Smart Homes

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For the discussion of smart homes, home automation and the like. Because of the instance it will tend to have a more UK flavour but everyone is welcome.

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Samsung's SmartThings (www.sammobile.com)

submitted 1 year ago by Emperor to c/smarthomes

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SamMobile had a SmartThings Week, so I thought I might as well use it to kick off a general SmartThings thread:

I've never used it (back in the early days it didn't sound so great) but I also understand that using Home Assistant and its ilk are (or were) more for hobbyists who didn't mind tinkering and some people just want a system that is a little more user-friendly. I'm just not sure I'd recommend it to such a person over HomeKit but I've used neither, so...

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[–] smeg 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

What's Samsung's history with supporting its smart things? Most proprietary home automation stuff has the reputation of spying on you until one day its cloud service gets shut down and it turns into a brick (whether that reputation is deserved or not I don't know, but it's always a risk!)

[–] Emperor 2 points 1 year ago

It's a good question. When I'm seriously took a look at it a while ago, it had some reliability issues but I am not sure if they've been addressed. It doesn't (or didn't) feel like it was top priority for Samsung as it can't help them shift more phones and tablets but, equally, it doesn't seem to be going away any time soon. However, with Nest shutting up shop, something that relies on the cloud is a concern.

Part of the reason for starting the thread was to look at it anew as people do ask me for suggestions on tech matters and I am not really up to speed on the low hassle end of the smart home market.

Homekit seems to come out ahead in reliability and usability, plus it doesn't use the cloud, but you'd really need to be invested in the Apple ecosystem and likely prepared to pay more for your kit as you have less choice (but if you are in the Apple ecosystem perhaps getting bang for your buck isn't a priority 😜 ).