Stacey on IoT | Internet of Things news and analysis

Internet of Things

  • Home
  • Analysis
  • Startups
  • How-To
  • News
  • Podcast
  • Events
  • About
  • Advertise
  • Speaking
    • Facebook
    • RSS
    • Twitter
    • YouTube

What’s the best button to control scenes in a SmartThings home?

July 17, 2019 by Kevin C. Tofel Leave a Comment

On the most recent IoT Podcast our voicemail hotline got a call from Jerry who wants to add a button, or buttons, in his home. These would be primarily be used to toggle pre-configured smart home scenes in Jerry’s house. While you can use a voice assistant in most cases to turn a scene on or off, voice isn’t always the best option: Someone could be sleeping or the smart speaker could fail to call up the requested scene.

A smart button, however, is generally more reliable since there’s little to no chance of bad input. Press the button and the scene works.

Since Jerry has a Samsung SmartThings hub as the brains of his house, I’d recommend Samsung’s own SmartThings Button, shown above.

Many folks don’t realize that Samsung offers this low-cost, compatible button, but it does. For $15, you get a natively compatible Zigbee device with a temperature sensor that can control just about anything in your SmartThings home.

With pre-set scenes then, Jerry could enable or disable them with a single button press, double-button press or press and hold action. And if three scene triggers weren’t enough, the button can be a trigger action for temperature presets as well. That’s a lot of functionality for the price.

Fibaro also makes a Z-Wave button available in numerous colors and although I love the look of it compared to the bland design of Samsungs button, I’m not sure it’s the best choice.

This button requires a custom device handler (read: software installed on the hub) to work with SmartThings, which adds some complexity. Additionally, Fibaro’s button will set you back $50, although you get six trigger combinations.

Stacey thinks the Aeotec NanoMote button is worth a look, and I agree. Priced normally at $45, the NanoMote is also more expensive than the Samsung option. You get four different buttons to press on this small Z-Wave device and there are two trigger actions for each button. So the ability to control up to eight scenes is possible.

And one other benefit is that out of the three options to consider, only the NanoMote has a built-in rechargeable battery: You just plug it in via USB once every three months or so instead of fiddling with battery replacements.

For my money, I’d keep it simple and recommend the Samsung SmartThings button with one caveat. If you want to control up to eight scenes and prefer not to replace batteries, the Aeotec NanoMote is probably worth the extra expense.

To hear Jerry’s question in full, as well as our discussion, tune in below to the IoT Podcast:

 

Want the latest IoT news and analysis? Get my newsletter in your inbox every Friday.

Share this:

  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)

Related

Filed Under: Featured, How-To Tagged With: Aeotec, Button, Fibaro, samsung, SmartThings, z-wave, zigbee

Sponsors



Become a sponsor

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Enter your email address to receive notifications of new posts by email.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

IoT Podcast

Listen to the latest episode of the Internet of Things Podcast. Just press play!

Sponsors

Become a sponsor







Get Stacey’s free weekly Internet of Things newsletter

  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Recent Comments

  • Michael Rada on Podcast: Hacking sensors and securing medical devices
  • Jon Smirl on TP-Link Tapo Smart Plug with Matter: Simple and mostly smart
  • Lawrence K on TP-Link Tapo Smart Plug with Matter: Simple and mostly smart
  • Hugo on TP-Link Tapo Smart Plug with Matter: Simple and mostly smart

Stacey on Twitter

Tweets by gigastacey
Copyright © 2023 SKT Labs, LLC · Privacy Policy