SmartThings or Wink?

mitch23

Hi There, smart home is such evolving over the past few years, and it just keeps on improving. Technology is at its finest if I may say.
I only have an Alexa at home and I'm thinking of adding a smart hub to make my home smarter. So far I've heard very good feedback for SmartThings and Wink. Check the Wireshopper review for reference. They both offer a range of connectivity options. The only decision breaker perhaps is the failsafe option of SmartThings because of its AA batteries. Well, I don't think that's a major redesign for the Wink but they should be looking at that. Any other personal experiences with SmarthThings or Wink?

PsyVision

SmartThings cloud execution was a killer for me, no thanks.

Wink seem to be going bust, there is an almost daily stream of people joining the Hubitat group on Facebook that have dumped Wink.

I am a Hubitat user myself, everything runs locally and fast.  SmartThings has a better mobile application so I can see the appeal of that however.

mushii

Wink is in huge problems currently. Their staff have reportedly not been paid for 3 months and they owe the IRS over $1.7 million in unpaid taxes and owes the California State over $500,000. Their servers are frequently offline too. I would look elsewhere than Wink for HA.

Puntoboy

I have, in the last week, installed a Home Assistant (Hass.io) server and added all my devices to it. I have a mixture, Hive, Philips Hue, Sonoff, Shelly and SmartLife devices and they are so far working well within the system. Haven't done much so far but I have set it up using a ZigBee gateway and have a Hue Dimmer switch (not connected to the Hue Hub) that is controlling a light in our ensuite that also turns on a Sonoff switch which controls the fan. Works very well.

Once I am happy with the system I will migrate all of my Hue devices to the ZigBee gateway and then I won't be reliable on the Hue cloud service. Eventually I will do that with all my devices.

mushii

I am a Homeseer user for pretty much the reasons that the above 2 posters have quoted. There you have 3 different options of local control that are all pretty well respected solutions.

dave77

I've had a Hubitat for about a week. Apparently a steeper learning curve than SmartThings but I prefer everything local as mentioned above.

What exactly do you want to do? You can do some basic stuff with Routines in Alexa.

Or use a UPS

xxGBHxx

I use Hubitat on a UPS too and have done for about a year. So far I find it just works and I've not had to do too much hacking about with it. FAR superior to the Vera I had before (which was an ungodly mess)

It's still a work in progress but it's got a great community around it and it's fast as anything being completely locally based (unless you add things in that need the Internet). I love the fact everything carries on working if the internet goes down.

YMMV as they say.

G

Puntoboy

Sounds like Hubitat and Home Assistant are similar.

dave77

HA seems to be better supported at the moment, which zigbee/z-wave usb stick do you use on yours?

mushii

I use an Aeon Labs Aeotec Gen 5 stick