In my last Home Automation post, I mentioned that I’d changed from a Staples/DLink hub to a Wink hub after Staples/DLink abruptly terminated support for their products. Well Wink also abruptly changed their business model and decided to start charging customers a stiff monthly fee with very short notice and without which the product became unusable. Bait-and-switch is unethical and unacceptable so I threw the Wink hub in the electronics recycling bin and will never buy from them again…I don’t patronize crooks.

My new hub is a Samsung 3rd gen SmartThings Hub ($67 from amazon) and it looks like a winner. It supports Ethernet for secure, reliable connectivity and serves as a hub for Zigbee and Z-Wave devices. Unlike the Wink hub, I’ve been able to pair *all* of my devices reliably (I could never get some of the devices to pair with the Wink hub). Also unlike the Wink hub, it stays connected reliably, and with the SmartThings hub there is no monthly fee. The phone app is slick and works smoothly and so far I am impressed.

Pairing devices that had been previously paired with my Wink hub required first excluding them using the phone app (Hub-> …Menu -> Z-Wave utilities -> Z-Wave exclusion) and then adding them.

My next sensors will definitely be SmartThings; kudos to Samsung!