Honest opinion for new to automation user.

[scroder]

I got in on the pre-order deal and mine should be shipped soon. I am having second thoughts though as I read of many issues people are having. I have a 10 year old router that needs updating and I would like to install some home automation light switches and maybe a few other things. I just scored a great deal on a Netgear Nighthawk AC1900 router and am thinking of pairing that with a smarthings hub instead of the Almond+. Any thoughts from users? Also, how well does the cellphone app work. I can't find anything about it. Thanks,

Dave

[LGNilsson]

This might be a bit biased coming from someone that works at the company, but I've tested multiple platforms and SmartThings is one of them.
If you're ok with controlling all your automation from a mobile app, SmartThings will do the trick. Personally I find it fiddly.
They do have a year or so on us in terms of the automation side and they support some sensors we don't support as yet, but we're working on that.
They also have good support for some third party stuff and we have some catching up to do here and I honestly don't now if we'll ever offer the same kind of support as they do for some of the more exotic bits of hardware that some of their third party developers have added.

Our advantage as you'll see once we release the automation (which will be in the public beta release that will be out in the next 24h) is that we have a local web based UI for the automation and all the automation runs on the device itself, rather than on a server somewhere else. This means that even if the internet goes down, the automation will work. Imho, it's also easier to add sensors using our LCD UI. Our apps work well, but they're not as advanced/complex as the SmartThings apps, but that's by design as we don't have to do everything through the app.
We also has a web based cloud UI that works on pretty much anything that has a modern web browser.

I'm not going to lie, we still have a lot of work to do, but long term I believe we'll have a better platform than many of the app limited gateways out there and SmartThings isn't the only ones that rely way too much on apps imho.

[scroder]

Lars, thanks for the response. I'm not sure what you meant by releasing the automation in the next 24 hrs as I though you could already control compatible devices with it? Also, since it was delayed getting to market, do you feel it is a little behind on wireless technology as AC1900 and AC2400 are already out?

[LGNilsson]

No, not really, AC1900 is mostly pointless and AC2400 isn't really relevant, yet. Why?
Well, there are no 600Mbps 802.11n clients which is why AC1900 has a higher rating over AC1750, otherwise the two are mostly the same, depending on the chipset maker.
AC2400 has the same problem, there are no clients so far, so unless you're doing bridging between two router, you won't see any real world benefit.
What will matter, once it works, are things like multi-user MIMO and beamforming, but so far its still early days and compatibility across various chipsets is poor.
It doesn't mean I'm saying these are bad products, there's just very little reason to get one based on the limitation.

[Ab]

From a A+ user who has been waiting "patiently"  I was toying with the wink hub and found out the hard way that service is another big issue and am still waiting on wink to get back to me about my issue (1 month in), they responded t me online to put on a show but absolutely nothing directly and dont even have such a forum ... whereas I have to commend the A+ team they have been upfront and responsive from the get go and the H/W failure I encountered received an overnight response even though I had to wait on a replacement I'm lucky to have funded the right team on Kickstarter, as from what I have seen so far they have stuck with us and have in the end have worked (and continue to) to get us a better product. Just wanted to put this out there ...

Kudos A+ Team! and thanks for staying up there!

[jim]

Former Vera user
Current Smartthings User
Almond+ owner.

I am not huge fan of the smartthings hub but it generally works.  Yes, if Amazon AWS has an outtage or you have an internet outage, you are going to lose capability.  As for not having a web interface, I am one of those people that thinks a well designed mobile app makes it easier to setup that getting on a computer and doing it. 

I personally think that the Almond+ is still pretty much at the alpha stage for everything.  Routing isn't working right out of the box.  VPN isn't working right out of the box.  Iptables isn't working correctly out of the box.  The problem list just goes on and on.  Now they have jumped into the automation stuff because that was a huge advertised feature.  The automation arena is far more complicated than routing and they haven't gotten that right yet.  So why would I spend hours un-associating all my smartthing devices and hooking them up to the almond+ at this point?  Not to mention, there is almost nothing advanced that the almond+ can do so I would lose huge amounts of capability.  I have written many many apps for my smartthings hub.

