If you own a 2013 SmartThings hub (that’s the original) or a SmartThings Link for the Nvidia Shield TV, your hardware will stop working on June 30 of this year. The device depreciation is part of the announced exodus from manufacturing and supporting its own hardware and the Groovy IDE that Samsung Smartthings announced last summer. SmartThings has set up a support page for customers still using those devices to help those users transition to newer hubs.
That transition will also include a discount for users of the affected devices if they want to purchase the latest Aeotec version of the SmartThings hub. If you’re still using either of the older devices you should expect an email that will provide a discount code to buy the Aeotec hub through TheSmartestHouse.com. That discount will be available until April 15.
Those who purchased one of these products in the last three years (Kevin just missed the window with his March 2018 purchase of the SmartThings Link for the Nvidia Shield) can share their proof-of-purchase at Samsung’s Refund Portal to find out if they are eligible for a refund. And in a win for those of us worried about e-waste, Samsung is also planning to recycle the older gear (or it will at least send you a prepaid shipping label so you can send back the devices for theoretical recycling).
I get that a lot of y’all are going to be upset over this news, especially because transitioning hubs and routines is a pain. If you’d rather abandon the SmartThings ship entirely then we have a list of alternative hubs you can find, although many of them are tough to find in stock owing to chip shortages and supply delays. I’m going to use this moment to argue for companies to put expiration dates on their products so buyers can evaluate how long they should expect a device to last, especially for something like a hub which can require hours of programming and setting up.
Those who purchased the first version of the hub in 2013 to see it stop working after seven years is annoying, but it doesn’t feel like an affront. It’s still pretty early to determine what the lifetime of a smart home hub should be. Based on the discounting plan, Samsung seems to think three years is sufficient, although that seems pretty limited to me. For a hub device, five years feels like a good minimum, and I might even hope it would last a decade. But I am cheap and hate to reprogram my home automation.
The thing I most like about this news is that Samsung is thinking about the death of these products and planning for recycling. I, of course, now wish I hadn’t tossed my 2013 SmartThings hub a few years back. Sure I dropped it at the electronics waste section of Austin’s transfer station, but I’m under no illusions that the city recycled it in any meaningful way.
Well it’s not annoying that they EOL a product and it’s nice they offer a discount replacement. But as a user since 2013 what IS annoying is the lack of migration path / pain of migration. It’s a non-trivial effort and really makes the idea of migrating to some other system an apples to apples decision. If they just migrated and called it a day (I would even pay for a migration service) that would be better. I do understand there are security issues but they’ve been thinking about the EOL for years.
Ugh…
Agree. This is the best time to dump SmartThings given the fact that you’ll have to redo everything all over again anyhow.
The ADT hub/panel is also being discontinued on June 1st. Unfortunately the ADT connected sensors; contact, motion, smoke, CO, water will also no longer function and will also be discontinued.
From SmartThings: “We wanted to let you know that we will be discontinuing support of your ADT SmartThings Home Security and Safety system effective June 1, 2021.
Your ADT SmartThings Home Security and Safety devices (including the Security Hub, Detectors and Alarms) along with the optional 24/7 professional monitoring from ADT will no longer work.”
Totally amazed that a company end a product after it made their profit from selling it. After spending time to add the components. Just throw away the stuff, & go back to old fashion switch & plain old led bulb.
Samsung has also abandoned their pre-2019 TV products. Also has been stripping features from them while adding junk to distract us from noticing.
Also affected is the ADT SmartThings Hub. I’ll break even monetarily, as I spent $155 on my ADT hub and sensors plus $35 (and probably tax and shipping) for the new hub and they are offering $199 to buy the old stuff. Oddly enough I never opened any of it because I needed someone to climb a ladder for some of it and Covid prevented that.
3 years is not long enough for a hub. A hub minimum should be 10 years. Now if there are security issues.. perhaps that could be shortened to 8. But still.. the sweat/tears/hours of programming the automations NEED to be taken into consideration when they decide to deprecate devices.
Buying a new hub is the least of my concerns. What I am stunned about is that it will take literally weeks of effort to recreate the extensive automation I’ve built using smartthings over the last 5nyears or so. The fact that they don’t have a migration process to move existing devices, scenes and automations to a new hub is sickening.
Couldn’t agree more. I actually tried Hubitat – very flexible, local processing is interesting but not a deal breaker for me given how complex it is (flexible=complex).
I am going the HOOBs route to bridge the SmartThings to HomeKit and letting Calgon take me away…
Just catching on to this and triple whammy of hub, ADT and programming plus some customer devices.
Does anyone have a working link to the refund site? http://www.samsungcso.com/ isn’t working.
Gary
I guess I’m done with because I just wasted $600 will not no longer be by no Samsung phones are nothing to with smart things peace out have a nice day and not getting screwed by your anymore