This article was originally written for the Engadget forums. There are many good follow-up comments there if you're interested.
In my previous post about home automation, I outlined the basics of starting out with a ZWave system, using available products that could all work together.
Since then, the product category of home automation - and indeed the entire concept of the Internet of Things - has been getting really big. The #1 overall topic/theme at CES this year was IoT, with dozens of companies announcing products and services. Some even announced brand new proprietary platforms (which is the last thing we need in this area).
I thought it might be good to follow up with my opinions of two of the biggest platforms in this space, as well as some new thoughts I have about the platform I've recommended previously.
SmartThings
Samsung's SmartThings is probably the most popular smart home platform, and for good reason. They were the first company to put a tremendous effort into supporting a wide variety of home automation products. They also created a much more attractive interface than seen previously on competing devices.
I recently picked up a SmartThings hub to try it out, as I was starting to get tired of my old hub, the MCV Vera, and it's not expensive (only $99 on Amazon). I was looking for something that would support more device types, and for something more current and well-designed. I partially found what I was looking for, but I also found something that had me running back to the safety and comfort of my Vera.
I set up my SmartThings hub and added a few lamp modules to it, so I could test out the device without horribly disrupting my entire home and making my wife mad (tip: try not to do that). I also added one of SmartThings' very cool presence sensors, a little thing the size of a thick dog tag, that lets the hub know when you're in the vicinity. In a smart move, SmartThings also lets me add my smartphone as a presence sensor, which adds geofencing to your home automation setup. Very cool, and it all worked great. The Hub could tell when I was out and run things accordingly.
I thought the SmartThings app was very attractive, but a little clunky to get around in. For example, I added two lamps to my hub. If I want to control those lamps directly from the app, there are two places I can go: "Things" and "Lights and Switches." "Things" has a nice, block layout of all the devices you've added to your hub (so it includes the presence sensor and my phone), and I can turn the lamps on/off by tapping the middle of their square, or I can tap the settings gear on each of them to adjust their brightness levels (that annoys me slightly, but it's one tap). The "Lights and Switches" option takes me to a screen with each lamp listed as a "Shortcut" that just turns the lamp on or off, with no option to change the brightness levels. I found this confusing, but it might be ok for others.
In general, I just found it difficult to figure out how to do things in the SmartThings app. Some tasks are clear, like making things happen when a certain trigger occurs. I can make a tripped motion sensor turn on my lights, for example, very easily. But other things, like setting up something I could trigger manually through the app, were difficult, as was simply moving through the app.
I stopped short of adding any more devices for two reasons: first, I have no doubt that they'd work fine, and second, I ran into a dealbreaker: Smartthings is terrible at lighting scenes.
I define scenes essentially as macros. Either a trigger or other manual action initiates the macro, and the scene carries out until it's done. In my home, the most common type of scene is one that turns on a bunch of lights to present dim levels. I'll hit a button on a remote or choose a scene using my phone, and all the lights in my living room will turn on, for example. Another button dims those lights to a late-evening TV-watching level. Another dims them to extremely low movie levels. SmartThings, at best, can only dim all lights in a scene to the same exact level.
Technically, I could accomplish what I wanted with a series of apps, as I was informed by users in the Smartthings community, but I found the process to be a huge hassle, and even if I accomplished it the scenes would have been very annoying to operate from the app, ending up in a very long list on a page a couple levels deep.
Because of this, I went back to Vera, which makes scenes extraordinarily easy right out of the box. I can even set up scenes that will set lights at one dim level one moment, then another level the next. Part of it, I'll admit, was the familiarity of the Vera system and setup process, but I was surprised that Smartthings did not have the equivalent of scenes that Wink and Vera do.
Speaking of...
Wink
The Wink hub from Quirky (and, largely, Home Depot), is probably the best value of the hubs on the market. It retails for $50, and I picked one up on Amazon for about $38 (doesn't seem to be available at the moment). Like the SmartThings hub, it talks to a really nice variety of devices like Hue, Nest, and Dropcam, as well as a bunch of more traditional ZWave devices (light switches, thermostats, door locks, etc.).
In my opinion, the Wink app is much easier to use and wrap your head around than SmartThings. The home tab lists your devices, the shortcut tab lists what I would call scenes, the robots tab is where the automation happens, and you set up events to trigger devices around your home. The interface is very clean and well designed.
But there are limitations.
Currently, the Wink hub doesn't have support for as many devices as SmartThings. One of the big omissions, in my opinion, is support for a hardware remote to have around the house. In my current setup, I'm using something called a Minimote to initiate scenes in various rooms in my house. It's nice for when I don't want to dig out my phone. But these don't work with Wink (they do with Smartthings).
