??? If it was Apriil 1st I'd understand, but as I've said before I'd like to see one single automation that would be important to more than a handful of people that can't be done other ways with more universal platforms. I don't buy platforms to make my poor device choices (I've done a bunch of them) seem workable. I try to buy proven devices that already work with everything...like Lutron and Aqara for example. I really liked this video!!!
Yep... really did that. Obviously it's too much to deal with and get a reliable smart home, so yeahhhhh
Time to try some drastic things. $400 hubs, total DIY, white glove pro setups. We have to find the best for real.
Started with smartthings, even though a non tec , could do many things watching your videos. Even virtual switches. Have ended up with hod podge lately, not using smartthings as much. Lost me with transition to edge and got to be too confusing to find solutions like before…….use alexa for some automations when smartthings got too weird . Use yolink for some things. Needed distance and only one that work for my freezer and outdoor stuff. They have been super . Just got a couple of aqara and transitioning to some matter. Had google smart displays from beginning. Need to consolidate i guess but nothing perfect. Homey too expensive but look forward to info on aqara and hubitat to help make a streamline decision.
My experience with SmartThings has been mixed. My set up is pretty simple, mostly plug-in switches, I have about 60 devices connected. My constant, never-ending battle is with water sensors/leak detectors. I can't find a single one that's reliable. A big advantage with SmartThings as a very active user group. I can ask a question and I get multiple good answers within 30 minutes. Shocking that Homey Pro requires an adapter/dongle to have an ethernet connection. I can't believe they didn't build that important feature right into the hub. I enjoyed your video. When I see all the things you're automating, and all the difficulties you're experiencing one has to wonder if home automation is worth it AT ALL.
And that's where you have to right-size it for yourself! Enjoy!
@@AutomateYourLife Well, like you, I enjoy this type of stuff. I'm a little frustrated right now. I've spent the last four days trying to get a. Aeotec - Flood Water Sensor 7 Pro to work properly. My current one is stuck on "wet". At least Aeotec does wright drivers for SmartThings. Unlike Fibaro, that says they will not write a driver for SmartThings. I have their leak detectors, they have a nice design and work reliably. But every time I would change the battery, it was a brand new day, having to start over pairing them. The Aeotec leak sensors have a QR code. This QR code doesn't help much. I've set up Wi-Fi cameras that have QR codes. I do it in 30 seconds with my iPhone.
I'd like to see some videos on the Homey Pro. Having a hub where all my smart home actions would be performed locally is kind of a grail for me. Speed, reliability, access during outages -- it would be worth the $400 if it can be set up reliably and with a minimum of fuss.
That's my feeling about it too. If it can ACTUALLY do it...it'd be worth it.
Agreed. Homey Pro looks pretty awesome, but I think any home automation needs to strike that perfect balance between techies and every day users who don't want to delve into the why's and how's and just want things to work. I tend to categorize people into 2 groups, Apl users and Andr. users. Bringing both together seamlessly in a hub would be the grail to me...I suspect AI voice integration / coding devices within a hub is the likely end result that might accomplish it.
When will you be making your follow up video? I'm very interested in making my own monitored smart security system.
Which specific follow-up video? I've made one about Homey and we're starting coverage on a few other systems. :) What are you wondering specifically?
Love the direction you are taking! Can't wait to see more on Homey Pro. Reminds me of something called Stringify several years ago. It was awesome.
Stringify was amaaaaaaaaazing!
@@AutomateYourLife you'll love node red on HA then. It's almost identical to how the homey pro clips you showed work.
I like your videos and I am a recovering home automation geek 🙂. I have had ST for a while now and had Homeseer and Hubitat. Was wondering why you chose to review the ones that you did and not include Homeseer? The only reason we went away from it was the time and frustration of my better half, that I think most people who do home automation may have some experience with. That being said, I thought ST would be an easier more stable platform, turns out, not so much. I am about to move everything into Amazon and call it done, since most of my kit is so old I will have to start over anyway.
Homeseer's fine, but it's a bit closed off for me. They just don't seem to have a lot of momentum in terms of growth. Again, nothing wrong with that but I have to choose!
