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I’m using SmartThings Favorites page, SmartThings widget, SmartThings Devices and Media add-on, Alexa Favorites, SharpTools wigets, Google Home app since I can organize my device in rooms differently than I do in SmartThings, Tasker, and Nova Launcher. And because I’m using Nova Launcher, I have other apps displaying things like weather forecast widgets. And an app displaying a website in a widget for other data like air quality.

Samsung introduced its first standalone SmartThings smart home controller at its CES 2022 keynote this week. The Samsung Home Hub is designed to be a central place for a household to control and monitor their smart home without having to buy a $4,000 smart fridge.

Samsung says at launch, the Home Hub will “be able to connect to every product within the SmartThings ecosystem,” with integrations for other devices, such as lights and door locks coming soon. There was no specific mention of this being a SmartThings software hub itself (Samsung has said it is integrating SmartThings hub software into many of its smart appliances), but it’s hard to imagine it won’t be. There’s no pricing available or a US release date, but it is scheduled to launch in Korea in March and globally after that.

There have been a few attempts at solving this problem — the touchscreen Brilliant Control Panel that replaces your existing light switches is an innovative solution that takes advantage of a house’s existing wiring. But installing that system in every room will set you back a pretty penny, and the screen is much smaller than a tablet, making it less intuitive for all users.

I’ve used the Samsung Family Hub smart fridge, and the Home Hub interface looks similar. Both largely resemble a blown-up version of Samsung’s SmartThings smartphone app. There’s a Favorites home screen with your favorite devices on it, a Devices tab for all your gadgets, and a Life tab where you’ll find Samsung’s connected services — such as Cooking, Clothing Care, Energy, Pet, Air and Home Care Wizard. That last one monitors your Samsung smart appliances and tells you when you need a new water filter for your fridge, as well as offers troubleshooting tips when needed.

Speaking of Samsung’s connected services, the SmartThings Energy service, which monitors the power usage of all compatible connected devices and recommends ways for you to save energy based on usage patterns, is being expanded to include more products and services. Samsung also announced partnerships earlier this year that enable real-time monitoring of whole-home energy consumption in the SmartThings App. This type of integration should allow homeowners to set up automations based on energy costs or demand response events.

Samsung is also part of Matter, a new smart home standard with similar goals. How this initiative will fit in with Matter is unclear at this stage. Matter is a local protocol, with devices communicating primarily over a local network while still allowing IP access to connect to the internet. This new Alliance appears to be focused on expanding connectivity between cloud-based services. This is something Samsung has been pursuing more aggressively since it started to transition its SmartThings platform from a hardware-based smart home hub to a software-based service.

Luckily these days, things are different. Several low cost, highly-configurable SmartThings dashboard options are available. I’ve taken the four most popular (ActionTiles, SharpTools.io, HousePanel, and webCoRE) and compared and reviewed them for you below.

NOTE: Before jumping into each SmartThings dashboard option in more detail, it’s worth mentioning that ALL of these choices require upfront work and learning. Some more than others, but make no mistake about it, you will need to spend several hours, at a minimum, setting up your dashboard.

If there are home automations that you wish you could setup, that you can’t right now with SmartThings, Amazon Alexa, Google Home etc., then SharpTools.io might be worth exploring.

The founder himself admits, “HousePanel is considerably more difficult to setup…than ActionTiles”. His goal, when creating HousePanel, was to “provide an open source platform that developers can use to create dashboards”.

SmartThings is compatible with 100s of smart home brands. So, you can control all of your smart home gadgets in one place, including your Samsung Smart TV and smart home appliances.

With SmartThings, you can connect, monitor and control multiple smart home devices quicker and easier. Connect your Samsung smart TVs, smart appliances, smart speakers and brands like Ring, Nest and Philips Hue - all from one app.

- Track, monitor and save money on energy with SmartThings Energy. See how much your home and compatible Samsung devices cost to run, and try various energy saving features, such as AI saving mode, or schedule devices to run during off peak hours.

Samsung SmartThings is one of the oldest smart home platforms still actively supported, as it was originally founded in 2012 before being acquired by Samsung in 2014. SmartThings isn"t just the management/setup tool for Samsung"s own connected products — it can connect to thousands of other platforms, just like Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant. Managing everything you"ve connected to SmartThings is currently only possible through the Android and iOS mobile apps, but now Samsung is finally building a way to access SmartThings devices through a web browser.

Samsung started development on a web panel for SmartThings in May 2019, though the closed alpha was shut down in October of that same year while Samsung prepared "for a much larger test leading to a full release." According to later forum posts from a SmartThings developer, the web app was still in development, but the project was "running into shifting requirements from legal and security teams." The panel appears to have gone live for anyone with a Samsung account earlier this week, accessible from my.smartthings.com, though the developer noted that it"s still not finished and no official support is available.

