Why I'm Ditching Samsung SmartThings (And Redoing My Smart Home)

this is going to shock some of you and I'm sorry I'm done letting Samsung smart things manage my smart home they've screwed up too much I've had so many problems and I can't ignore it anymore I'm throwing out the whole setup and I'm starting my smart home over again let me explain why I'm walking away what it means to the channel and what I'm going to use going forward in my smart home [Music] hello autometers thanks for tuning in again I'm Brian from automate your life and I recently shared how frustrated I was with the smart home industry I really appreciate how much you shared with me and a few of you suggested that I should redo my smart home that's exactly what I'm going to do and now I'll explain why in four parts why I think Samsung's no no longer the right platform for me now this shouldn't stop you from using them cuz there's a lot of good things happening but here's what's happened to me in just the last year my automations have been turning off not all of them but enough of them to notice of course I don't get any notice that it's happened and when I go to investigate in the app the automation is just disabled my devices are disappearing from the app zigg and zwave stuff included that's a especially bad with Z-Wave since I have to go through a very painful exclusion process if I ever want to use those Z-Wave devices again I don't even know what this means for zwave security but it's messed up and I've never seen it happen on another platform period matter connectivity has been the worst I've spoken about this problem in general but it's been worse with smart things and if you want to know how I spent 2023 it was waiting at the very last screen of setup for matter products in the smart things app Samsung has to register the product into my account and they can't seem to do that right it hangs there sometimes indefinitely and the really terrible thing is the matter over Wi-Fi devices are already connected to my Wi-Fi network and they still fail on that step I hit the 200 device limit in the smart things app long ago obviously I'm not a typical user but the silly thing about this is it isn't a limit based on Wi-Fi zigg or even zwave it's just the app good thing I've been losing products there's been a primary Hub in my home for a long time and Samsung has told me that I've reached the memory limit with that that's okay I understand that hubs have to have a limit but what I really don't like is that if I make an automation that uses devices from two separate hubs it becomes a cloud-based Automation and therefore requires the internet and creates all kinds of delays all of this combines with some other basic issues to keep automations too unreliable on this platform this should have been solved with the edge driver program but even with local automations I'm still having too many failures and delays I have a Samsung Smart Monitor and for those of you who have a TV or another Samsung Appliance you'll understand this problem my smart monitor just disconnects for no good reason it's not a Brian Wi-Fi problem because I have Wi-Fi devices that have stayed online for all of 2023 this is a Samsung problem and that monitor can't stay online and it was supposed to be another hub for me which is a dream I gave up on a while ago those are the issues that have hit my home and some of them are bad and some of them are terrible but I said that there are four parts to the reasoning behind me leaving smart things in the dust the second part is what I would call broken promises now broken promises are like those firsts in our lives you know the first I'm talking about when I say you never forget it so Samsung should stop breaking these kinds of promises with us a good example of this is if you use smart things and then you connect it to Amazon or Google Voice Assistant if you've done that you will likely have experienced duplicate devices as in you'll see two of the same device because you've integrated it with Samsung and then separately with Amazon or Google this is something that just about everyone who does home automation runs into if they use smart things and the stupid thing is this solution was both talked about and very simple Samsung just has to give us the ability to choose which devices are synchronized to Amazon and Google and they just never did it another example if you've ever worked with the features in smart things labs and if you've been paying attention then you know some of those were supposed to turn into forever features and some of them were supposed to disappear I've only ever seen them disappear one of the big opportunities for Samsung is that they are one of the only hubs that allows smart home cameras into the app and then allows them to be used as part of the smart home security system now they were supposed to be creating Edge drivers for some cameras and that was supposed to unlock all kinds of great features I believe this was announced a year and a half ago and there has been zero movement on what should have been a very short project if you remember from our Edge driver announcement video last year the smart lighting app was supposed to disappear it was supposed to happen last year as you can see it's still at the bottom of my list of routines Samsung I think talked about a date of September 2022 and it's still sitting here and I've had no communication there were some other broken promises from things that Samsung gave me like they told me a number of routine options that were coming to the platform many of those never arrived and there's been no further communication the matter Bridge feature which Samsung was rightfully so very excited to announced has come and gone from the app I put out a video that showcased how aara and smart things could be integrated based largely on that feature working and many of you have come back and told me hey no