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Review: Samsung SmartThings

PhoneChanger
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Back in October I was fortunate enough to be considered for a trial with Samsung SmartThings, however due to come logistical issues with the delivery it only arrived last week! (don’t ask), however thought it would be good, considering it is still a tech product to share some thoughts on the device, it’s set-up, and its day to day use.

 

Samsung provided us with a full starter kit, this comprises of a hub, a Multi-Sensor, Motion Sensor, Presence Sensor, and a Power Outlet. At the time of writing these are available directly from Samsung, or via your local electrical retailer for £199. You can of course add more sensors and items to the hub at any time, but Samsung believe the starter pack should contain everything you need to get started.

 

The kit is designed to work with a smartphone, iOS and Android devices are supported out of the box, with an application for Windows Phone in the pipeline.

 

Items

 

The Multi-sensor can cover a variety of uses, it can tell you if you have left a door or window open, whether the temperature in a room is too high / low, or whether entry has been detected (via the ability to detect vibrations). The sensor comes in 2 parts so my initial thoughts are that this was intended for a door / window. I have tried this on our back door, and it works well, though doesn’t detect the vibration when our kitten either runs into the glass, or jumps at the door to get out. It is quite a large sensor though and isn’t nearly as discrete as our alarm door sensor. It comes with the required screws to attach to the window / door, etc but since this is a trial and we have to return them I have just used to Velcro strips.

 

The Motion Senor detects movement in a room which can then trigger an alert to your smartphone. This can be used in conjunction with other smart electronics such as turning on the lights when you enter the room, or set an alarm to trigger. For this to work however more investment is needed, I found the only use to this was to turn on a lamp using the also-included smart plug, as without having smart bulbs, etc. this cannot talk to any other devices. It does work out of the box with 3rd party products such as Philips Hue bulbs, but I do not have any of these at the moment (nor do I have plans to acquire them… yet…)

 

Next we have the presence sensor, this can be attached to anything, childs backpack, your car keys, pets collar, anything you can think of that would go in and out of the house. This enables the application to know when the user is close to your home, so the app will notify you when someone enters and leave the house, this can again be linked in to other smart appliances to enable lights to come or, or for those with smart heating it could even turn the heating on or off. Once good point for this is users phones can also be used as a presence sensor.

 

The power outlet is probably the item most people would have use for straight out of the box without considering any 3rd party add-ons. You can use the app to set the socket to come on at certain times of the day, I use this for the auto-lighting of a lamp as covered earlier, but could be used to turn on a coffee machine every morning 10 minutes before you wake, so as soon as your up your favourite beverage is ready and waiting.

 

More to follow (plus photos soon)

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jonsie
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Anonymous
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This is very cool @PhoneChanger. You are basically building a domotic space with appliances! Can't wait for you further reviews, maybe a video of how it all works? That'd be amazing!

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Chris_K
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I love this smart home stuff. I know these days some folk say technology has went too far and it's taking away a human element but things like this that automate and simplify your life can only be a good thing. Waking up to freshly brewed coffee, having the lights come on as soon as you walk through the door, having the heating come on after coming home from the freezing cold outside... Those can only be good things.

Looking forward to seeing more slight_smile


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Daddydoink
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I think this is a really useful review - thank you. I might pass it around colleagues in the workplace, as we are looking at IoT as part of beaconing.
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Anonymous
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Very good application of this smart technology at larger scale @Daddydoink, how would you apply it at the workplace ?

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Toby
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How are you getting on with SmartThings @PhoneChanger?

Fancy writing a great device review or O2 forum guide? Send me a message!

Get involved:
• New to the community? This is how you get help.
• Want to know who we are? Come and say hi to us.
• Want to have a chat? Drop me a direct message.

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Anonymous
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This is all quite interesting. How have you found it so far @PhoneChanger? Is it as useful as it seems or technology gone mad?

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jonsie
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I leave the house I always like to double check the lights and heating are off and that windows and doors are locked....I'm not sure I want to be dependent on this sort of technology at my time of life.

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PhoneChanger
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Well its been a few days, so thought i'd update on the journey so far...

 

Setup

 

Well setting up the SmartThings is anything but smart; the application isn’t the most user-friendly. The initial setup screen requests you type in the hub code which is written on the documentation in the box, you then get prompted to search for any extra smart things, such as your sensors. Once this is done you need to go into each sensor, and tell the application where it is, and what you want it to do. The software needs some work, it is almost impossible to navigate with any ease.

 

The time it takes to detect each of the additional smart items runs into minutes, rather than the seconds a lot of people will expect, I found this to be the case even when the extras were all in the same room as the hub, there is obviously a lot of work going on behind the scenes between the device and the hub that the customer doesn’t see. However, once connected, the connection does appear to be solid.

 

Just as an example I used the smart plug to turn on the lamp. I had hoped the application would allow this to be done at a set time, for example every day when I get home around 6pm, but nope; there are no options for this. I can turn it on / off manually, or when my phone is in the immediate area of the house (using geo-location), but something as basic as a timed function is missing.

 

This doesn’t even begin to cover how much more complicated things get if you want to add some 3rd party smart items, for example anyone who has a Phillips Hue lighting system would need to link the Samsung hub to the Phillips hub to controls the lights, so I can see a house of the future being a “house of hubs” something which isn’t ideal.

 

I can understand why manufacturers want to keep their own items working with their own hubs, but if you’re going to advertise 3rd party support as being a selling point, it really should work out of the box.

 

Day to day usage

 

I have the Multi Sensor attached to my back door, this being a room in the house to the outside that doesn’t have an alarm sensor on the doors (though it is covered by a PIR sensory), so when the door is closed everything is fine and the sensor reports ‘closed’ along with the temperature at the sensor point (useful, but I don’t quite see the point when these sensors will mainly be used next to external access points). When the door is opened the status in the application changes to ‘open’, yet no alert is sent to my phone (I’m sure this is something in the set-up, but it does show an example of how the setup is far from straight forward).

 

I have the plug in use to power the aforementioned lamp; this works well, and reports the appliance current as well as status (on/off)

 

The hub does send some useful notifications to your phone without any extra setup, just yesterday it notified me it lost power for 1 hour (a street-wide power failure) and when it was subsequently restored.

 

The Smart Tag I’ve yet to find a use for. I can see this being useful for families checking when their child is home / goes out, but for me, when my phone does this, has no use so far. I did think about attaching it to my kitten’s collar, but there is a good chance it would return broken, if it returned at all.

 

Motion sensor, this is set up in the living room, I did trial using this with the smart plug so once it detected someone walking past the lamp would illuminate, this again works well, but I feel would be better with more smart appliances.

 

Conclusion

 

I can certainly see the usage, and I can see many benefits, but I can’t help but feel that there are elements missing. The application certainly requires improvement to become more user friendly, and unless you plan on installing Z-Wave, Hue, or Zigbee bulbs in every room of your house (and don’t mind trying to find your phone each time to turn a light on or off) there is no ability to control general lights (such as ceiling lights), the easiest solution is the smart plugs for lamps, etc. but at £45 per plug, it would work out to be an expensive alternative.

 

While the starter kit does have some good initial items, customers should be prepared to have an additional budget to cover extras, as out of the box functionality isn’t there.

 

One good point is at the moment there are no on-going costs, once you’ve purchased your starter kit, it’s yours for good (well you may need to replace the batteries every year or so)…

 

If anyone has a questions, or any ideas of things I could try with the device, please do let me know 🙂

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