My Smartthings Divorce

This post is intended share my experience migrating from Smartthings/webCoRe to Home Assistant/Node-red. While there are some complexities it is a relatively smooth transition and one that I believe well worth the time and effort invested. Hopefully, this helps others who decide to take the leap. I also want to thank those people whose posts, YouTube channels and other information helped me prepare for this transition, as well as the broader Home Assistant community. The ones that I found myself turning to the most were: https://smarthomepursuits.com/how-to-migrate-from-smartthings-to-home-assistant/, https://slacker-labs.com/ and more broadly https://community.home-assistant.io/ . These are great resources for the details to make the move.

Before I share my journey let me describe my starting point. I had set up my house using a combination of Smartthings devices (buttons, motion sensors, multi-purpose sensors, smart bulbs), Ecolink/eWelink devices (buttons, smart plugs and multi-purpose sensors) and TP-Link/Kasa (switches, dimmers and smart bulbs). The Smartthings and Ecolink/eWelink devices are all Zigbee based and the TP-Link/Kasa are Wi-Fi based although I discovered a rogue Z-Wave device. I was able to manage and control these all in the Smartthings app using automations and virtual switches as well as handling the more complex needs in webCoRe. This all worked ā€œOKā€ but was not as smooth as I wanted plus the dependency on the cloud caused issues when Smartthings services were having issues.

I started my move to HA due to the uncertainty around webCoRe. I decided Node-red was the direction I wanted to go, to use it to replace all my complex webCoRe automations as well as the Smartthings app-based automations. I had many time & state based automations that I could not easily do within the app without a lot of gymnastics and the more I read about Node-red I could see a path that would allow me to do everything in one place. My first approach was to try to use the Samsung Automation Studio but I could never get this to work. Plus, the palette for running on Node-red standalone was not as full featured as I wanted/needed. (This is unfortunate as I believe Node-red is the best platform for these types of implementations). The more I read about the Node-red integration in HA plus the Smartthings integration I saw a path forward. A bonus was the ability to create custom dashboards in Lovelace that comes with the HA setup.

This initial step was pain free and I had everything moved in a weekend. The Smartthings integration is a cloud push integration so I still depended on the Smartthings cloud but I was able to create multiple flows (Node-red terminology) that managed everything I have. I really enjoy Node-red and can create useful dashboards in HA Lovelace that are great looking on a phone as well as others that are targeted for larger displays. There was still a noticeable but mostly tolerable lag with some of the automations however this plus the issues with the Smartthings cloud finally reached a breaking point a couple weeks ago, pushing me to commit to a complete local Home Assistant setup.

Side note 1: I am running Home Assistant on a Raspberry Pi 4, 8G ram with a 120G SSD. I have this mounted on the wall in a utility closet in the middle of my 1 level home. I am running on Wi-Fi although many people state that HA is unstable on Wi-Fi, but I have not seen any issues in my few months of running this way. This setup was good because my Smartthings V3 hub was also mounted in the same closet and was on my Wi-Fi network. I am running a Google mesh Wi-Fi setup with 1 primary node and 2 satellite nodes with create coverage through out my house. I can stream 4k video throughout my house and this combination of speed/signal strength may be why my Wi-Fi HA setup works so well. The Zigbee smart plugs I mentioned earlier control a few lights but mainly function as Zigbee repeaters as do the Smartthings smart bulbs. This distinction became important when began moving off my Smartthings hub.

To begin moving all my Zigbee devices off my Hub meant I needed a new radio to handle this function. Based on everything I read I decided to go with the Nortek HUSBZB-1. It is both a Zigbee as well as a Z-wave radio and HA has integrations for both. I discovered that I had one Z-Wave dimmer installed so this was needed for me to fully move off my Smartthings hub.

Installing the HUSBZB-1 is straightforward and there are multiple How-to articles available. Once I had it connected to my Pi, I installed the ZHA integration (Zigbee Home Assistant). Again, this was based upon what I read although there are some other options. Once I had this up and running the real fun began.

I began by moving the devices in one room from Smartthings to ZHA. This room only 3 devices, all Zigbee ā€“ a Smartthings button and smart bulb plus an Ecolink smart plug. This allowed me to learn the nuances of the ZHA integration as well as how to deal with my button inputs. The Smartthings button provides status on single and double press events as well as press and hold. I use these states to trigger certain things. The nomenclature is slightly different with ZHA vs Smartthings, so I needed to adapt any Node-red flows accordingly. For example, I have a flow that runs everyday at 7 am, reading the battery status and sending me a notification. With 30+ battery devices I want to make sure I keep an eye on these devices. In Smartthings this entity comes in as ā€œā€¦.batteryā€ with the value reporting as a percentage. In ZHA this is ā€œā€¦powerā€. It is small things like this that will break flows and I wanted to understand what to expect once I moved to the rest of the house. All of these devices are in a guest room so I could take my time.