Hey Brian, great video. I left smartthings back in January because of a lot of the same issues you mentioned. The mishandling of the Edge driver program was a huge turn off for me. Also taking away the IDE, and the lack of functionality of the Windows app/ browser. Even going back to the classic app vs the "new" app, the classic app was better in my opinion. You had the best Smartthings tutorials and news. Speaking of news, it makes sense to hear you say it was lacking. There seemed to be no voice from Samsung ever giving any news on new features or anything. I made the switch to Home Assistant and it's been great. Way more options to tinker and ways to troubleshoot if an automation isn't working. I wouldn't be concerned about the time commitment. The GUI of Home Assistant has gotten really good and you'll be able to do everything that smartthings can do within the HA GUI. Also a great thing about HA is that if your smart home gets too big for your HA Green you can easily move your configure to more capable hardware. Best of luck to you and your channel. I think your upcoming content will have more viewers because it won't be smartthings focused 😀
Thanks so much for the message. It helps to hear people say that the content felt a little off. You don't always know these things from this side of the desk, ya know?
@@AutomateYourLife Hey it wasn't off from your end. It just seemed like there was no news to report but there should have been (if Samsung cared about growing the platform in the same ways it was started). But seems like they really don't so the whole product, even though it has the same name, is really not what it was created as (a hub to pull in all of your devices from different manufacturers). Things change 😉. Smartthings was great (for me) from like 2015-2020, then it wasn't and naturally there were other products there to take Smartthings' spot. For me, I thought I was going to switch to Hubitat, but in the end ended up dipping my toe in the Home Assistant water (with a very small Raspberry Pi investment) and was able to figure it out. If I didn't like Home Assistant I would have gone to Hubitat but the way you can ease into Home Assistant is nice. For about a year I still used my Smartthings hub as an input to Home Assistant, which kept me from having to buy Zwave and Zigbee dongles. There was really no commitment to Home Assistant while in this phase because all my devices (wifi/Zwave/Zigbee) were still attached to Smartthings while being able to be controlled through Home Assistant. I think that is a major plus for people thinking about moving from Smartthings to something else.
I can't use the humidity sensor on my aircon to trigger an automation. The Samsung aircon measures humidity, and displays it on my SmartThings hone screen but that's as far as it goes. I've tried contacting them, but the feedback is tedeous and a generic process which doesn't allow you te get in contact with a human to analyse what you're experiencing and add it to the Dev team's backlog. I'm also looking at moving away from the SmartThings WiFi as the WiFi performance is dated and need to redo my entire setup. Been quite an issue trying to figure out what combination of hub/s and WiFi aps are the best options to go for.
You touched on a big thing there...WiFi and hub combos
You have been my Jedi master on this journey. I started with Amazon, you taught me to to branch out and truly showed me that smart homes are more than just cool features, it can actually save you time. I went headfirst into SmartThings. Over the last year, too many incompatible devices, issues with drivers, and all the broken promises you mentioned, I made the move to Home Assistant. I even emailed you about it and you responded to me in one of your viewer question emails!! I felt like I was cheating on you leaving SmartThings. lol. But your last two videos have shown me that you are feeling the same frustrations I am with Samsung and the smarthome industry as a whole. I love your honesty and the way you talk to us. It’s like we share your channel with you. You’re always keeping us in mind, and we appreciate it. I have a feeling I’m gonna be tempted to move to Homey after a few of your videos, but after two hub switches in one year, and lots of money, I should wait a while before I start fresh with a new system. You’re the best
Thank you so much Jay!
I'm glad you tried it! I hope it's working out well and just gets better for you. Maybe next time I'll email you for some help 😃
I ditched smart things about 4 years ago and have been using Home Assistant ever since. I don't have any issues like I had with the Smartthings platform. Well, the only issue I had with HA was to keep my HA certificates up to date so I can access it remotely. But now you can use Cloud Flare to manage this with no user interaction. That was a game changer. I didn't want a paid subscription for something that I could setup and manage myself. I rarely have to reboot or restart HA. Yes you have to update it but I think that can be done automatically. I have it running on a Proxmox VM (Full HA OS) and have a USB extender hub in the middle of my house for my zwave devices. Automations run as expected. I know my setup isn't for everyone but I feel that HA has came a long way over the past 4 years of using it. Looking forward to seeing what platform you decide to go with.
So glad you're happy Ed!
I don't blame you for leaving Smartthings. After being a loyal user for years, I had to do the same earlier this year after virtually all of my devices disappeared from the App. And the solution from Samsung Support was to reconnect/re-add them all. So I bit the bullet and reconnected them all to Home Assistant. Don't worry, your loyal subscribers and members will not abandon you. Keep up the great work and I'd be especially interested in your HA content!! Merry Christmas to you and your family!!
