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INACTIVE - http://mzl.la/ghe-archive - A place to publish experiments and investigations from the Connected Devices team
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SmartThings: Gen 1 Review #4

Closed KatieCaldwell closed 8 years ago

KatieCaldwell commented 8 years ago

Jared and I have SmartThings and have been using them for maybe a year now. It's the first generation set (?), so I'm guessing many of my complaints have already been addressed in the next generation update. To that point, I do find it incredibly annoying/wasteful that our SmartThings are already dated and "old". If they are update-able (firmware?) - they should auto-update if they're so smart. I don't have time or interest in finding out if there's anything I can do...

My quick thoughts:

  1. With our home kit, we received two "dongles" for keys or pets, which SmartThings has now discontinued. I assume this is because for us, we kept getting messages that our dog, Grimm, had left the house, even though he was sleeping ON me at the time. You can imagine getting these false notifications while we were out were not reassuring. The dongles were too big (and too ugly, IMO). I didn't trust they'd be okay outside (Grimm goes to adventure camp) - how would they handle running in the woods, mud and water, other dogs? Most annoying were the false notifications.
  2. The amount of Notifications I see on Jared phone is bonkers - screen filled, constant buzzing. If I open the back door to let Grimm out, Jared gets a notification "Back door open". So if I let Grimm out, (2 notifications : open/closed), then I open the door to call him back (2 more notifications), then Grimm finally comes, i let him back in (2 more notifications). If it's windy, sometimes we get notifications that the front door is open. It is not. That especially sucked when we were in Turkey. As of today, the sensor is working better (new lock on our door, makes the door tighter) but we now get reverse messages - so when we close the front door, Jared gets a notification that the door is open. I honestly would never recommend SmartThings to anyone.
  3. Jared has the app on his phone - after seeing the all the notifications he gets, I decided against adding the app on my phone. I don't know how it handles multiple accounts.
  4. At the moment, we have the motion detector sensor face down, I can't remember why we did this, probably because the notifications were painfully annoying. I think we've only used it recently to check the temp in the room where it is. Honestly, we don't care about the temperature, unless something feels off (like is the house too cold?). [ Jared added that he does trust the motion sensor and we use it when we're out of town. ]
  5. The best use of the SmartThings plug (we have a light plugged into it), is to fake people out. It's in the guest room, so we can turn it off and on from the app. We convinced my nephew that Jared is a real magician. That was fun. However, while I understand that the lamp is plugged into the ST plug (and I understand the technical function), the fact that I can't use the physical switch on the lamp makes me INSANE. Jared actually uses the app to turn the lamp on/off, and claims it's easier. But now he's the ONLY person in the world who can turn the light on/off.

I do think SmartThings is leans more towards "security" and monitoring... but, I wouldn't rely on it. I'd say it's given us more reasons to worry and second guess the state to the house. The notifications are out of control and to me, it's not designed for people who want peace of mind.

Looking forward to hearing about your newer SmartThings, but even if you love them, I'm doubtful I'd change my mind... unless they are truly delightful, remove burden, and can self-update. my 2 cents, kc