I bought the original Smart Things hub in a starter kit from Amazon last January. I had already invested in eight Belkin WeMo switches and six WeMo plugs. I have a Nest Thermostat. I have four IP cameras around the outside of my house. I have a personal weather station on the roof. What I did not have was one central 'thing' to control them all. I had hoped that, based on my experience at CES2015, that this hub would be it. It was not.
Smart Hub 1.0 had some real issues with the Belkin WeMo devices. Some of them it would control seamlessly. Others were really sporadic. One, the fish tank light, which I wanted to turn on with the sunrise and off with the sunset, never worked despite being closer to the wi-fi router and Smart Hub than most of the others.
What the Hub 1.0 did really well was integrate with Zigbee and Z-Wave devices. After getting the hub, I purchased a Z-Wave relay for my garage door. After messing with the Z-Wave instructions for a bit (only to discover that they were written with wrong information), I got it connected and the Hub 1.0 was quickly able to open and close my garage. And do it from anywhere I had any network connectivity. That was really nice for someone who is constantly worried that he forgot to close his garage door.
Nest... well, we'll get to Nest in a bit.
Enter Smart Hub 2.0. I missed out on the introductory offer that included $75 of sensors, but still purchased it directly from Smart Things for $100 when they came back in stock. When it arrived, I wasted no time in connecting it and trying to get it to work. That took a little doing as the Smart Things servers seemed to be a bit busy with a bunch of mooks just like me trying to get connected. The app (almost the only way to connect to the hub) kept telling me that I was not authorized to connect to the hub. I traded emails with the Smart Things customer service, who were very responsive and great, before identifying the Belkin WeMo link app in the old Hub 1.0 as the problem. Once that got deleted, everything was pretty smooth sailing. Even re-installing that same WeMo app on Hub 2.0.
Hub 2.0 is a HUGE improvement. HUGE. All of the switches now work flawlessly. I believe that much of this is attributed to fact that the new hub can connect to things on the local network without first going out to the Smart Things servers. Response time is better. I can have multiple switches respond when only one is pressed. For instance, I installed some LED lighting in some bookshelves. Now, when I turn on that room's main light, both book shelves also turn on. I had tried to do that with the old hub via a "Big Switch" app and through IFTTT, but neither was fast or consistent. Now, it's flawless. Oh, and the fish tank switch works exactly the way it should.
Some other tricks I have going:
- Outdoor Garage Light and indoor Living Room light turn on 30 minutes before sunset and off late in the evening. There's an Smart Things app to randomize all of that, but I haven't messed with that yet.
- My daughter's room light turns on at 6:30am, but only on the three days of the week that she's with me and has to go to school. My bedroom light goes on at 6:00am on those same three days.
- My heated seat bidet (shameless luxury) now turns off when I leave the home and turns back on when I return to save energy.
- The indoor garage lights turn on when the garage opens, but only after 4pm. They then shut off five minutes after the garage closes again.
- My home theater and TV turn on when I get home to the Chromecast input. This is via a Harmony remote hub. Harmony also has a Smart Things app. And they turn off when I leave. (Note: when I say that 'I leave', it's not actually tracking me, but my smart phone. It could also be tagged to a 'presence tag', a smart luggage tag, but that would mean one more thing for me to carry.)
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| The Room Page of the Smart Things App |
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| The switch list within a room |
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| Some of the internal Apps I've installed. |
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| Some of the additional Apps that Smart Things has available. |
If the particular device that you want to control does not have a Smart Things app, then you have two choices:
- Write one. There is a developer page for Smart Things which can be accessed through your browser of choice. From here, you can create commands and controls and devices and all sorts of things... if you know what you're doing. I don't. I tried anyways, as that is my MO, but got lost quickly. I'm sure that if I had a better understanding of the 'Groovy' programming language, this would be pretty simple stuff. Again, I don't. Smart Things does have some good documentation available, but I'm not quite smart enough to parse it correctly... or maybe that should be 'patient' instead of 'smart'.
This was the only way that I was going to get my IP Cameras to work with Smart Things. I own Foscam products. I have one pointed at the front door, and would like to have it do something when the motion sensor in the camera is triggered (don't really know what yet... text me?). There is some code written for the Foscam cameras, but I was unable to figure out what I had to change to make it all work. At least I was unable to before my attention span saw something else shiny to play with. - Use IFTTT. If you're not familiar with IFTTT, then change that. IFTTT has come a long way and is a great way to make things happen. The basic premise is that IF This, Then That (hence, IFTTT). For instance, if your local school posts 'closed' on their main page, then send you a text. Coupled with Smart Things, this allows all kinds of things, including Nest integration (still wait for it). They also have a new 'Do' button that can put a widget on your phone's main screen for specific things. For instance, instead of navigating three pages in the Smart Things app to open my garage, I have a IFTTT Do button that does it just as well.
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| The start point for creating 'Do' Buttons. |
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| Some of the Button's that I've created. |
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| What the 'Do' buttons widget looks like on a phone screen. They also have a 4x1 widget that looks more like the buttons in the 'Do' app, but I wanted to save the real estate. |
Finally, Nest. I love the thermostat, but it has some issues. The biggest for me is that I spend all my time in my office which is not within in the IR sensor range of the Nest. As a result, it will often think that I'm 'Away' when I'm actually home, sending it into energy conservation mode. Then the house gets uncomfortably hot or cold depending on the season. I had hoped that with the Smart Things presence sensor and IFTTT, I could force the Nest to remain in 'Home' mode as long as my phone was in the house. Unfortunately, the only data links that Nest seems to allow are to set specific temperatures or turn just the fan on. Google (sorry, Alphabet, Inc.), who owns Nest, has not released the links to the 'Home' or 'Away' settings. I can do those things through the native Nest app, but the whole goal of this was to integrate as much as possible into one thing. To the best of my knowledge, this is a Nest issue and not a Smart Things or IFTTT issue.
After all of that, let me give you the TL;DR Conclusion.
Pros:
- Better integration with local IP resources
- Faster response
- Better app with better internal apps
- IFTTT has come a long way. (I know that Smart Things has nothing to do with this, but it really helps their product).
Cons:
- Not everything that is considered a 'Smart Home' or 'IoT' item is supported, even through things like IFTTT. Check that you can actually do what you want to do before you invest.
- Cost. While I think that the Hub 2.0 is very reasonable, many of the 'Things' available directly from Smart Things seem over priced. For instance, the door and window sensor (is it open or closed?) at $40 prohibits me from getting enough for all of the exterior doors in my home.
- My particular brand of IP cameras doesn't work easily with Smart Hub.
If you have questions or comments, hit me up at @schmoid on Twitter or reply to this FB post.
Thanks for reading.
[Final disclaimer: I used to work for Samsung who now owns Smart Things. I no longer work for Samsung and do not feel obliged to color my review of this product one way or another. I had a great time while I was there and have a lot of respect and admiration for the people and the organization. Still, not everything is perfect even in the second generation. I hope that my review reflects that.]
