smartthings lcd panel in stock

An over-the-air update coming later this month will turn Samsung’s standalone SmartThings hubs into controllers for the new smart home standard Matter. The v2 hub will control Matter devices over Wi-Fi and ethernet, while the current hub and SmartThings dongle will also act as Thread border routers. Samsung is the first company to publicly announce Matter certification.

Jaeyeon Jung, Samsung Electronics corporate vice president and head of SmartThings’ mobile experience business, told The Verge in an interview that the company received its Matter certification early on Wednesday, October 12th, a week after Matter launched. Michelle Mindala-Freeman of the Connectivity Standards Alliance, which oversees Matter, confirmed that it started issuing certifications this week and said Samsung was among the very first to secure one. Samsung said the certification is for the hubs, with the timeline for the dongle certification still being determined.

During the Samsung Developer Conference Keynote this week, Mark Benson, head of SmartThings, announced Matter support would be rolled out to its platform this month. Jung confirmed to The Vergefollowing the keynote that Samsung plans to push over-the-air updates to all existing v2 and v3 SmartThings hubs and the SmartThings app on Android. The SmartThings dongle and the software-based SmartThings hubs built into newer Samsung smart TVs, monitors, and Family Hub fridges will be upgraded to support Matter at a later date, says Jung.

While the upgraded hubs will still support Zigbee and Z-Wave, they won’t be Matter bridges, at least not anytime soon. “We don’t have a plan to support that function yet,” says Jung. “SmartThings users will be able to continue to use those devices connected to a SmartThings hub, but existing Zigbee and Z-Wave devices won’t be exposed to Matter.”

The good news is that SmartThings v3 hubs (now made by Aeotec) and the $35 dongle for Samsung appliances with SmartThings software hubs will become Thread border routers. “We worked with Silicon Labs to use software to simultaneously run Zigbee and Thread using the same hardware chipset,” says Jung. “Once we roll out the software, SmartThings v3 hubs will support both Zigbee and Matter over Thread devices, along with the dongle, too.”

This means if you have a compatible Samsung smart TV or smart fridge and you pick up the $35 dongle, you’ll have a SmartThings Matter controller with a Thread border router ready to go when the update arrives. Of course, there are no Matter devices available to control yet. But with the launch of the standard last week, we should see products start to roll out this year.

Amazon Alexa, Google Home, Samsung SmartThings, and Apple Home are some of the big smart home platforms signed on to support Matter. Apple and Samsung have already updated their compatible hubs to be Matter controllers, and we expect to see updates arriving on the other platforms shortly.

In addition to not exposing Zigbee or Z-Wave devices connected to the SmartThings hubs to Matter, Jung says Samsung has no plans to add its smart TVs or appliances to Matter as devices, meaning they will only be controllable through the SmartThings app and not other Matter controllers. TVs are in the first Matter spec, but appliances are not. (Samsung is a member of the Home Connectivity Alliance — an organization of major appliance manufacturers aiming to do for appliances what Matter is doing for the smart home, so someday you could control an LG washing machine in the SmartThings app and vice versa. The Vergesawa demo of this, but there’s no launch timing yet).

Jung says Samsung’s smart appliance ecosystem is one of the reasons the company thinks consumers will choose to use SmartThings over another platform now that Matter is making compatibility of devices less of an issue in the smart home. (SmartThings arguably built its brand on being the most open platform of the major players).

She also pointed to the SmartThings Home Life services, a new feature in the SmartThings app that groups smart home functions into energy management, cooking, pet care, and air quality to provide actionable advice and control. Currently, these services only work with Samsung devices (except for energy management, which can monitor the energy use of all devices connected to SmartThings). But Jung says, with Matter, Samsung plans to support more devices in these services. “We seek to become an open platform so people can benefit from using SmartThings with all the smart devices they have in their home,” she says.

However, by not enabling the bridge function in its hubs, Samsung’s claim of pursuing platform openness with SmartThings rings just a little hollow. It’s the only platform of the big four that supports both Zigbee and Z-Wave devices, and many devices in the first Matter categories — lights, locks, sensors — use Zigbee and Z-Wave protocols. This meant Samsung had a unique opportunity it didn’t take. It could have been the first platform to bring Zigbee and Z-Wave devices into Matter, allowing all Matter-enabled platforms to control any compatible devices connected to its hub. Instead, SmartThings hubs and dongle will be the first way to get Zigbee, Z-Wave, and Matter all in the same ecosystem — but it will have to be SmartThings’ ecosystem.

UPDATE, Friday, October 14, 4:05 PM: Samsung reached out to clarify that the SmartThings dongle is not yet Matter certified. We have updated some language in the article to reflect this.

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.

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.

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.