Brutal. Just BRUTAL.
I've just recently started using the SmartThings ecosystem with my everyday devices. That is until the Aqara M3 hub launches. I bought an Aqara window/door sensor and realized that it doesn't connect to the Aqara M2 hub. It uses Matter. I tried using the Home Assistant Matter integration and the sensor kept going offline. I turned to my Samsung SmartThings Station I had lying around and attached the sensor through matter with it and added the hub into Home Assistant. It's been working flawlessly ever since. I'm in the US, so maybe that's why it's working well for me?
There shouldn't be a big difference, but I'm glad yours is behaving well at the moment!
Sigh, this is so frustrating. I mean, I get it, I really do. You have to do what's best for you, and Smartthings has been a real mess this year. My smart home is Smartthings and Alexa, the two that all my favorite smart home channels are bailing on. Smart Home Solver talks about very little besides Home Assistant these days, and just posted that he's dumping Alexa too. I'm probably not going to bother with his channel anymore, but that's been coming for some time. He hasn't been relevant to me for a while. Craig's Tech Talk, I usually ignore... and so on. Anyway, I'm glad to hear you're not abandoning us entirely. I'm frustrated too, and Samsung needs to hear this!
I'm sorry Brad! I get it. We will do what we can, and maybe Samsung comes back and lays out all their plans and they're amazing. I'm definitely not saying for you to tear down your smart home. :)
Hey Brian, thanks so much for this video. I have been using SmartThings since 2017. Mostly with good results, but I have had some issues. I was debating on waiting for the new Aeotec with Thread/Matter but now..... not sure what I want to do. I was also considering Home Assistant since I have seen so many UA-camrs talking about it, but I also watched your unboxing video on the Home Assistant green, and not sure if I really want to spend so much time learning it. I liked what you said about Homey, but I just don't think I can fork out $550 for a hub. As a teacher, my funds for smart home tech is limited. I really miss the early days of smart home tech because it was so exciting and looked so promising. Then with the Matter alliance, it was like "yea, these companies are going to help us make this easier" but now, its soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo frustrating. My whole family wants me to dump it all. Which I'm not ready to do.......yet. I'll be interested in your upcoming videos on the hubs. Thanks for being so informative and so transparent about your journey.
We gotta find easier stuff too Buddy. I think that's the key for all of us going forward. It'll be fun to showcase Homey Pro, but I'm not going to ignore the need for simple, effective, inexpensive automation. :)
I am physically disabled and I need technology to enable me to be independent. I am aware that vital devices should not be connected for obvious security. But when it comes to lights, fans, curtains, and other aspects of daily life, I'm extremely disappointed with Samsung and their development team. I'm proud to see your message coming up, Brian. I'm behind you and I'm confident that the best structure will be presented to us soon, hoping that Samsung will still be part of it.
Thanks Alain. We'll get to a great place together.
I have no idea why edge devices often goes offline without being able to reconnect them unless I factory reset my ST station. No issues with devices imported from Hue bridge though
On Hue, that's my issue. That's an integration I used to get some custom features. Hue should be great otherwise. 😃
FYI Brian. I have 2 identical wake up routines, one set up as a Google Home automation and the other as an Alexa rouiine. They are scheduled to run mintues apart. The Alexa routine wins on reliability. The Google automation runs some days and not at all on other. Today it worked after doing so for a day or 2 but not all the actions were performed. I have no hubs, except Hue, other than the alexa hub in my echo device and the one in the Nest Hub gen 2. Both are running Matter and are up to date. So Google clearly has sime reliabiliy issues with their automation.
Google has more reliability issues than Samsung, for sure.
I've been disappointed with my ST since they dropped the Groovie IDE. Ive had to many issues and been contemplating starting from scratch just to see if anything works better or even like it should. Although this would require just as much effort to switch platforms and in some cases much more ie HA. Is the extra effort really going to make that much of a difference in the end. It seems they all have issues of some sort. HA has my attention at the moment, just not sure if the ROI is sufficient enough to make the change.
I agree. The ROI has to be there.
I’m finding that my Google hub is doing the same thing. I have several Leviton switches and plugs that have always worked. Now some of my automations loss connection randomly. They are fine in the Leviton app on my iPhone. Getting frustrated with smart home equipment. 😢
I think Google Home is in a worse place when compared to smart things. We will be having conversations about that platform very soon
Thanks!
