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Wireless Networking Hardware

Samsung Will Shut Down the v1 SmartThings Hub This Month (arstechnica.com) 86

Posted by BeauHD from the what-a-headache dept.
Samsung is killing the first-generation SmartThings Hub at the end of the month, kicking off phase two of its plan to shut down the SmartThings ecosystem and force users over to in-house Samsung infrastructure. "Phase one was in October, when Samsung killed the Classic SmartThings app and replaced it with a byzantine disaster of an app that it developed in house," writes Ars Technica's Ron Amadeo. "Phase three will see the shutdown of the SmartThings Groovy IDE, an excellent feature that lets members of the community develop SmartThings device handlers and complicated automation apps." From the report: The SmartThings Hub is basically a Wi-Fi access point -- but for your smart home stuff instead of your phones and laptops. Instead of Wi-Fi, SmartThings is the access point for a Zigbee and Z-Wave network, two ultra low-power mesh networks used by smart home devices. [...] The Hub connects your smart home network to the Internet, giving you access to a control app and connecting to other services like your favorite voice assistant. You might think that killing the old Hub could be a ploy to sell more hardware, but Samsung -- a hardware company -- is actually no longer interested in making SmartThings hardware. The company passed manufacturing for the latest "SmartThings Hub (v3)" to German Internet-of-things company Aeotec. The new Hub is normally $125, but Samsung is offering existing users a dirt-cheat $35 upgrade price.

For users who have to buy a new hub, migrating between hubs in the SmartThings ecosystem is a nightmare. Samsung doesn't provide any kind of migration program, so you have to unpair every single individual smart device from your old hub to pair it to the new one. This means you'll need to perform some kind of task on every light switch, bulb, outlet, and sensor, and you'll have to do the same for any other smart thing you've bought over the years. Doing this on each device is a hassle that usually involves finding the manual to look up the secret "exclusion" input, which is often some arcane Konami code. Picture holding the top button on a paddle light for seven seconds until a status light starts blinking and then opening up the SmartThings app to unpair it. Samsung is also killing the "SmartThings Link for Nvidia Shield" dongle, which let users turn Android TV devices into SmartThings Hubs.
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Samsung Will Shut Down the v1 SmartThings Hub This Month More

Samsung Will Shut Down the v1 SmartThings Hub This Month

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  • Note to Self: (Score:5, Insightful)

    by bill_mcgonigle ( 4333 ) * on Thursday June 03, 2021 @09:33PM (#61452550) Homepage Journal

    Don't standardize on Samsung things.

    • But their "standards" are so dynamic! No stagnation there! Always on the move!

      • Agile!

        • Fragile more like!

          • One of the things that makes me always pick HomeKit compatible devices where available is that the spec from Apple calls for the device to be controllable locally from your HomeKit devices using standards APIs (with encryption to boot!). The lightbulb does not need to talk to the internet to turn on, or rely on anything that does. When the internet is offline Siri or my phone can still power off the lights. That is how it should be. It will work forever because on device processing is the only way to make t

            • Exactly my sentiments. I see no earthly reason for my devices to have to 'phone home' all the time. I won't buy anything that won't work without an internet connection (apart from my router naturally).
              I'm afraid that people are just like lemmings and heading for their own information armageddon.
              "Mr Brown, we notice that you turned your bedroom light off at 01:00 and your alarm got you up for work at 06:23. You are not getting enough sleep. We have arranged for a full medical checkup. Unfortunately, your ins

    • Re:Note to Self: (Score:4, Insightful)

      by dohzer ( 867770 ) on Thursday June 03, 2021 @10:52PM (#61452712)

      I'm sure this kind of obsolescence will be isolated to Samsung products.

    • Z-wave is an open standard. Lots of companies make hubs. You can replace this hub with a new one or even build your own.
      • You don't even need to do that! Anyone with their own silicon foundry can make Samsung-compatible chips and build their own hubs that do what the Samsung ones do. It's as simple as that.