longer working the truth is it comes in and out and it's part of the overall issues with matter that Samsung has one of the other promises that Samsung made last year when they changed over to this Edge driver program was that we would see very few products affected by the changeover that has certainly not been the case with all the problems I've experience this year so all of those broken promises are leading a lot of us to frustration but part three of my reasoning comes from my experience in working with Samsung I've been covering this platform for around 5 years and it's been getting tougher whenever they come to me with an announcement which happens once or twice a year the people I talk to are very professional they are very clear they give me dates and they tell me exactly what's going to happen they are also really good at telling me when they don't know something everyone I've worked with from the smart things team has been professional and knowledgeable but the problem is I walk away I create content for you and then the dates are missed and features are missing and what I am essentially doing is lying to you this happened last year with the edge driver program announcement and it's happened multiple times with our CES coverage it's all in that broken promises list and you can find it throughout our coverage of smart things as a platform the other problem I have is when I ask questions of their PR team I'd say it's about 5050 that I will ever get an answer back back and when I do it's usually months before I hear anything and the answer is a half-ass response at some level I think it's Samsung's interest in the platform that's the problem when I ask Samsung PR about a TV an appliance or a phone the answers come back like that I get clear detailed responses and I understand what their offering is so when I evaluate my ability to give you good solid information about the smart things platform I can't do it the information I get directly is bad and I can't pull information that I need in order to produce really good content for you it's about integrity and it's about using my time on the platforms that want to help you the most and there's an even bigger problem that I liken exactly to this it's the way the developer Community is being managed the whole point of a developer Community is that they can push your platform further this is is exactly what home assistant deploys as their entire strategy around the smart home and I'm not saying that that's perfect but Samsung had a great developer Community for many years I've had multiple conversations with developers who have described Samsung doing something akin to what I described with the PR department lack of clarity and even information that hurts them is sometimes passed over not given simple messages that would keep developers who are working for free to improve the platform are not being given at least not in these instances these people take those Edge drivers and make them better or give us extra features these are the ones that Samsung can never get to and smart things used to be a place where people could go and find almost any feature they needed and then they could connect almost any device through this a good example of this is the Philips Hue and smart things integration that blue yeti created this gave us features like the ability to Blink your Philips Hue Lights it allowed you to control by room and eliminated popcorn lighting effects it was fast and it gave you access to Philips Hugh scenes sensors and buttons now you can't do any of that with the basic Philips hu and smart things integration today sadly I think that integration is dead and it's because of the management of the developer Community by Samsung I've had a number of conversations with that developer and based on the situation that was explained to me it seems like simple information could have saved that entire relationship crushing the developer community and crushing creators like me is not the way to develop your platform's reach with people like us who want to automate Our Lives it shows an inability to connect with the people who are working with your platform on on a daily basis enough about that let's move on to part four it's very clear at this juncture that Samsung is looking more and more to lock you into all of their products they've made some good moves with things like the home connectivity Alliance and they've made a good attempt with matter but after that features are now being locked in with Samsung devices being the only ones that get them Samsung has always had modes in smart things but today if you want to add or change a mode on your phone you have to have a Samsung Galaxy phone the Galaxy tags and the Galaxy fine service are only available if you have a Samsung phone 2o and even my smart things station had a few things like the Galaxy fine service that would not work unless I had a Galaxy phone now I'm not saying that other companies don't do this stuff but the fact is if you don't like Samsung products in other parts of their business you're not going to want to keep heading down this path it's a full Lo walk-in strategy as far as I can tell and I could continue to name things like smart things energy or cooking or the other life aspects in the app but I think you get the point it's all Samsung or smart things will be a lesser experience for you and even worse for those of us outside of South Korea is that that's the country that gets all the features first Sometimes they get rolled out to the US shortly thereafter but the rest of the world can wait when is an indefinite time their process to roll out these new features is very sluggish and I just don't think they can get many of them outside of South Korea and the US now before I move on to what I'm going to use in my smart home going forward I want to talk about what this means for the channel and I'm going to open up an option for