Thank YOU sir!
I had never heard of Homey until this video. I look forward to seeing more of what it can do. Having one hub that can work with everything is a dream and if the automations are stronger and more stable that SmartThings just another win.
We'll dream together Ryan.
What are your concerns about the direction of home assistant?
I've shared a few over time on the channel and a few in the comments below. We'll see how it plays out and I'll share a full set when I'm ready. Most things are good of course :)
@@AutomateYourLife since you replied to every comment, which is a good thing, I'm having a hard time finding a single comment you made addressing my question. I'm genuinely interested in your opinion, but I am also not going to spend an hour scrolling through comments or watch all your old videos just to find an answer for my question. I'm sure you can relate ♥
Hi guys, anyone knows if it is possible to integrate Philips hue into aqara hub m2?
It is not. You'll need an aggregator app. Homekit, Alexa, Google
@@AutomateYourLife thanks for the reply. What would you recommend to use if I like to control hue lights and aqara products?
I think the question is which platform will be the first to let you 'do it all'? Control4? Home Assistant? Homey? Homekit? Alexa? Google? All close but not quite doing it like the USS Enterprise ship's computer. So we are stuck with a mishmash.
The ship's computer!
I’ve been noticing irregularities on smartthings but thought it just me originally as,up to that point my smartthings and Alexa combo seemed ok for what I currently have. I have been thinking about expanding my smart home and may try Hubitat as an alternative as I don’t have time for HA. Don’t get me wrong , I think the idea and autonomy of HA is great but unfortunately it’ll take more time than I can juggle. I’m not sure about HomeyPro, mainly the huge expense but I feel as they will, after a few good years and every penny you have, will tie you in somehow. Definitely not going to jump ship with the channel though as I always use yours as my main “go to” channel each week. Looking forward to seeing what your journey can highlight for us all mate.
We do need some kind of guarantee of that future when we switch these platforms. It's hard to think of a way we'll get that... Thanks Rich!
This is exactly what i'm planning to do, as I'm not as happy with my smartthings, as I was a year ago. I just moved a couple of months ago and did a total reboot and even though I now know a lot more than 2 years ago when i started my smarthome adventure, it's now much Haarder to make it work right and be consistent and easy to pair new (or even old trust devices) and linking hubs (Hue for exampel) to use cross platforms, but I have to use a hue outdoor sensor inside, to tigger my Philips Hue, as I can't get my Hue or ST plugs in Hue to work from smartthings as I used to 🤔
So im thinking of buying myself a Homey pro and a couple of Homey bridges to use as satelites, so everything is going to be optimal from the start, but I can't wait to see what your experience os going to be and how you do it, as you seem to be very in depth with the stuff, but still keeping it very simple to both understand, but also not just buy everything from the top shelf, but mingle to make stuff work how we all would like it to do.
I do have a Samsung Galaxy phone headbuds and tv, so I think i might stil be using my ST hub for automations or maybe even buy the new ST station for triggering scenes when charging my phone etc., if Homey can't do those things by itself, with ordinary wireless chargers and a smart plug perhaps :)
Keep up the good work Brian!
Best Regards here from Denmark.
You gave me something to look into here. Can I use Homey Bridges as satelites for the network? Very interesting!
Anyways, thank you and I'm looking forward to our next steps together. :)
I bought a Smartthings Station over Thanksgiving on sale and could not get a single Matter outlet to connect. I already have them paired and connected with my Echo Dot over Matter and used that setup code it generated, didn’t work. Factory reset the device multiple times, it forced me to connect to HomeKit, didn’t work. It finally connected over Matter after multiple factory resets, the Samsung app says it’s disconnected. I returned it and I think I’m going to get a HomePod mini instead.
Ooof, that's a rough one!
I left SmartThings when they bricked my V1 controller. Mostly due to the idea that they were eliminating the old IDE and pushing you to a new Samsung IDE which at the time had zero documentation and also certain features were limited to Samsung partners only. I moved to hubtitat which has a lot of nice features, but the dashboard was not one of them. I now have a hybrid where my Hubitat handles the Zigbee and Zwave, my Amazon Echo interface, and some of the more basic automations including modes. I then have Hubitat integrated into a home assistant instance. I primarily use it for my dashboard(100x better than anything Hubitat or SmartThings ever thought of), my smartphone presence detection, and my more complicated automations.
