0Samsung SmartThings — A smart home hub

I’ve recently inves­ted in a SmartTh­ings Hub for my home to use for secur­ity and safety as well as for gen­er­al smart home func­tions. Over the com­ing months I will be writ­ing a series of art­icles with some of the tech­nic­al hurdles I cross along the way.

The SmartTh­ings hub includes sup­port for Zig­bee, Z‑Wave, and WiFi products, with Bluetooth sup­port rumoured for the near future. There are lists of com­pat­ible products on the SmartTh­ings web­site, but be warned — the licensed Z‑Wave fre­quen­cies are dif­fer­ent around the world so ver­sions of the hub are loc­al­ised, and hence the com­pat­ible products vary by region. As I live in the UK I have pur­chased a UK ver­sion of the SmartTh­ings hub which oper­ates on 868.42MHz — the licensed fre­quency in the UK and Europe.

Sadly the SmartTh­ings hub is cur­rently NOT com­pat­ible with “Light­wave RF” products — which is a pity as these are widely avail­able in the UK and are typ­ic­ally lower priced than Zig­bee or Z‑Wave altern­at­ives (which are also far more lim­ited in number)

I am cur­rently using the SmartTh­ings hub with a Fibaro motion sensor (EU ver­sion 3.2), a Fort­rezZ “siren strobe alarm” (UK ver­sion) and a Belkin WeMo Switch (UK ver­sion). I have also exper­i­mented with hook­ing up an old Foscam Fi8918W wire­less cam­era and a Duwi Z‑Wave switch both of which are still a work in progress