While I no longer use Smartthings I keep peaking at what features are added in each new version… I don’t know whether to laugh or cry… today ST got the ability to sort locations… can’t believe the impressive updates (sarcasm)!!
I am soooo happy I moved to HA 
You should have seen the previous one (and the sensational article about it):
I realize that most of their updates are in the cloud but…
The LUA is a huge step forward and it makes it future proof.
BUT
Until the Hub hasn’t got a local API and there isn’t an easy way to locally do a dashboard for control, then it just fails with Samsung’s hunger for your personal data.
The new LUA provides a lot of new way to connect devices, locally! But the forced certification model and the failing cloud to cloud connection it is just not working well.
Another refugee checking in. Glad to see some old faces here!
I took the leap as HomeKit and Siri integration are a big deal in my house. I don’t want to be scrambling when Samsung manages to break the current Homebridge Smartapp (whose developer has fled to Hubitat), and Home Assistant looks like the best alternative.
My strategy:
All advice and experience on this approach welcome.
Going OK so far, but glad I had YAML experience. It is definitely much more responsive than ST/Homebridge, especially for voice commands.
Id offer that you’ll be happier if you bite the bullet and add a Zigbee stick to your plan.
Its only 40-50 more dollars and the SmartThings integration is cloud based. Every act in HA controlling or reading state of SmartThings is a cloud action…
Adding a Zigbee stick is definitely a possibility. However, i want to climb the HA learning curve one one protocol before adding a second. Other than bulbs, almost everything in my house is Z-wave, and many bulbs are on the Hue hub, so Zigbee is a pretty low priority.
Next on my learning list is getting blueprints to work. Right now, i can install them, but they don’t seem to recognize any of my Z-wave devices. I suspect this is related to using Z-Wave JS to MQTT, but I’m not experienced enough to diagnose and fix it - yet. (Heck, if i can figure out Groovy DHs, this should be a snap.)
Personally, I’m holding off on moving my zigbee devices over to HA until the SkyConnect dongle comes out.
I recommend both Sonoff-.branded “ZBBridge-E” and “ZBBridge-P” Zigbee USB dongles from ITead which actually cost less than $20 if you don’t count the shipping + a long USB extension cable. See:
and/or
FYI, you should know while the official Home Assistant SkyConnect USB Stick will be great for early adopters of those wanting to buy new devices using the upcomig Matter/CHIP standard over Thread protocol, the official Home Assistant SkyConnect USB Stick on paper actually performs worse with a large Zigbee network if you will use as a multiprotocol radio with Matter/CHIP over Thread in combination than if you instead buy and use a separate dedicated Zigbee USB dongle. This is totally understandable considering it runs needs to handle the work of two radios, even with the off-loading to System CPU it will do.
So instead consider just buying a separate dedicated Zigbee USB dongle now to use only for Zigbee devices, and then if you want also buy the official Home Assistant SkyConnect USB Stick when it comes out and use that only as a separate dedicated for Matter/CHIP over Thread.
That way you get the best performance and still sponsor Home Assistant by buying their dongle.
There is no point in waiting for Home Assistant SkyConnect USB Stick if want to use Zigbee.
Again, recommend Sonoff-branded “ZBDongle-E” or “ZBDongle-P” from ITead for use with ZHA today:
FYI, even if it is a low priority you should know that installing the ZHA with a new Zigbee USB dongle and moving Philips Hue devices to it is super easy, though Zigbee is much more sensitive to EMF/EMI/RFI interference than what Z-Wave is + have shorter range before your Zigbee network mesh is built out with more Zigbee router devices so suggest read and following all my tips in advance to be sure to have a more pleasant experience setting up a Zigbee network setup/environment in ZHA for the first time, see here:
PS: I originally migrated a lot of Z-Wave devices from SmartThings too before moving my Zigbee devices which were on Philips Hue Bridge, IKEA Trådfri gateway, and Aqara/Xiaomi Gateways.
I started out with still using Smartthings and the Smartthings integration for zwave and zigbee for a little while, just to get used to Home Assistant. It might not be a bad idea to get started this way, temporarily, so you can make 100% sure Home Assistant is right for you before investing in new hardware. Just be aware that issues you have with speed are likely going to be because of the Smartthings cloud, and not Home Assistant.
If you decide you like Home Assistant though I would agree to just get the zigbee stick sooner rather than later, and don’t rely on the Smartthings hub long term. Also, make sure your zigbee stick is not the cheap CC2531 chip, as those don’t work well (the post above from hedda has some great recommendations). It was a night and day difference in processing speed for me versus the Smartthings cloud dependent integration. Once I got my zigbee and zwave sticks, the Smartthings hub was unplugged and I have not used it since. It appears you already are halfway there with the zwave stick so that should give you a pretty good idea already of the processing speed.
I am still hoping that someone at SmartThings will realise that a local API access could save them a lot of money on cloud dependencies and would give a new uplift to the platform with community developers. But it is just a hope. Knowing how sh!t Samsung’s development cycles are, then it will never happen.
(The forced infrastructure is definitely not something what you can push on everything…)
Its not in thier best interest to even try to build it right now.
Id wait and see how Matter support shakes out. In theory if they make the right decisions there matter could theoretically be the protocol… I won’t hold my breath but…
More likely is some industrious community members make an interconnect implementated as an Edge solution.
Ditching Groovy in favor of Lua for DHs gave me some hope for ST…but the use of that red-headed stepchild of JSON for defining rules rekindled my pessimism. Publicly saying they will not be a Matter hub was a huge positioning mistake - they could have positioned ST as the hub that ties it all together again.
Defining everything in YAML with a clean API makes much more sense. I’m still climbing the learning curve on many things due to the richness / complexity of the ecosystem, but the basics are actually much easier to learn.
And just for context - everyone here saw the news yesterday?
https://community.smartthings.com/t/groovy-deprecation-end-of-september-2022/246063?u=nathancu
For anyone who hasn’t read/heard - Sep 30. They actually have a start date for Groovy retirement, announced on Stacey on IoT’s podcast.
Thanks! I haven’t.
SmartThings has made it clear that it (Matter) will not be the protocol. They will use only on their advantage.
There has been some discussions with JDRoberts there and the conclusion is the whole Matter standard is a shambles…
To be honest, I think PR must have a lot of problem with that guy. He always makes shady statements what are not backed by any facts.
The first thing what all of us has learnt from SmartThings, they do not state deadlines for anything.
And this guy does this randomly in public.
By the way, where have Blake Arnold fled to?
I saw Donald Kirker left SmartThings as well. I haven’t seen him joining this discussion yet, but saw a Github commit from him in a custom component’s report.
Thanks for posting this - I hadn’t seen it yet. Boy, timing is everything - looks like I jumped on HA just in time. Time to pick up the pace of migration now that there’s a hard deadline.
The announcement is finally out:
Can’t believe they are finally going for it!