When evaluating Home Assistant, I would check out Node Red. It’s essentially the flows you were describing. In fact it looks like the flows in homey are a polished version of Node Red.
100% checking out Nod Red :)
Really excited for this as I’m hoping to start my smart home this year and currently thinking of homey pro
Awesome! We'll discover stuff together
Function wise would you say homey pro has everything aeotec has. I am debating between the two
Yeah it's pretty close. I have a comparison video on the channel so just search on our page for Homey and you'll find it
Aqara M2 and Home Assistant (I use Yellow) are where I'm sticking. Easy quick configs in Aqara and they have devices for most any kind of control situation although I use Lutron switches & plugs because they're just solid and I don't worry about burning my house down. HA is great for doing almost anything with almost any device but it is more complicated. It's never let me down once I got something connected and running. You can simplify it by doing almost everything on Aqara and only using HA for the devices that Aqara doesn't have/support but that's getting to be a very small set of things - their offerings keep growing every month.
Great Jim! Love this experience based response. Thank you!
Sad. I have a basic smartthings home setup and you were the biggest channel I've found for information on smartthings.
Sorry David!
I have a bunch of Smartthings door sensors and buttons. I bought a Hubitat hub. Will I be able to remove my Smartthings sensors from my Smartthings hub and connect them to my Hubitat hub, or am I going to need to replace all my sensors too?
Most will transfer across just fine!
I currently have SmartThings integrated into HomeAssistant which I think says it all. My home automation platform was in the state of "if it aint broke, don't fix it" but then ST upgraded to edge and my simple automations stopped working correctly (motion sensor turn on light). Only thing left to buy to finish my transition to HomeAssistant (already had the pi) is getting a zwave stick.
And there are a few good options out there for that!
@@AutomateYourLife Yep, Inoveli and Home Assistant have lists of compatible sticks. Was leaning towards the Zooz 800 one but I wish that I was able to wait it out for the first party home assistant zwave stick similar to the skyconnect one for zigbee/matter.
I'm considering leaving SmartThings to go to home assistant. It's a lot more complex, but I am running into issues with SmartThings like Govee or Wyse for example missing from the list, more local routines are needed as well.
Thanks for sharing!
I'm moving into a 20 year old home soon and plan on doing a complete smarthome from the ground up. I've done SmartThings in my new home for the last 5 years and am so done with ST. I like a possible hybrid approach (smart hub (HA or Homey) and Google). If you didn't have any legacy constraints and were also moving into a 20 year old home (may not have neutral wires), what would you recommend for the smart hub (HA? or Homey?), still use Google for front-end/dashboard? and what about light switches (Lutron?), thermostat, cameras, etc? Appreciate y'alls input.
20 years old may not have neutral wires? Dude. That's embarrassing that you think this.
Can home y pro speak using my echoes natively and easily without goofy virtual switches ?
Yep! I've already done that
Thanks!@@AutomateYourLife I'm ready to move on from ST. Crazy ST only supported Sonos for speaking text (or at least last time I checked)
Google assistant/nest seems to have got rid of mode control too - screwed all my light routines. Now having to set scenes in smart life to reset into correct mode.
You should be able to use virtual switches for that
@@AutomateYourLife can you recommend an app. for doing that in? Smarthings perhaps? And then can the switch feed through into the Google Home app?
I have been thinking of ditching smartthings as well. The unreliable automations are a real annoyance.. I have home/away routines that quit working reliably. Sometimes the system switches to armed/away sometimes it doesn't and I can't get the home routine to run properly at all. Logitech integration is also gone, which was very disappointing.
Logitech let us all down in many ways... :(
Ever since I bought the Samsung SmartThings hub, I knew something was wrong. So I did not even use it at all. First of all, the integration was tedious. So I resort to using various hubs that control my vast devices around my house. I know it's kinda silly not to integrate all the devices into a single hub but I think there's a silver lining in that. For one thing, if there's a failure in a device I can isolate where it lies and I can rectify it directly.
For example, I have Ikea Tradfri hub to control all of the Ikea smart devices, Vera Edge hub to control my Z-wave devices and Broadlink to control my RF and IR devices. So if one device were to fail, I could troubleshoot that particular area.
But all of them will still be controlled via Alexa. So the bottom line is, SmartThings is not so smart after all. And that's the irony of it. My conclusion here is that Samsung may be a great company for many devices like TVs, watches and phones. But when it comes to home automation I'm afraid it's not their strongest point.