Once you log in to the SmartThings web dashboard with your Samsung account, you"re greeted with the main screen that lists your favorite devices — these don"t sync with the mobile app yet, but they will at some point. There"s also a tab that displays all your rooms and the devices in each one, as well as an "Automations" page that shows your smart home scenes and active third-party connections.

It would be great to see Samsung continue to develop the SmartThings web panel to have as much functionality as the mobile apps. The panel works well on both desktop and mobile, and unlike many other modern web apps, it isn"t slow to open. Google and Amazon don"t have a similar web panel for their smart home ecosystems (except the basic Alexa web app for connecting/disconnecting third-party services), so Samsung is alone in expanding access to the web.

Samsung previously offered a Windows application for managing SmartThings, but it was deprecated in 2019. The company is now working on an updated desktop application, primarily designed for its new Galaxy Book Pro laptops.

So I often find myself checking out the competition. A friend needed a recommendation for a smart thermostat for his Samsung SmartThings setup, and so I set to work doing the research to determine the Best SmartThings Thermostat.

If you’re in a rush, my recommendation is the Ecobee Smart Thermostat, with its robust construction, great integration with SmartThings and with other Ecobee devices, Spotify compatibility, and its ability to learn your behavior and adjust the temperature accordingly.Ecobee Smart Thermostat – Best feature packed smart thermostat

Stelpro Maestro Smart Thermostat is popular for its top-of-the-notch baseboard and heat fan compatibility accompanied by a terrific rapport with SmartThings.

Features like auto heat/cool change that allow the thermostat to adjust itself not just to the temperature that was set, but to adjust the temperature according to the ambient outside temperature would be ideal and would be the easiest to automate with SmartThings.

Wi-Fi is a given, for control using SmartThings or a proprietary app. Features like Zigbee and Dual-band Wi-Fi are worth investing in for connection with additional accessories for cool automation routines like outdoor thermometers or weather stations, to adjust the temperature according to the weather outside.

Suddenly, SmartThings looks like the most comprehensive smart home platform, at least at a glance. Both Google and Amazon are rapidly expanding the number of first-party devices that work with their Alexa and Google Assistant services, but neither has their own TV or refrigerator yet, outside of products from other manufacturers. Samsung SmartThings has both of those things, as well as

It"s been awhile since we took a close look at SmartThings, so I decided to spend some time with it -- on my phone, and in the Samsung fridge and television installed in the CNET Smart Home. What is it like to have a home wholly operated by SmartThings (and Samsung) in 2019, you ask? Spoiler alert: not great. Read on to find out why.

SmartThings pressed on. There"s still a SmartThings hub (now third-gen) and an updated app. And SmartThings still has an open platform with tons of compatible third-party partners

It was almost as if no time had passed, and I don"t mean that in a good way. SmartThings gave me a lot of trouble in 2015 when I tested the second-generation hub, along with tons of SmartThings sensors and third-party devices.

But knowing how much SmartThings has grown over the years, it felt only fair to see if it had also matured into the platform I"ve always wanted it to be. Unfortunately, SmartThings was as temperamental as ever, just on a larger scale.

There are also a variety of devices installed at the CNET Smart Home that are compatible with the SmartThings platform and already paired to it on the app.

Let"s move on to the specifics of testing out SmartThings on the app, the fridge and on the TV.The updated app is my preferred way to interact with SmartThings -- although it"s still glitchy and tough to navigate.Tyler Lizenby/CNET

All that said, the app -- even with the latest app version -- crashed inexplicably at least four to six times during my testing. It still takes a lot of clicks and different screens to reach the settings you want and it"s easier to view the Arlo Pro 2 live feed in the Arlo app than on the SmartThings app.

The SmartThings connection on the Family Hub fridge performed significantly worse than the app. The fridge itself is a solid product with tons of apps and clever features.

SmartThings was another story. I connected the exact same SmartThings account on my app to the fridge. Instead of getting a list of all of the connected devices like the Play Light Bar and the Pro 2 camera, I got... crickets. It didn"t list a single device.

The fridge"s giant built-in LCD screen instead said, "After you connect devices in the SmartThings app on your phone, you"ll be able to monitor and control them on your Family Hub." Hrm.Where are all of my SmartThings devices? Who knows.Tyler Lizenby/CNET

The Q6 Series TV fortunately worked better than the fridge. Login via the SmartThings app on the TVs home screen and use the Samsung TV remote to scroll through -- and control -- your SmartThings devices. I was able to turn my Philips Hue light bar on and view my Arlo Pro 2 camera.Viewing the Arlo Pro 2 camera connected through SmartThings on the TV screen.Tyler Lizenby/CNET

Annoyingly, my SmartThings devices didn"t always show up when I opened the TV app. I"d log out and back in and they"d usually appear, but once or twice I had to log out twice before they loaded.

While SmartThings has clearly grown up, I still wouldn"t recommend it as a whole-home setup today. I experienced similar glitches in 2015 as I did testing the updated system in 2019. The app crashes, for instance, shouldn"t still be happening.

