SmartThings Review: Living in the Smart Home

Chris Davies

Prepare to hear a lot more about SmartThings. Kickstarter success turned Samsung acquisition, the smart home startup isn't the only DIY approach to home automation and security out there, but it may well end up being one of the best funded. SmartThings' mantra is one of openness, aiming to work with as many third-party components as possible rather than lock users into a closed platform. Admirable, but it could easily add up to confusion; I've been living the SmartThings life for the past six months to see whether it works.

We've come a long way in home automation. What once was solely the preserve of the rich, demanding expensive installation or - if foresight had been lacking during construction - even more expensive retrofitting, has transitioned to a new age of plug & play components, cross-platform connectivity, and the sort of DIY-friendliness that makes setting it up yourself straightforward.

That's a marked difference from the attempts at consumer smart home tech that came in-between. X10 and other platforms were flexible but complex, and more frustratingly for everyday use they were often ugly in a bland, beige, unstyled way. All that changed with the advent of the smartphone.

SmartThings' approach - like others we've seen in recent months, such as Revolv - has been to eschew clunky controllers and complicated dip-switches for setup, and instead turn the smartphone into a remote control. The company's app handles not only installation but ongoing interaction, whether you're home or away.

The $99 hub itself is a small block of glossy white plastic, powered by a wall-wart AC adapter, and hooking up to your router with a supplied ethernet cable. Inside, there's most conspicuously ZigBee and Z-Wave radios; WiFi is handled by your home router. Absent are Insteon and Bluetooth.

From that central beginning it's a case of adding your choice of peripherals, with SmartThings offering a range of its own as well as compatibility with a growing number of third-party devices. The easiest way to get going is with one of the company's starter kits, which includes the hub and a few bundled components.

There are five main pieces to the SmartThings range. The Multi Sensor looks the most straightforward, a battery-powered door or window sensor that's stuck in place with self-adhesive strips and triggered when the two parts are separated. However, inside it also has an accelerometer for reporting physical movement, and a thermometer for tracking temperature.

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SmartThings Review: Living in the Smart Home