I'm confused because I use Hue with smartthings and can use it with the hue app separately mine works great is it because I have a galaxy?
Maybe you're just extra lucky! Honestly, with just those two things, it's generally OK. It's when you get more complex.
I'm just glad I made the switch when I did (2019 or so). It seems nothing has changed. When smartthings was it's own company, it rocked. As soon as Samsung bought it, it started going downhill. I switched when the new app came out, and so so so many promises with that transition were broken. Tough to see it it is still a problem. Home Assistant was the right call for me, and I've had SOLID reliability for years. Best part is I run it as a VM on my server, so I didn't have to buy anything except a Nortek USB combo ZW/ZB dongle and usb extension.
Glad it's working for you!
Partly in response to this video, I went through my SmartThings setup. I too had a lot of frustrations, particularly with devices disconnecting spontaneously.
But you know what? A lot of the problems I had are gone now. I'm sticking with it.
Glad you have things worked out!
If I have a V2 hub, and add a Smartthings station for matter over thread, will automations between those 2 still be cloud to cloud?
Today, yes. I don't think this is a long term issue though.
The fact that this is even an issue is absurd especially between their own devices. Thank you for the prompt reply.@@AutomateYourLife
I am just getting into home automation. I automate every day at my job using Power Automate and was overwhelmed with home automation. I am going with the Homey Pro as the advanced flows are the best apples to apples for my brain. I realize they don't have all the devices for North America yet, but hoping to be a 'semi late to the party early adopter'. Glad I'm starting now and don't have years of legacy equipment! Would definitely appreciate more Homey content!
I felt this way myself with home automation vs industrial/commercial. It's apples to apples, or close enough
I'd love to see remake of your smart home. You'll get a lot of good advices on how to do certain automatization better or be more efficient. Your community will support you on this journey :)
Oh man, that advice is going to be invaluable. I have to find a way to bring that advice in.
I am completely with you Brian. Smartthings has been my main hub ever since starting smart home. But there are so many things that stop working! I would expect that in Home Assistant, but not smartthings. I've tried to get Samsung to play nice with matter products and it just hangs like you showed in your video. My problem is that I COMPLETELY RELY ON MODES and I don't know what platform I can switch to that has the same thing. I don't have the time for home assistant. Are you able to help?
I will, as we go. Hubitat has modes of a sort. It's just a different way to manage it. H.A. does too.
And you're right, you'd expect things to break on a system made by a ton of different developers...but nope, it's the system that's owned by one company and one set of devs.
I'm on the brink too. I have had the Smamsung ST from day 1. Out of no where, things stop working and its almost impossible to troubleshoot. So dang frustrating. I am not sure where to turn. I have many Iris motion sensors and door sensor, a few ST mention sensors, MyQ garage and front door. Tons of Phillips Hue lights. Very few things work at this point. I am not sure what to do. Auuggghh..
Sorry Monte! It's a rough go. The good news is you're likely to be able to use that stuff in another system if you move. Hue and most of the ST sensors should be just fine. MyQ's a bit of a crap shoot and Iris can be too...but you should be OK with minor costs to move if you decide to.
I only had ST to monitor door and motion sensors. The battery life of the sensors was really odd, with new batteries showing at 1% charge within days, then working for months more. When a firmware update killed my hub they replaced it, and I disabled firmware updates.
I've seen that 1% thing too. Weird stuff that
I would definitely like to see videos on setting up a smart home with Homey Pro. I'm in!
I think smartthings is crap, I used to use samsung A/V cams to see footage outside, my garage, and around the side of my house. Within 8 months or so, the plastic became yellow, they would go offline intermittantly, and a "upgrade" blocked externally viewing footage on my Blue Iris recorder. They provided no help at all, other than suggesting I buy yet another samsung camera. I'm glad I dont own any smart thing products anymore. Smart Things has really gone downhill.
Oh Samsung 😬
I’ve also moved on from SmartThings with the last devices migrated to Home Assistant 2 days ago. I’ve disconnected it after 6 years of use. I had the same issues as you. I’m looking forward to moving past these issues!
