Just checking to see how many of us are out there. I recently added amazon echo and have been playing with the skills example. I am able to get it to send mqtt message and update my smartthing devices for things not support with echo+smartthings out of the box. Like setting and changing modes on my thermostat and building a report of what is going on in the house.
Pretty cool stuff.
I have a Smarthings hub, and one of their multi-sensors, but have yet to actually play with it. I intended to use it exclusively, but had a Raspberry Pi laying around, and instead went the HASS route.
Can I ask what your experience has been with Smarthings + MQTT + HASS has been like? Also, I’m trying to understand if there is any advantage to setting up my Smarthings hub. From what I can tell, all my ZWave devices seem to work in HASS…
I started with smartthings first. I have had hub v1 since July of 2015. Since I am a programmer I have done a lot with it. But I never liked the phone app or the presence detectors.
I started playing with Hass this summer and was planning to get a zwave USB device for it and move most of my device to hass. Not all of them are z-wave though
I am a programmer and I like to tinker both ST and hass allows me to tinker.
I also started building my own devices with arduino compatible nodemcu boards , I built a sprinkler and a garage door opener and since they are wifi enabled I got them to work with hass. When I discover mqtt, I did a reinstall of hass with the AIO on a new raspberry Pi and began building a mqtt based hass system. Eventual getting my thermostats , lights switches and door contacts all in hass with mqtt. The hass iTunes module handle presence and its better than ST because Gives me specific location with zones,
The advantage to ST as a controller is that it handle zwave and zigbee devices. Enter Echo and its working out of the box, “turn my back yard lights on” works. I never messed with zwave on hass and I know the kit device that come with st are not zwave so they won’t work directly with hass.
Another smartthings+mqtt+hass user here. I’ve been pretty happy with my setup. I have no experience with z-wave on Haas but find it pretty easy to setup in smartthings. I also have a few zigbee bulbs so ST can also connect to those. I like hass for it’s flexibility in writing scripts. Much easier than trying to automate things in hass.
Another benefit is when a hass upgrade doesn’t go well or when my pi sd card gets corrupted (just happened this weekend) I have a backup way to control devices.
Phil
@Hansen8601 Thanks for the input. I am new HASSio user. Just installed the Smartthings bridge addon on hassio.
Thanks!
I don’t know the details of Hass.io, but to start you will need to run through the usage steps at https://github.com/stjohnjohnson/smartthings-mqtt-bridge. When I started it wasn’t obvious to me where to do some of the steps. Most steps are done via the smartthings console via the IDE at https://graph.api.smartthings.com. Once the IDE work is done you can then configure what to send to Hass in the smartthings app.
Once installed and configured you are able to control devices from both hass and ST. They will stay in sync, showing the correct device status in both places.
@Hansen8601 thanks for the response. I went ahead and set everything up. I can see notifications under “recent activity” on Smartthings SmartApp. Also, my MQTT broker says MQTT bridge is connected.
As far as I can tell everything is connecting. However, devices from my smartthings are not showing up on Home Assistant. Is there anything else I need to do on the home assistant side to make my smarthings devices appear on home assistant?
Another question I have is: Which one should I connect my devices to? I have a USB zigbee stick on Home Assistant. So I can connect my zigbee bulb to either home assistant or smartthings. Which one should I choose. Or, can I connect to any controller (home assistant or smarthings) and the light bulb will show up on the other?
Sorry just confused about how they all fit together. I appreciate the help in getting me started.
Edit: just found this https://home-assistant.io/blog/2016/02/09/Smarter-Smart-Things-with-MQTT-and-Home-Assistant/
That’s a great link to get you going. I think that’s the one I originally used.
Now that I’ve read you have a USB ZigBee stick I want to point a few things out. You would have to connect devices to smartthings for the setup we’re discussing to work. Connecting via the USB ZigBee would allow ST control. Is there a reason you want to use ST in addition to HA? I’m pretty close to buying a USB ZigBee stick and ditching ST because the reliability is terrible. It seems like the hub is down once a week and I don’t have control The only thing holding me back is that I have HA running in docker and would have to go back to something with a USB port to make the USB stick work.
@Hansen8601 First, just a bit confused with two of your sentences because to me they seem conflicting to me.
So should I connect the devices to ST or USB?
I am just starting out with HA. So I decided to try both ST and HASS. My aim is to ultimately just build on HASS, which is getting better and better every day. I have tried HASS on Ubuntu with HUSBZB-1 and HASSio.
I have not figured out HASS completely. There is so much to learn. One advantage of ST right now would be voice control of devices with google assistant. Is this possible with HASS (I think it is).
Also, I have seen reliability issues with HASS as well. I am still trying to figure it out.
You may have figured this out already, but in case not, what I was trying to say is that smarthings needs to be in control if you want to use both smarthings and hass. As far as I know, you can’t connect ZigBee/zwave devices directly to hass and then control it via the smarthings app.
Thanks. I figured it out. I am going to connect all my sensors to HASSio and use smartthings only for a few things: harmony hub etc.