you to hopefully impact Samsung directly obviously I won't be able to focus on smart things as much because I won't be using them in my everyday life I will will take those hubs out of the trash though when I'm done being angry so the channel will have less dedicated smart things content but we're making a bunch of automation ideas videos and those will always contain automation ideas with smart things as we find good ones we will also continue to talk about connectivity to smart things in product reviews so it's not going to change that much in terms of our coverage what we will be losing is some of the news and I do think we will lose a couple of the larger tutorials it's not that we can't do Basics like how to build automations with smart things but I can't show you things like that edge driver that blue yeti made because I don't believe it's going to be there in a year the other thing I want to talk about is your reaction to this I want to continue to have discussions with you and I want you to understand that I'm listening every week when you guys tell me on a poll or through the comments that something is happening or something better or you're having a problem a lot of my direction here today is based on your feedback and it will continue to be so I will say that I kind of expect someone at Samsung to reach out at some point probably based on this video because they've actually been really good with that this is part of what I mean when I say the people within the smart things team are professional and some of the most knowledgeable people in the smart home industry but they have day jobs and I don't get to deal with them all the time but when they do reach out if I have a lot of comments from you about the struggles and about why you've left or are considering leaving smart things I will be able to have quite the conversation with them about what they can and can't do and we might actually get something done so leave comments below about your experience and what you want Samsung to hear because I will at least guarantee that someone from their team will watch this video okay that's enough talking about smart things specifically what is my plan going forward in my own smart home I'm going to evaluate five platforms side by side in my home with a lot of the functions and features being mirrored eventually I'm going to come out with an indepth comparison guide of well actually more platforms than that but it'll be these five in my home going forward home assistant which is every DIY person's favorite platform I have a lot of concerns about the direction of this platform and I have a lot of concerns personally about my time investment in it however it would be a disservice not to include it hubitat now this platform is well respected and it's a very stable one for the most part I feel like I will be trading some problems from smart things for different problems with habitat but I do like the stability of it Samsung smart things and it might surprise you that I'm going to continue to evaluate that platform based on what I've said but Samsung has a lot of good things that they've promised and I'm going to keep tabs on that I'm also going to keep tabs on whether or not the platform can eventually run reliably in a medium to large smart home I'm also going to evaluate a Cara I think this little Hub right here has a lot of opportunity because of the great devices that aara builds and actually they have a really robust home automation or automation system and the platform that has the inside track for me and what I will be converting the main parts of my home to is homie Pro to date which is now well over 4 months I have not experienced an automation failure I have not experienced a disconnection of any of the devices I put on the Hub I have not had an outage of the whole platform simply put I've been impressed with everything that homie Pro does it does these things simply and the app is easy to use plus I've seen new feature roll outs and new important companies jumping on board with homey connectivity plus I see a bit of growth in the developer community so I'm really interested in a lot that is going on with this platform I love the ability to create automations that handle an entire process through their flow system I think that's one of the big problems we have in home automation systems today as we can't group our automations together in a really smart way at least not in a lot of systems so I'm going to start now and I do think there will be tradeoffs this Hub is ridiculously expensive and there will be features and device types that I will miss with homie but what I want to offer to you is a series of videos where I'm redoing my smart home with this we can go through the conversions the different aspects of my home and how the automations and the experiences go if you'd like let me know if this is a series of videos you would like to see otherwise you can see my thoughts on the platforms that I will be evaluating right there is our review of both homie Pro and home assistant green both of which are the newest hubs from those companies down there is our review of the smart things station and we also have our review of the habitat C8 and the accara on screen now otherwise thanks for watching today and of course live smart

Channel: Automate Your Life

Views: 78,661

Keywords: smart home, home automation, samsung, smartthings, samsung smartthings, smart home setup, smartthings tutorial, smartthings ideas, smartthings setup, samsung smartthings app, home automation system, smartthings new updates, smartthings features, smart home youtubers, smart home 2024, best smart home system, automate your life, samsung smartthings news, smartthings vs home assistant, smartthings vs hubitat, smartthings vs homekit, homey pro, homey pro 2023

Id: BOx8in5ab60

Length: 18min 32sec (1112 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 17 2023