Done the move I see. Nice
im just dabling with smart home stuff, really just basic things like lights and tv control for now,
But my god what a mess the whole thing is, already with just a few lights and switches im having to use 3 different apps which do not work properly together for every device,
alexa wont pass on control of a matter bulb to any other app, alexa wont use the status of any switches passed to it from other apps as a trigger for routines, smarthings isnt showing status of switches from smart life devices nor can it control said switch state, just has the ability to toggle it.
honestly the whole thing is just ridiculous,
I have done a lot of programming in my time and could cry at the complexity needed to do the simplest things which a few lines of code would do in no time,
Add to that the reliablilty of operation is hit and miss too and its just a totally frustrating mess, my family hate it all and just want physical switches so I also have to add those into the equation lol.
Having said that I am actually enjoying the challenge and the results can be cool, but for average user it is not good at all.
Enjoy the challenge! It certainly can be!
I have issues with SmartThings as well. Would be good to move to another system…. But.. I would like to use the sensors I have. Would be good to know what you suggest.
I want my sensors to come too. I'll be working on that.
What about Tuya? I use it in the garage and my garden house. It works perfectly, and there are many different products available. I use SmartThings in the rest of the house, but I’m thinking of switching everything to Tuya.
A couple folks saying that!
Why wouldn’t it be great if one or two of these other hubs had an integration tool, so you could just plop all of your devices and automations directly into the new system?
It would be!
I use smarthings also but its becoming more and more difficult to keep track of things, and the worse part is the duplicate i have duplicates of many switches and one that i cant figure out is when i log into the webportal for smarthings its all in italian no idea why .
Yikes. That's sounding worse and worse as I read it. :(
@@AutomateYourLife good thing i understand the language :-)
One example today. While I am away at 6000 km, my st hub went offline about 3 hours ago and no signs of it coming back and not much I can do !
That's painful! :(
@@AutomateYourLife its weird. It says its on, connected to the network, but not connected to samsung cloud ! And at the same time it stills reports all activities !!!! Well hopefullg the young woman taking care of our cats did an unplug replug and now its back.
@@AutomateYourLife I should put a hue smart plug to be able to reset st hub at distance 🤣
I am curious why you did not include Apple HomeKit into your evaluation. I am uing it for some time and it works flawlesly
I think that's a different layer of automation. :) Those are simplistic automations that don't allow us a lot of actual automating. That's all. Nothing wrong with HomeKit, just when stacked up to these hubs it's not the same.
Brian, you hit the nail on the head exactly and pretty much summed up exactly what I've been thinking since Homey Pro was announced in the United States. I've been frustrated with the lack of forward movement with SmartThings but honestly been uninterested in spending the rest of my life locally coding and sourcing the internet for solutions. Homey Pro seems to scratch the itch of somebody who's decided to grow up with SmartThings user interfaces and solutions without being held back by the SmartThings platform itself. I am 100% interested in the future content and might end up doing the same exact thing depending on your experiences in the next 2 to 3 months.
I couldn't have written it better. Thank you!
Hi Brian, is it possible to operate both smartthings and habitat in the same house?
I've done it for years! Just watch zigbee radios I'd say
Do you mean the channels of the one of them? And how did you use it in the same house? Some of the devices where connected to ST and some to habitat?
Yep and yep! Most of my stuff was connected to ST, but I did have Hubitat always running with a few products side by side.@@niravniel561
I have problems too sometimes the thermostat shows fahreneit instead of celcius
:(
Im all for learning about restarting. I started with google, expanded to smartthings, and got invested in their webcore system. But since then samsung bailed on hardware which seemed to trigger other failures and as you put it broken promises.
Aqara has been the system i have been considering but i have been unwilling to commit to making a change at this point.
I look forward to you helping me figure out what could be my new automation system, and which voice assistant works best with the new ecosystem.
Thanks so much! I'm looking forward to this too!
Thanks Brian! I having been contemplating the exact transition that you are describing. I am trying to determine the best alternative for my situation before jumping the ship that Samsung seems bound and determined to sink. Looking forward to hearing about your experience.
First video coming soon! Just a how to guide for Homey, but we are starting now! We will go on the journey together. 😃
If I add another Hub to my SmartThings account with the same location, can I have 400 (2*200) devices connected or not?
It's an app problem. Nope. New location helps though.
I hear you. Few things have been broken (Presence on android, automations, etc), but before I give up, I am going to give them a chance to finish the full transition and execute at least majority of their vision. I can understand and appreciate that projects like this can be difficult and for sure it seemed half arsed, but their overhaul project was not simple and I prefer them taking us along rather than burning it all down and starting from scratch which they could have. My perception is that all of the platforms are still too tinkerey and it will take an apple, samsung or google to nail it down. PS I miss groovey, but running apps on their cloud was doomed from the start once too many users joined in.