There"s also a question of value. If you want SmartThings in your home today in a major way, you"ll have to dish out thousands of dollars for a Samsung fridge and TV -- and that doesn"t include the other investments in third-party devices like lights and cameras.

Relatedly, even if the fridge integration had worked better, I wouldn"t ever think to head over to the fridge to turn on a light or adjust my SmartThings settings.

The idea of the fridge as the "hub of the home" makes sense in many ways -- I particularly enjoyed the TV mirroring feature, but I don"t want (or need) my fridge to be an access point with all of my smart home devices. I do like the idea of being able to view a security camera feed on the fridge, but, again, that specific SmartThings integration didn"t work for me.

That feeling isn"t specific to Samsung, SmartThings or Bixby. I wouldn"t want an Alexa-, Google Assistant- or Siri-platform-enabled LCD fridge display either. Voice sans screens is the simplest way for a whole family to interact with smart home devices -- no phone, no fridge, no TV needed.

It will be interesting to see if and how the Galaxy Home changes things for Samsung and SmartThings. Samsung is way behind the voice assistant curve, which seriously hurts its appeal today.  But once the smart speaker hits stores, I have to ask -- what"s the point of the SmartThings hub? Does the Galaxy Home even need a SmartThings hub?

All of this speaks to the diminished role of hubs in homes -- I feel similarly about Wink. Samsung"s clunky execution of SmartThings hasn"t helped things either.

This certainly sounds like it could make Bixby better, but that won"t mean much if I can"t manage to connect my SmartThings devices to the fridge. We"ll see.

Since I originally published this article, I’ve switched from using SmartThings to using HomeAssistant & stopped using ActionTiles. While I’m leaving this post up, I don’t have much experience troubleshooting this setup, so while I’d like to help, you’re probably best to ask someone else questions about this setup.

I recently replaced my traditional home security system with a more modern setup. The old system was your typical box with multiple wired sensors hooked up to doors, windows, motion detectors & smoke/carbon monoxide detectors. The new setup takes all these existing sensors and exposes them as things in SmartThings where you can use the SmartThings

To interact with the old security system, you typically use bulky keypads with the back-lit LCD screen. These won’t work for the new setup… I wanted something much more modern. The solution: smart touchscreens!

This panel is actually much bigger… I can stroll down to control our smart thermostats, view the cameras we have on our house and a lot more. Some of the tiles are interactive while others aren’t. For instance, the sensors from the old security system aren’t interactive such as doors, windows & motion detectors.

ActionTiles rocks as I can configure panels as much as I like in a browser experience from my desk and wherever they are being consumed, they automatically get updated.

We like it so much, we’re considering getting the larger 10" Kindle Fire for the kitchen. That one’s ActionTiles panel will use a larger tile theme to see it from across the room. It’s also great for displaying recipes via the Plan to Eat app we use for meal planning.

The existing security system had a wire that ran to the main security system. This wire provided 12V power & data to the keypad. Because the Kindle tablets are using my existing wireless network to show the ActionTiles panel, I only needed to supply power, but just 5V of power.

One thing I want to call out though was that I added a SmartThings plug that cycles power on/off every few hours to the tablets. Driving constant power for an extended period of time to a tablet isn’t safe as the batteries aren’t designed for that. This way, the tablets charge for 3 hours, then run off battery discharging themselves for 3 hours which is more what they were designed to do.

If the Aeotec Smart Home Hub looks familiar, it’s because it’s a millimeter-to-millimeter clone of Samsung’s discontinued third-generation SmartThings Hub. It can integrate a smart home full of devices, so long as they don’t rely on Apple’s HomeKit technology.

The Aeotec Smart Home Hub takes the place of Samsung’s discontinued SmartThings hub and is certified to be compatible with the SmartThings ecosystem..

Building a smart home around the Aeotec gear is not like using any other hub. That’s because the Aeotec hardware doesn’t have its own app. Everything is done with the Samsung SmartThings app. There are versions for Android and iOS and the app works with Galaxy SmartTags and other Samsung products. When it’s ready to connect, the hub blinks red and green.

My major work was done, because the SmartThings app is complete with everything needed to control and automate the devices. Unfortunately, the Aeotec hub can’t be accessed via a connected browser, as is the case with the Hubitat Elevation, but the SmartThings Windows 10 software worked well.

After a few minutes to link SmartThings with Alexa, voice control worked well. Soon I was able to turn anything on or off, including my group of two lights. There was one big surprise: the app automatically recognized my Samsung M7 smart display. Without any installation effort, I was able to turn it on and off, change the programming, and adjust the volume.

Easy to learn and use, the best part about the Aeotec Smart Home Hub is its simple but powerful software. Even though the device is getting a little long in the tooth, its SmartThings app is the one to beat. It all makes the Aeotec Smart Home Hub highly recommended for anyone building a smart home.