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 )

      Not all Samsung products are crap. My spouse bought a Samsung "smart" refrigerator. It has a touch screen on the door with options for news updates, weather reports, etc. It uses the "Bixby" interface, which is horrible, but the speakers are top quality, and the music playlist is easy to manage.

      So if a great sound system is something you value in a refrigerator, Samsung is a good choice.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by leonbev ( 111395 )

        Are you looking forward to your smart fridge becoming part of a IoT botnet when Samsung stops issuing security updates for it about 3 years from now and it gets hacked?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by DarkOx ( 621550 )

        Excellent example of Poe's Law here.

      • Well done. I genuinely believed you through the first half of the post.

        /hat tip

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by hawk ( 1151 )

        the speakers on the refrigerator . . .

        uhh . . .

        I remember folks mocking the clock on the microwaves.

        I'm done with Samsung. Well over $300 for a replacement drum because they made it out of stainless, and cracking and ending up out of round is *common* on these. But the only place in the US that had them in stock didn't really, and it was 3 or 4 months to get it in from Korea--only to be as out of round as the failed one.

        And the fancy four-door refrigerator whose ice maker, well, iced over, and is non-fu

    • Re:Note to Self: (Score:5, Insightful)

      by anegg ( 1390659 ) on Friday June 04, 2021 @12:20AM (#61452870)
      Don't buy "systems" that aren't self-contained. If you can't run the system without connections to a vendor's IT infrastructure, then you don't really own the system (just part of it). Connections to support utilities like power and Internet are ok, but needing to link your data processing to the vendor's leaves you out in the cold when the vendor withdraws support, no matter how well the system you are using meets your needs and the devices it runs on continue to operate reliably.
      • Agreed. I replaced my failing pool controller in 2015 with a beaglebone. I did have to add a 24V PS and used some opto-isolators to drive the relays for the pumps. Still works fine and if the BB dies, I'd probably switch to pi. Basically any cheap GPIO capable tiny computer works. But zero need for a corporate hub to make it work. Since then I've done several other home automation thingies. I strongly recommend either BB or Pi if you have any DIY skills at all. It is just too easy compared to 20 years ago.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Sertis ( 2789687 )
      People who bought these first gen hubs chose smartthings because it was not associated with Amazon, Google, Ring (at the time independent) or any of the big players so it could seamlessly support just about anything. Once Samsung bought them we knew it was going to kill that independence. Will probably move back to openhab when it finally breaks.

    • I was an early adopter of the Smartthings ecosystem. Fortunately, I didn't go crazy with a lot of devices so I'm going to take this opportunity to just scrap it and go with something self contained and standards-based from Hubitat.

      https://hubitat.com/pages/home... [hubitat.com]

      No internet? No problem. It still works. And I will not be buying anything of consequence from Samsung going forward.

      Best,

    • Re:Note to Self: (Score:5, Insightful)

      by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Friday June 04, 2021 @05:13AM (#61453224)

      Don't standardize on non standard things.

      FTFY. Samsung isn't in any way unique here and doesn't deserve to be called out specially. The entire smart home industry / IoT industry is full of non-standard garbage just waiting for a developer to pull the plug from your investment.

      If it doesn't use an open commonly available protocol and communicate in a documented way with a variety of products from various manufacturers you shouldn't really consider that as an investment in your home where the product life spans decades rather than OS version.

      I realise this precludes the use of many common smart home devices.

      • It's really sad overall. SmartThings was an excellent platform back in the day, and this is just another instance of a company buying another company in order to slowly destroy it. I admit that I have wasted my money on SmartThings, but then again it has saved me a ton of money on a professional security system, and I was able to completely program my own intuitive system from the ground up using Groovy. I'm not sure that it was altogether the wrong choice when I consider how much use I've gotten out of it

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      It's best to avoid anything that can't run open source firmware. Tasmota is the most popular one and it supports a large number of devices that use the ESP platform. The various ESP chips are low cost microcontrollers with WiFi and Bluetooth, so they are popular with IoT vendors.