I did get a raspberry pi as a contingency if I am to move as well, but I'll wait a bit longer. I don't blame you at all. Communication by Samsung has been weak.
Looking forward to seeing the next videos.
I like your plans. Well thought out and preparing for both scenarios. Honestly, I hope ST works it out.
I have been dreading the move… it’s been 10mo since this video but I’m going to have to commit to the change. Hopefully you’ve made good migration step by step, cause I have a lot of devices and years with mine built SmartThings wifi… smart lighting is locking me out. Nothing works well locally if I lose internet. I need to move. Now to look through and choose Homey or HA…
I don’t like change, but so disapointed with ST
what are your home assistant direction concerns?
Yeah, you're the second person to ask that. I'll think about how I want to address those. You can find some of the basics in the other comments on this video though :)
Which device did you end up going with?
Still using Homey Pro :)
Function wise would you say homey pro has everything aeotec has. I am debating between the two
Same here with being frustrated with smartthings lately. Lots of devices just not connecting no more and the duplicate issues. The only reason I went with smartthings was that I came from Wink. I have setup home automations and smart devices for my parents. They loved winks app simplicity and that’s why went to smartthings as it seemed more user friendly for my parents, but that wasn’t the case. My request Brian is when you do your hub comparison is you take into consideration the user knowledge. Like for example this hub is good for smart home enthusiasts and this hub is good for ppl who don’t have as much experience like my parents. Now on a separate topic, have you tinkered with the ring home alarm system integrations. I have been helping a friend integrate his door lock to the system but it’s not working. I’m guessing maybe it’s might be US only and as we are in canada it might not be supported. I hate it when companies region lock their features. Thanks again for all the vids. Good luck on your smart home hub journey.
I'll make sure I compare effort/knowledge levels as we do our work! That's a huge focus of mine personally, so you should be good there.
As for Ring, I've had some luck in a couple systems...but it depends what you're trying to integrate, and what with?
Thanks so much. I remember when switching from wink to another system. I was looking between smartthings and hubitat. The only reason I went with smartthings was it was much easier for my parents to navigate. If it was just me I would have gone with hubitat as I like the whole thinkering and the granular control, but it would have been a field day to explain to my parents if something did go wrong and have to troubleshoot with them. Thanks for looking in that direction. About the ring. It’s the ring security system I’m talking about. Amazon canada had them on sale a couple of weeks back. A friend of mine bought one and we set it up. The only issue we were running into was his weiser zwave smart code home connect door lock integration. Even though their description said it’s possible. I later found out it’s U.S.A. only. It would have been great if it did as he doesn’t have any hubs that have zwave. I hope ring opens up this soon rather than region lock it.
Yes, your future vids on HomeyPro will get my attention. Very interested in how it will work with "old z-wave" Is there a generic z-wave option that will allow it to pair with older devices?
I see some of that, but it's not perfect!
Yes there is an option but imo it works best with fibaro system, almost all devices have great support out of the box
And that distinction makes sense. Fibaro is part of Nice, and is EU focused. Like Athom.
Why is blink not supported?
That's likely more about Amazon and Blink then it is Samsung.
Interesting topic. I am intriqued about Homey. But when I went to look at it I couldn’t tell if it supported the two technologies that I use most in my smart home: Insteon and Wyze. Do you have any ideas? Thanks for the great videos
I don't believe it does, and I'm not sure it will. Wyze has been pretty closed. Insteon is pretty old...
I too am looking at domping SmartThings because I have many light switches in my home that use SmartThings, however when I enabled the Alexa skill, my light s work for about a day and then get disabled. Not sure if this is a SmartThings issue or an Alexa issue. Converting all my switches to Kassa Wi-Fi switches seems like a good choice for me as I can do away with hubs
Let's hope we can find a good path for ya Fred!
Also hope you show what st devices will migrate to your new system…will be watching to see that.
Respect for sharing this. I personally like the platform, but my word, it has been a pain to move to Edge. I dare not purchase any product that's not proven within the smartthings community. Trouble is Samsung don't have a decent revenue stream of smartthings so why would they bother. I'm praying that they don't give up as I've spent thousands over the years on my and other's properties to give them a full smart security system... 😬
I'm praying for that too honestly. They've been pulling back since acquiring ST...