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Comment by breser | Hacker News Reader

SmartThings is Z-Wave and Zigbee compatible. SmartThings is just a hub to control devices that work on those protocols. If you decide you don't like SmartThings anymore for whatever reason you just replace it with a different hub that also supports whatever protocol you've got devices for.

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SmartThings relies on their cloud setup in order to execute the logic for the smarts you have inside your home. This is why it might take more/longer to get a command to execute. One hub that has all the logic locally, inside it, and that you can program it with Lua is VeraPlus by Vera Control.

The SmartThings has the logic inside too; cloud is just used for setup. I can pull the Ethernet and power cables, and it works fine, triggering my water shutoff valve when a leak is detected.

I know. However if you have lots of devices it will be quite some pain in the ass to unpair them from one hub, add them to another and recreate all the rules.

And of course there's always the possibility that the new hub doesn't support the same protocols then the old one. Or maybe it does, but there are some incompatibilities within device support and some of your devices won't work anymore.

As opposed to Control4 and Crestron systems that require $$$$ and a tech to come out every time you want to make a change, no thank you.

Sure, if SmartThings goes the way of Revolv and bites the dust I'll have to buy a new IOT gateway de jour and set my stuff back up, but that's maybe an hour or two of work if you know how your devices work and can read a manual.

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