      Sonoff devices make extensive use of them but so do many others. Flashing Tasmota is fairly easy and then you can link up with HomeAssistant, for a fully open source system that won't brick itself when the manufacturer loses interes

  • Switch to hubitat. Doesn't rely on the cloud so there's nobody to shut it down.

    • and yet, you have to pay monthly, or is there an OSS install for it?
      • You can create your own hub with a raspberry pi [raspberrypihq.com].

        • That or home assistant, though hubitat is a lot easier to use and more reliable than both, and probably will cost you less than an rpi after you've bought all of the accessories that you'd need on an rpi (case, adapter, sdcard, etc).

          • That or home assistant, though hubitat is a lot easier to use and more reliable than both, and probably will cost you less than an rpi after you've bought all of the accessories that you'd need on an rpi (case, adapter, sdcard, etc).

            I'm sorry, how is Hubitat more reliable than Home Assistant? Additionally, you can buy the Home Assistant Blue for $140 and the only other thing you'd need is an adapter for Zwave/Zigbee. So yes, that option it is a little more expensive than Hubitat but not by much. If you already have a server you can just run the whole thing in Docker and buy a $50 USB hub for Zwave/Zigbee.

            • Home assistant crashes quite a bit in my experience, whereas I can't say I've ever had my hubitat ever crash or quit working unexpectedly.

              • Home assistant crashes quite a bit in my experience, whereas I can't say I've ever had my hubitat ever crash or quit working unexpectedly.

                Home Assistant has never crashed on me once, but I don't run it on a Raspberry Pi.

      • Nope, it's just self contained. They're are some optional services that do rely on the cloud (such as the cloud backup feature, which also includes free device replacement if yours gets damaged even outside of the warranty, or the remote management feature) which does cost money, but you can easily do without those and not miss anything. For example if you understand networking you can set up your own remote management, and you can easily script an automatic configuration backup, though it's not really need

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by afidel ( 530433 )

        Nope, there's no monthly fee for basic functionality, you can pay for full remote admin (vs dashboarding which is free) and for a protection service which does cloud backups and includes a device replacement service. Neither of those are required, the monthly fee goes to offset their costs for running servers in AWS or whatever cloud they are on and to provide a recurring revenue source plus it's a hardware replacement plan. Personally I've had zero reason to pay for either service, though with the zwave mi

    • huh. This looks interesting. I am still going through it, but thank you.
    • I bought a habitat to replace my smartthings hub - I like the concept but the UI is a flaky mess compared to the old experience.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by afidel ( 530433 )

        Flaky mess? What specific problems have you had? I've had zero issues with the UI so kinda wondering what shortcomings you're seeing.

      • I bought a habitat to replace my smartthings hub - I like the concept but the UI is a flaky mess compared to the old experience.

        I switched over from SmartThings to Home Assistant. I really love how customizable it is and since it is all open source your options are pretty much limitless.

  • this is part of why I buy vizio tvs now. (Score:4, Informative)

    by WindBourne ( 631190 ) on Thursday June 03, 2021 @10:02PM (#61452618) Journal
    Sometime ago, I had a samsung bluray player. After 3-4 years, the bluray portion updated and then quit playing ANY bluray. Apparently, Samsung decided that our players were not good enough to continue to update, so they just zeroed out the bluray and converted a $200 blueray into a $30 DVD player. So, now, I have a 2015 LCD TV that I will run without internet connectivity, until it dies, while the other 2 are nice new vizios that are continuing to update their simple chromecast OS.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by DMJC ( 682799 )
      Samsung wiped out Youtube on my parents 55" TV. The panel still works great, just useless for videos on the internet.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by evanh ( 627108 )

        Much more likely Google changed Youtube and Samsung never updated the TV to match.

      • That is an improvement likely..