I have a trouble ticket in with Almond+ and they did try to call me but I have a 40+ hour a day job and a 20-30 hour a week evening job.  Not their fault but at least look into the issue before tying up my time.  I provided a detailed description of what I did and how it wasn't working.  If you say you can't reproduce then we can talk.   I just want crap to work.  What I have experienced should be dead simple to replicate. 

So no, if you want automation, I would not recommend the almond+ right now.  Get a Vera lite if you want non-cloud based, get a smartthings if you want flexibility and plug and play working.

[scroder]

Jim,

Thanks for the response. I simply want something that works. I have a 10 year old router running DD-wrt that works, it just needs to be upgraded. I want to be able to control a few lights in the house with my cellphone and that's about it. I just picked up a new AC1900 router for half off and with a smart hub I'm in for the same price as the A+. I'll really have to think about canceling it now. Thanks for your response.

[w0b]

There's been a streak of burglaries on my road in the last couple of weeks, it would be nice to be able to get my IP cameras and Z-wave sensors working so that i could be alerted to anything happening at home, which was what I imagined when I ordered the Almond.

I looked at accelerating the process with a Smartthings hub, but they don't do a European Z-wave option, and sadly all my sensors are Euro.

If it wasn't clear, I know next to nothing about the complexities of the back ends of these systems, but when i see the Smartthings hub able to create such great situations as http://blog.smartthings.com/stories/a-robbery-and-a-plan-to-get-even/ 90% of the smartness comes from IFTTTT.

Is there an approximate timeframe for adding support for offloading sensor state to IFTTT as triggers?

Edit: It turns out IFTTT has a 15 minute delay to most triggers, so useless for home security! So having something local and active responding to sensors is vastly preferable.

Im looking into alternatives to include the IP cameras, but I'd basically be paying to duplicate the sensor mesh functionality of the Almond, which works GREAT but doesn't actually do anything yet!

€200 for this, as example: http://eu-store.getpiper.com/products/piper or the Vera lite, feels like an expensive overlap.

[LGNilsson]

Ha, we just got a Piper to test, it's super slow for Z-Wave.

I'm waiting for the notifications as well, as that's part of the new apps and the updated cloud backend. It was supposed to be done by now, but they're having problems sorting out a couple of irksome bugs.

If all goes to plan for once, we should have a public beta of the automation software and you'll then at least be able to trigger a siren if a door or PIR sensor is triggered.

[Ck32250]

Today I received my A+ & tomorrow I will be looking into Smartthings. I'm new to automation, and what I imagined is that I would set up a number of automated tasks, ie lights would come on and off at pre-set time of day or if a motion is triggered. The first thing I did was pair the lights bulbs up, all I can figure out how to do is turn them on/off or dim. How do I schedule them? I don't see the capability here and starting to feel like I should have done more research on HA. Being able to turn lights/appliances on or off via smart phone is not home automation- it's just a fancy remote. Hopefully I'm missing something. 

[LGNilsson]

Did you install the latest beta firmware?
It's our first release with automation and it's done by the local web UI on  the Almond+ itself, rather than via the app.
Please see http://wiki.securifi.com/index.php?title=Rules_UI_-_Almond%2B_2014 for some basic instructions on how to set up rules.

[Ck32250]

Lars, thanks for the tips. I did confirm that I have the latest update by checking on the unit itself and it says its up to date. Logging in to the web interface, I do not have the "rules" or "advanced" tab referenced in the article you linked. Ive also looked through the options on the router and have not found any rules option.

[LGNilsson]

That'll just get you to R069, you can download R069cb BETA here in the forums (look at the top of the forums main page for a link), hence why I mentioned it was the latest beta firmware, not the latest release firmware.

[Ck32250]

Ok,I downloaded that one. How do I get it on to the router? Only instructions I have found is to go through the update screen on the router and that gives me the other firmware.

[LGNilsson]

I need to update the screenshots here, as the location has changed a bit of where things are, but it's more or less the same way you'd do it - http://wiki.securifi.com/index.php?title=How_to_upgrade_the_Firmware_-_Almond%2B_2014