Side note 2: I used the Smartthings IDE page to delete the devices from my Smartthings setup. I then disabled those same devices inside the Home Assistant Smartthings integration. In most cases I needed to actively reset the devices to pairing mode but some seemed to switch to pairing mode when they were no longer connected to the hub.

After I had everything working in this room, I then began my next big step. As most of my smart plugs were functioning as repeaters, I began moving this off the Smartthings hub and over to ZHA. I did this one at a time in most cases and while this may be slower, I felt that I could better manage any impacts to my total home automation. I did eventually ā€œbreakā€ some of the mesh connections in the Smartthings Zigbee mesh network during this process but nothing serious (a garage door sensor was offline for a day for example).

Once I had all these smart plugs moved over, I then tackled my biggest challenge. This involved multi-purpose sensors, motion sensors, smart bulbs, smart plugs and buttons. There were more affected flows that I needed to update as well but based upon what I learned with my first room it was straightforward. During the entire move some of my flows were a bit messy. For example, I have a number of buttons throughout my house that I manage within one flow. By moving over a room/area at a time I could update the affected portions and leave the unaffected portion running as normal. Again, the focus was to keep the affected area and devices at a manageable level so that I could update everything at one time, test it and then move to the next room/area. By moving my smart plugs over and only moving the smart bulbs as I worked on those rooms, I kept the original Zigbee mesh operating and had enough coverage with the new mesh to smoothly add the devices.

Once I had all my Zigbee devices moved off the Smartthings hub, verifying that all my automations were working I then began updating my dashboards. I saved these for last as these are main for viewing the status throughout the house. I do trigger specific automations from specific dashboards but the triggers are virtual switches that are managed within Node-red. I feel like I spent as much time cleaning up the broken entities on my dashboards as I did the moving off of one controller to another. This is definitely the boring stuff as I was sitting at a pc, making the updates. When I moved the devices over, I was getting up, moving from room to room, so the effort was broken up.

My last activity was to move the lone Z-Wave dimmer. To be honest, I wasnā€™t aware this device was Z-Wave until I started the move off of the Smartthings hub but fortunately my choice of the Nortek HUSBZB-1 and this move was straightforward with one hitch. While with Zigbee I could simply delete the device in Smartthings, set it in pairing mode and then add it in HA with Z-Wave you must formally exclude it on the old hub, to then add it on another. Other than this one snag this final device move was smooth as well.
Now that I have completed the move my first impression is everything is much snappier. I have several lighting controls that are based upon motion, doors being open, other lights that are on or off, etc. In the past, some automations would have a noticeable lag when triggered. Now, they happen as I would expect, with all running as soon as triggered. I have not dropped my internet connection to the outside world to insure everything runs locally (it should) yet. Once I do, I will provide an update.

Feel free to message me about any of the details above.

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This is exactly what I want to doā€¦100%! Iā€™m just to new to HA to even attempt that. I have problems with the most basic stuff still. However, yes I want to move away from Smartthings as well. The more you keep in house the more private, the better it works, etc.

Thank you for the info and keep us up to date!!!

Thank you!

Only thing I would point out are ZHA vs Zigbee2MQTT. Personally, I did choose Z2M as it support a waste amount of more devices, and 50-100 new devices appear per month. Stability are good on both ZHA vs Z2M. ZHA are quite straight forward to setup vs Z2M that need more reading/help from community (reading should be sufficient). Also it would need MQTT. So, why did I choose the MQTT way? Well, easier to manipulate commands as you can mimic all commands directly by creating your own payloads. Also, MQTT are a very slim IoT protocol and can run through the internet! Imagine having several locations and you can pass information back and forward over internet? :slight_smile:

Have a look at Zigbee2MQTT site, and even supported devices.

@cowboysdude bro, you know I will guide you every step on Z2M :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye: or even just set it up for yaā€¦

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Thanks for the shout-out on my https://smarthomepursuits.com blog! Iā€™m glad it helped you make the leap to HA!

@djbrooks022 - your Smartthings to HA notes were very helpful. They definitely made the switch easier. Going completely local for all my automations has been great.

Not sure if you have looked at the Node-red integration in HA. There is a learning curve but it makes creating automations much easier.

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I made the same jump two years ago. So glad I did. I was also an avid webcore user and was also immediately drawn to node red; I still use it for every one of my automations. I also find it is infinitely more performant. I have yet to find it struggle to handle even the most complex automations.

Whatā€™s up with webcore? Samsung thinking of scraping it? Didnā€™t the webcore guy get a job with Samsung?

I agree - Node-red handles anything I throw at it and in a visual way, making it easier to create and debug complex projects.