        In general there is no reason to use the crappy internal players on TVs.. just use an external device like chromecast or any of the options, they tend to provide superior experience and are a quite cheap upgrade.

        Though a full media PC setup is of course better for most cases if you want to go for the extra expense.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by hawk ( 1151 )

        >Samsung wiped out Youtube on my parents 55" TV.

        OK, they *can* do something right . . .

    • Apparently, Samsung decided that our players were not good enough to continue to update, so they just zeroed out the bluray

      [Citation required] More than likely there was a bug in the update they didn't fix. You don't need to arbitrarily decide to not support bluray. Even with revoked keys it would only cease playing new titles, not the old ones.

      My over a decade old Samsung bluray player still works. None of the smart stuff does, like the Youtube app, or any of the casting features, but throw in the latest blurays and it works just fine.

      • No citation required for something that I experienced. The machine only plays DVDs. No longer care why because we gave it away. We have 2 sonys players, XBox 360 and 1S (which does bluray). These work.

        • I'm not claiming you didn't experience something. I'm asking for a citation of your version of why it happened. Got some evidence that samsung purposefully bricked Bluray capabilities on your specific older device? I mean it's an act that doesn't make any sense in the slightest. If it did I wouldn't call you out on it.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      The best thing to do when stuff like that happens is to return the device as faulty.

      Your right to do it will depend on your legal jurisdiction, or the vendor if you have no legal rights. For example in the UK things must last a "reasonable length of time", which for a $200 bluray player would be at least 6 years. If yours died after 3 you would be entitled to a repair or refund, and it is the vendor who pays out.

      People started doing this a while back. The first high profile case was when Sony removed Linux

      • Not after 2 years and from either Target or Walmart.

        And 1 nice thing about Europe is they can about citizens the way that we did from 30-70s. Now, we are more of a fascists nation.

    • I bought their IPO and sold out quickly once I realized that TCL is eating their lunch - and has the exact same plan - to lock you in to their OS with your TV being the nexus of your home automation system (because phones don't exist).

      The goal there is every kind of monetization they can get and they're very boastful about how much they make on that part, far higher margins than on the devices and with lock-in that makes it hard for you to leave.

      As with everything, you're no longer the customer, you're the

      • correct.
        Would love to find a 'TV', that was simply a monitor with say 5 HDMIs, all with ARC, no tuner, and the ability to show various pix (like all 4 HDMIs in 4 different boxes) and then have it come with a seperate tuner box, have a RCA/ear plug-HDMI box, and perhaps offer up something like Chromecast/Google TV, I would buy it.
        Fact is, that tuners are about to be upgraded, while players, and network always are.

        This way, true competition can exist.

  • When the wrote the z-wave and zigbee specs, the paring process was set in stone; you literally can't migrate a device between two different hubs without re-pairing them.

    AFAIK this is still the way it is.

    • This is incorrect. ZWave supports secondary hubs, that can be promoted to the primary.

      • I've been using Z-Wave for a long time, and I'd challenge you or anyone to actually get this to work.

        In real life, devices are paired to a hub. If that hub dies you're screwed and you have to exclude and re-pair all your devices, period.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Cyberax ( 705495 )
          I'm working on a Go port of OpenZWave for integration into HomeAssistant. I debug my stuff right now through a USB stick, that is added as the secondary controller to my network (yes, to SmartThings). It absolutely works, but it's thoroughly undocumented and took some tries. On the bright side, all devices that I have support it just fine (water valves, switches, various sensors, ZUno-based devices).
    • Z-Wave paring is not permanent. Every z-wave device can be reset to factory default then paired with a new hub.

  • Ah yes (Score:3)

    by DMJC ( 682799 ) on Thursday June 03, 2021 @10:35PM (#61452672)
    The internet of Scams. Welcome to the future!!! It's a dystopian nightmare of capitalism run amok. Seriously though, can we get tech companies to just open this stuff up to open source firmware reflashing.