Another drawback for me - and one that applies to SmartThings as well - is that both platforms are entirely dependent on the cloud services that run them. If you don't have an internet connection, you're back to the dark ages where you had to actually get off your butt, walk over, and flick a light switch! The horror! But to be completely serious, this can be a big deal. If your SmartThings or Wink hub loses its connection to the services that run them, you cannot control your lights and none of your triggers are activated. Even if you have a reliable internet connection, these companies can experience outages of their own, and there's been talk that Wink has had their issues with this. While this issue may not sound like a big deal, there are some things you may rely on with these systems. For example, my automation system feeds my cats for me at regular intervals. If Wink's servers are down, I don't want my cats to miss a meal or two. You might also end up with lights on all day because they didn't turn off at sunrise like you wanted them to. These systems really need to be rock solid and reliable, and despite being a big cloud services proponent, I'm not wild about how these companies have structured their services. I also think it makes the control of your smart home slower, since your signals have to go over the internet and back.
There are a couple other issues I have with Wink. I don't like that when I set up a robot, I can't make it initiate a shortcut (scene). Essentially, I have to recreate the scene all over again, resulting in a duplication of work in a lot of cases. I'm not sure why they didn't simplify things and add that ability.
The other huge problem I have with the Wink app is that everything in it is absolutely enormous. The icons all take up about 1/6th of the screen, so even on my Nexus 6 the most items I can see on my screen at one time is 4, plus half of two more. That's absurd, in my opinion. I have 43 lights and lamps in my automation system, and the thought of scrolling forever through them all doesn't appeal to me. This app is very pretty, but it boggles my mind that they made these icons so gigantic.
One of my absolute favorite things about the Wink system is that I can grant limited or full access to other users. For example, if I had a teenager in my house, I could give them access to the devices in their room and not the whole house. Even here, though, there are design issues. I can either give access to the entire system or specific devices. I can't give access to shortcuts, for example, which seems like an oversight.
I found so much to like about the Wink hub, but I had reliability issues, slow response times, and several major design issues as described above. I think they could improve the device, but we'll have to see.
MCV Vera Lite
Which brings me back to the MiCasaVerde Vera Lite. It's the hub I was recommending in my first post, and the one I'm still using. However, after about 3 years of using it I'm starting to have a change of heart about the platform.
First is the stability. For the most part, it works great. It'll be reliable and consistent. But if there's a hiccup, things can spiral pretty fast. For example, if the system thinks it noticed a delay or a bad route at some point during the day, it'll initiate a heal process in the middle of the night (about 2-3am, I believe) to try to fix its self. In theory, this is great! A system that fixes its self! But I recently had this go horribly wrong, and suddenly nothing worked right or wouldn't work at all. Fortunately, a call to MCV support got me back up and running with a system backup, but it still gave me concerns about the platform.
The other problem I have with the Vera platform is that when I recommend it, I'm recommending something different from what I use. See, the Vera product I have is almost 3 years old and is running version 5 of their software. The current version of the Vera Lite being sold on Amazon is running version 7. One would assume this would be a good thing, but I personally think that the new version is one of the most horribly designed user interfaces I've ever seen. It has the worst use of white space in the history of mankind, for example. Both in the web interface and the mobile apps, every device seems to take up a third of the screen. It's the same problem I had with Wink but twice as bad. Even worse, in some cases there's even less on these device tabs than before, meaning that in their efforts to modernize their platform, they removed features. You can see in the image at the right how terrible the UI is. I can see, at most, one and a half devices at once! I have no idea who designed this, but an Ive or Duarte they are not. And yes, that portion that says "Click on * to select favorites" is a static block that goes down to the point where "Dimmable Switch" is cut off. They really devoted about 1/8 of the usable space to a tool tip that cannot be removed. Astonishing.
I'm still recommending Vera despite their UI issues. SmartThings and Wink have the best cross-platform device support and the prettiest apps, but they both require a constant cloud services connection, and SmartThings can't do scenes correctly. Wink and Vera do scenes well, but Vera is starting to become a bit of a mess.
I'm hoping that someone will come along and fix all of this, but I absolutely do not expect that company to be Apple or Google. For now, I still think you're best off with a Vera Lite or Vera 3, but many users will be completely happy with a Smartthings or Wink hub. Personally, I really disliked using the Smartthings app, but other people might not have the same issues I did.
I still think you can put together a fantastic home automation system using products on the market right now. The current hubs that control them all have definite quirks, but there should be something for everyone.