Aeotec Smart Home Hub, Works as a SmartThings Hub, Z-Wave, Zigbee, Matter Gateway, Compatible with Alexa, Google Assistant, WiFi

This is a great product, I think Samsung has done a great job with their smartthings ecosystem, it does not have the same level of customization that HomeAssistant offers. However this makes things easier to configure.If you are not a tech savy person or just don't want to spend time dealing with custom integrations and configurations, an smartthings hubs might be the best approach for you.

I think that unless you want to go with the fully customizable, but you really gotta dive in, Home Assistant, or you are going with the extremely expensive managed platforms by companies that specialize in home automation and theaters, you can’t really beat this particular niche. So it’s pretty powerful, and SmartThings has a great community and if you want to learn and get very custom, you certainly canBut if you want pretty powerful out of the box, along with lots of abilities, since it says Z wave, zigbee, matter, Wi-Fi… This is pretty good.I am only outgrowing it because of my desire for extreme customization on the rules side. So home assistant will be next for me.I guess my main issue is that they do not handle cameras very well nor very many of them. You can get a custom driver but I didn’t find it working very well. Right now it seems like Tapo is one of the better solutions and Aqara door doorbell video really doesn’t good job on it!But for having something that can get a lot done and is very versatile, yet doesn’t require extensive training, this is probably about as good as they get. I like it more than Apple but I still use a couple of the apple features just because I have the iPhone and iPad. I’ve got a door locked that can use NFC off of my phone. That’s a no-brainer

So far so good. It took awhile to figure out how to hook up my honeywell pro series thermostates. I had to call someone. When I went to the z wave set up my thermostates were excluded so i had to do a factory reset to make them included. If they are already included open up your smart things app. Click the plus sign to add device. I searched honeywell and it came up. I clicked on it and it automatically connected my thermostate. U have to set up each thermostate individually.

I bought this when our smart home service went away, which used Z-Wave devices. I bought this for its compatibility with those, with other common smart device standards, and with my Philips Hue hub, as well as with Google Home/Assistant (and Amazon Alexa) for voice control. The Aeotec Smart Home Hub connects with and is managed through Samsung SmartThings, which works super well and provides for preset automations. (And there is a web interface for advanced functions, if needed.) And then by linking SmartThings and Google Home, I can control all the devices connected through the hub by voice, and set up voice controlled automations. I'm really pleased with the setup I landed on, and this hub is the critical piece. I think it's a really good value, and there's no subscription service to pay for. I'm just thrilled it's all working so well!!

I had originally purchased this as a means of getting my feet wet on my journey to upgrade my newly purchased home into a smart home. After almost a solid week of research, this product seemed like the all-in-one package. It supported both Z-Wave, Zigbee, and Matter, meaning I wouldn't have to have separate hubs for each protocol. Aeotec was given the IP rights for SmartThings, so that was a big green flag to pull the trigger on this company as I figured that meant it was at least reputable and proceeded with my purchase.The intent was to set up this device with HomeAssistant. The product description *heavily* implies that this product works locally, only needing WAN access for setup stating - and I quote - "Requires internet access for set-up: Ethernet connection recommended, but Wi-Fi is also available."There is also a question asking if it is cloud dependent in the Q&A with Aeotec themselves stating - again, I quote - "This hub is currently cloud dependent, but will become local-dependent in the near future through firmware updates." back in 2021. I had assumed that given the current product decription saying it only needed internet for setup, in addition to SmartThings Edge drivers, meant I could finally have local control, but alas this is not the case. As soon as I pulled my WAN cord to simulate an outage, I could no longer control my devices via the SmartThings App even still connected to the same WIFI as the hub via Ethernet. It outright refused to work and the app said my hub was offline. Home automation still should - in theory - work, but since I only have smart switches and lights, setting up automations was outside the realm of possibilities with my current hardware. This also meant that I had no way of integrating SmartThings with HomeAssistant to control it locally either.So why does this matter if the device works as intended without an internet connection? Well for starters, I value my privacy and dont want my devices phoning home constantly. I also dont like giving companies the ability to brick my hardware at the drop of the hat. A company called Insteon shut down back in 2022. Their service relied entirely on the cloud infrastructure to function (just like SmartThings). Once the company shut down it then effectively turned every single one of their IoT products into a paperweight and completely worthless. On the other hand, we have companies like Amazon shutting down user's accounts and devices (Including his IoT security system) for false claims of racism by a delivery driver. With all of this happening in the IoT/Smarthome ecosystem, I refuse to give any company control of my devices and my hardware - and so should you.If you disagree with that sentiment and instead want only cloud-enabled devices for your smart home, then by all means treat this review as a 5-star review. The product worked fine - albeit not as advertised.