    • It totally is. Basically, it's this, and I'm going out of my way to make this as simple as possible: You have something that works. You have media that works with it. Finally some asshole pushes an update that breaks it. Or they discontinue some service (hard-coded proprietary NTP servers anyone?). Or they decide you have to "upgrade" for a fee (basically any EA Sports game released in the last decade). They cut off support. They terminate servers that they've engineered the programs to not work without. Or

    • Or people could learn how to build their own.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mjwx ( 966435 )

      The internet of Scams. Welcome to the future!!! It's a dystopian nightmare of capitalism run amok.

      The EU will pretty much be the only one interested in stopping this. So if this dystopian nightmare doesn't come to pass, thank an EU member.

  • Matter (Score:2)

    by crow ( 16139 )

    Well, there's the new Matter standard that Google, Amazon, and Apple (among others) are pushing. My understanding is that this is supposed to make your smart devices work with anything that uses that protocol, so you're not at the mercy of any vendor that might decide to stop providing the required cloud services. I don't know the details, and compatible products aren't out yet, but at least it sounds like a much better solution than buying into a vendor-specific ecosystem.

    With it being an open standard,

  • I have a 2 week old, brand shiny new Samsung 5G phone and it comes with the SmartThings app pre installed. 2 weeks from 'buy me' to 'bugger off' is pretty darned quick.

    • Can you uninstall it or will it be there forever taking up space?

      • I just tried and the answer is yes, I can uninstall it.

        There are 18 more pre-install Samsung apps I never use, sitting in a folder. If I run out of space for photos, I'll know where to go a'deletin'.

    • Not that quick. SmartThings is still a product and you can buy it. This is the old v1 hub, the v2/v3 are still fine. I have one, works great and I'd buy it again because I understand it won't be supported forever. I get another 2-3 years out of it and I'm fine, then I'll get something else or roll my own with Home Assistant.

  • Another good reason NOT to have a smart house (Score:3)

    by shubus ( 1382007 ) on Thursday June 03, 2021 @11:30PM (#61452790)
    Yes, you never know when some company is going to pull the rug out from under you and leave you high & dry....especially nowadays where everything and I mean EVERYTHING needs to be connected to the Internet....and run by company servers, of course. I'm throwing out my iOT toothbrush tonite before Samsung won't let me brush my teeth!

  • Our house came with SmartThings installed and a bunch of switches had been replaced with smart switches. Unfortunately whenever we have a power blip, one of the $35 switches bails. There’s no reactivating it so until I replace it with an old fashioned switch, it either doesn’t work at all or clicks at me until I pull it.

    [John]

  • HomeAssistant is a great alternative (Score:5, Informative)

    by SirAbbadon ( 6783790 ) on Thursday June 03, 2021 @11:47PM (#61452832)
    If you have this nightmare in your life, consider HomeAssistant. It's open source and runs entirely on your own hardware. If you have to migrate everything by hand, you might as well migrate it to something that is less likely to brick you again. Tying yourself and your home automation to any of these big tech giants is asking for trouble. They are in it for themselves, not their customers, and certainly not their products. They have a history of bricking devices that WE purchased. And they get to keep doing it because we KEEP GIVING THEM MONEY. So, simply, stop it.
    • Nah. I dig SmartThings, I use it as sort of a front-end bridge. Then I have Home Assistant behind it for more complex shit. I don't know what the nightmare is, if you have an old-ass SmartThings hub it will stop working? I have a new SmartThings hub and I know fully well they will stop supporting it at some point. It's not like it cost an arm and a leg, I can afford to buy a new one ca. 2025.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by mr5oh ( 1050964 )
        I have V3. Still every update breaks breaks things. Most of the time the only solution osnton remove and re-pair devices. This also messes up to every automation and scene that used to control those devices. Not to mention the things Smart Things just plain can't do. I'm on my second thermostat, both of which connect to and are certified for use with Smart Things. However if you tried to automate of use them in scenes they would just ignore Smart Things. The you have there support that only seems to have
        • I have a SmartThings V3 hub. The updates have never broken anything, I've never had to "remove and re-pair" any devices. Having previously used the Wink v2 hub, the SmartThings hub has been a welcome stable environment for my devices. It has been very reliable.

