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Comment by grandalf | Hacker News Reader

I recently reached the conclusion that Samsung SmartThings gear is junk, so I'm trying to figure out what to do next. Several of the sensors corroded inside the box (copper battery contact on PCB interacted with the metal in the battery casing), and many of the devices lose contact with the hub even though it's only 20 or 30 feet away.

Any suggestions for things like sensors, smart switches, etc.? What is the most open and reliable platform?

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I've found Home Assistant [0] to be a solid project that works swimmingly on a raspberry Pi 3. For sensors, the Aeotec (by Aeon Labs) Z-Wave sensors [1] have been reliable for me. The Z-Wave stick I use is from Z-Wave.Me [2] and seems good, too.

[0] https://home-assistant.io [1] https://aeotec.com [2] https://www.z-wave.me/index.php?id=28

Looks really interesting. I'm not sure where the breakdown in my SmartThings setup is happening -- might be the hub or might be the remote devices.

Do you know if Home Assistant can interact directly with sensors, etc., without requiring the branded hub itself?

I haven't used a SmartThings hub, however their documentation [0] states that they're using Z-Wave, so if you go that route with Home Assistant, I'm willing to bet that it'll play nice with what you already have as far as sensors go.

[0] https://support.smartthings.com/hc/en-us/articles/204392790-...

I really like mine! But I live in an apartment and not a huge house.

I like it in concept. The app is very useful, etc. The issue I have had is that the hardware simply doesn't work.

Because your "things" are too far away from the hub, or just in general? Which things are you trying to hook it up with?

The "things" that don't work are roughly 30 feet from the hub. For some reason they become unavailable from time to time and stay that way for up to a week. During that time they don't function properly and it's not clear what to do to get them working again.

I've read that some people can get them working by resetting and re-installing each "thing" but that must be done each time it happens, which is really not practical.

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