Re webCoRe there is no clarity about the future but there has been no added features, it does not work with the STHM features, doesnā€™t have native Google Home integration, etc. The last I saw about the guy you mention was a presentation he gave at the Samsung developers conference in 2019. (YouTube video I found when I started my home automation journey)

All that stated, the final straw were the multiple days of Smartthings cloud issues in June. That convinced me that I had to have all my automations running locally. I had been halfway there ever since I first moved to HA earlier this year, with the only cloud connection being the Smartthings integration. This has now been moved local as I described in my original post. It has been a great experience!

My thought is that anyone in the Smartthings world who uses webCoRe can easily make the move to HA, it is a similar level of effort. Also, while I am new to HA my take from all I have read is it has matured to a point where anyone who is at the point that they are adding door sensors, motion sensors, etc can easily setup and run HA on a Raspberry Pi. IMHO

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I donā€™t believe they are getting of scraping it I just think that if you can eliminate the ā€˜middle-manā€™ in your home automations itā€™s just a better idea.

There is a noticeable delay in some things. For instance when I walk into my hallway I have a motion sensor that turns on the light after the sun sets and there is a delay there.

Cutting out the middle-man should speed things up :slight_smile:

You are correct, there is no stated shutdown of webCoRe. That said, my sense is it will wither on the vine. Unfortunately, Samsung seems to not have a real strategy in home automation. The recent poor QoS of their Smartthings cloud service, slow roll out of their Rules API, etc reinforces this feeling. With HA I can control my future and even more importantly, everything is working!

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I agree with you. Iā€™ve tried to ā€˜customā€™ things on the Samsung IDE but itā€™s difficult at best. It seems like well here it isā€¦ use it. Weā€™ve done the basics and thatā€™s all itā€™ll ever beā€¦ With HA you can control so much. Itā€™s overwhelming for a new guy like me :slight_smile: BUT Iā€™ve learned other systems I can probably learn this too. Just takes time, but I have a feeling in the end I will be glad I did.

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Has anyone had any success using Node-Red to get devices imported from HA to Smartthings? Iā€™m similarly trying to progress from a separation to a divorce from Smartthings, but I have a few lights and locks that I need to import back to Smartthings to ultimately be controlled by some Brilliant controls (which only integrate with ST). I have Node-Red installed, and linked to both systems but I am at a total loss of how to best build a device ā€œsyncā€ flow.

Anyone seen issues with Zwave/Zigbee with numerous reboots of HA?

Iā€™ve kept my SmartThings hub in place to date and leveraged the HA Integration to control these Ziblgbee/Zwave devices. Been really solid and like that the mesh networks survive HA reboots - which are at least a time or two a week.

Anyhow, wondering if the upside of all local trumps the downside of HA reboots. Running on a NUC fwiw.

@swamplynx
I donā€™t believe there is a reverse path. You might try the Samsung Automation Studio. It is a Samsung specific Node-Red implementation that runs on their servers. I tried to use this before I jumped to HA but was never successful.

Wanting to use Node-Red was one of the drivers for me to move to HA (plus local execution and stability).

Do these specific devices connect via the Smarthings hub? If so, and you use the HA Smarthings integration they should be available in your HA Node-Red instance.

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@Markus99
I started out using the Smarthings hub plus the HA Smarthings integration but quickly moved to a local solution using a ZigBee/Z-Wave USB stick. I am using only ZigBee devices on this stick as I note in my original post and it has been rock solid. The Smarthings integration is cloud push whereas the stick is all local. Almost instantaneous response.

It is work to set it up but once it is done I have not had to do any maintenance.

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I actually ended up working around my need to import things back to ST by using the awesome Hue Hub Emulator in HA, since everything I am using that doesnā€™t support HA, but does support ST, also happens to support Hue (Brilliant and Harmony).

And if you put your RPI4 on LAN cable, it will be a tiny bit more snappier :yum:

I have tried it both ways and could not find any difference in response. The system has been rock solid and stable since I got everything up and running. All I really do now is tweak my automations, add new ones, play with my dashboards.

My latest effort was setting up an x86 based (old, low cost mini pc) unit in our second place and linking it to my main instance. Now I can monitor both homes and report any issues thru my mobile app.

Iā€™m still trying to get this doneā€¦ I have added a ton of Zigbee devices and slowly deleting smartthings links.

At the moment I cannot even get Home Assistant to see my phoneā€¦ and I cannot figure out why. 2 nights on this and nothingā€¦ I REALLY wish the documentation was betterā€¦ Iā€™m VERY frustrated.

I am assuming you are using the Home Assistant companion app on your phone. I am using Android phones and tablets and it works great. All the devices show in the mobile app integration in HA.

What issues are you encountering?