          • Same here.. I had a Vera before for years (two, actually) and it worked fine but it's just such a small company they can't really keep up. SmartThings has worked pretty well for me, no major(*) complaints. I have a nice Home Assistant integration I use for stuff and it works well that way too. For example, integration with my DSC Envisalink setup works great in home assistant.

            * - one moderate gripe I have is about that risible, shitty situation some tiny-brained idiot at Samsung set up where they had two di

    • I agree, but HomeAssistant is not really a great alternative. Flashing firmware? Pasting github URLs? IP addresses? Ports? WTF is a Port, can I drink it? It's a non-starter for 99% of the population who have shown to be incredibly technically inept.

      People keep coming back to platforms like Smartthings because in exchange for a bit of money they plug it in and it works. If you want this to stop you need to provide an actual alternative.

      • If you want this to stop you need to provide an actual alternative.

        2021 is the year of the open-source...hub.*

        *Said only slightly tongue in cheek, for a group where desktop is a meme and counting with good reason. With that said unlike desktops or tablets home automation hasn't been around long enough or cohesive enough to work out any kind of usability standards. It's basically trial and error and see what sticks.

    • If you want an easier-to-use alternative to SmartThings, then look at Hubitat. It has local processing (internet connectivity not required) and it easier to use for people who aren't tech wizards.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by kbahey ( 102895 )

      Home Assistant is great. I have been running it for over two years. I like the functionality, extensive number of integrations, customizability, and so on.

      What bugs me about it is how they handle the lifecycle of the product.
      In late 2020, they made a crucial error: they mandated Python 3.8, even though the stable Raspbian does not have that version yet.

      See, I installed HA using a python venv. If I am forced to use a new version of the language, that means I have to a) install the new language version, usual

  • I do not understand, they thus reduce the cost of their production ??? But you will also lose customers, you need to invest in software development (visit this blog [computools.com]), because such big competitors as Apple and now Xiaomi will not give an opportunity for a mistake

  • Go with open source (Score:4, Informative)

    by kbg ( 241421 ) on Friday June 04, 2021 @04:49AM (#61453188)

    When I started looking at making my home into a smart home, I researched all of the protocols, devices and software on the market and saw that the only thing that made sense was to go with open source, local server and use a common and a tried protocol, because that is the only way to make any of this future proof and independent of the whim of some company. So I ended up with running Home Assistant on a small Raspherry PI and using WiFi as the main protocol. I bought a bulk of cheap chinese WiFi devices (SonOff) and reprogrammed them with an open source firmware ESPHome. I could not be more happier, this just works and has basically unlimited options, but of course you have to be a little tech savy for this option.

  • Soooo (Score:3)

    by Impy the Impiuos Imp ( 442658 ) on Friday June 04, 2021 @08:42AM (#61453556) Journal

    Am I missing something? You own this equipment and they are just going to shut it off?

    How is that legal?

    Mere planned obsolescence is the height of corporate responsibility by comparison.

  • This article is filled with half-truths and outright lies. Arstechnica has become nothing but a clickbait cesspool. For one, Samsung DOES have a migration tool for the SmartThings devices. And, they only discontinued the v1 hub and the other hubs (like the ADT and Nvidia) that were based on the v1 because they have a seriously old core system that was replaced by the v2 and v3 hubs. The new Aeotec hub is just a rebrand of the v3, no physical difference. The new app is simply different from the old one.

  • I predict the poor souls being ditched by this moving over to the opensource Home Asssitant, which has gotten increasingly better since last year - it's now even a supported "Alternate install" by Raspberry PI. Even better is that for anything that can be kept local instead of being an IoT device, you can keep network traffic, to a minimum.

  • Because they, did a dumb thing.

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