Aeotec Smart Home Hub, Works as a SmartThings Hub, Z-Wave, Zigbee, Matter Gateway, Compatible with Alexa, Google Assistant, WiFi

I bought this when our smart home service went away, which used Z-Wave devices. I bought this for its compatibility with those, with other common smart device standards, and with my Philips Hue hub, as well as with Google Home/Assistant (and Amazon Alexa) for voice control. The Aeotec Smart Home Hub connects with and is managed through Samsung SmartThings, which works super well and provides for preset automations. (And there is a web interface for advanced functions, if needed.) And then by linking SmartThings and Google Home, I can control all the devices connected through the hub by voice, and set up voice controlled automations. I'm really pleased with the setup I landed on, and this hub is the critical piece. I think it's a really good value, and there's no subscription service to pay for. I'm just thrilled it's all working so well!!

I think that unless you want to go with the fully customizable, but you really gotta dive in, Home Assistant, or you are going with the extremely expensive managed platforms by companies that specialize in home automation and theaters, you can’t really beat this particular niche. So it’s pretty powerful, and SmartThings has a great community and if you want to learn and get very custom, you certainly canBut if you want pretty powerful out of the box, along with lots of abilities, since it says Z wave, zigbee, matter, Wi-Fi… This is pretty good.I am only outgrowing it because of my desire for extreme customization on the rules side. So home assistant will be next for me.I guess my main issue is that they do not handle cameras very well nor very many of them. You can get a custom driver but I didn’t find it working very well. Right now it seems like Tapo is one of the better solutions and Aqara door doorbell video really doesn’t good job on it!But for having something that can get a lot done and is very versatile, yet doesn’t require extensive training, this is probably about as good as they get. I like it more than Apple but I still use a couple of the apple features just because I have the iPhone and iPad. I’ve got a door locked that can use NFC off of my phone. That’s a no-brainer

I'm a certifiable smart home nerd (everything in my house is controllable from app or voice - all wall light switches (I use GE Enbrighten Z Wave switches), smart plugs, garage doors, thermostat, exterior door locks, blinds, appliances, security system, etc.). I had a 2nd gen Samsung SmartThings hub and decided to upgrade to the latest-greatest Aeotec version. I would have given this straight 5 stars, but very, very unfortunately, they don't have a transfer utility to move devices from an earlier version of the hub to the new one. Since I use all Z-wave devices, each one of the over 70 devices in my home had to be reset before I could connect them to the new hub. 3 of the wall switches just wouldn't reset no matter what I did so I had to replace them even though they worked fine with the old hub. Anyway, after spending a (beyond annoying) weekend methodically resetting and adding each device, we're all good to go and everything works great. The Alexa skill for SmartThings works great and Alexa picks up new devices I add instantaneously; and since SmartThings handles all of the main wireless smart home standards, you can connect just about anything to it. Plus, the SmartThings app is easy and intuitive; and I love the automations you can create (such as locking all of my exterior doors at 10 PM every night, turn on my garage outside lights at midnight and off at 5 AM every day, etc.).

I bought this hub to talk to two Schlage Z-Wave locks that are in the house we just bought. After banging my head against the wall trying to get them to sync, I wrote to Aeotec support saying I may need to return the hub to Amazon. They replied within an hour, stating:Sorry you’re having issues. Unfortunately Schlage locks have been a bit notorious with connection, especially if they existed before you added your home hub or if they were connected to another smart home device previously. Factory reset does not REALLY reset the Schlage locks. We encourage you to attempt the following steps to see if you can get the lock paired.1) In your SmartThings app find the Hub in your Devices and then select the icon to open the device page for the hub.2) Open the three dot menu in the upper right corner of the hub device page3) Choose z-wave utilities4) Choose Z-wave exclusion (this puts the hub into exclude mode)5) Follow the instructions on your Schlage lock to include/exclude from a Zwave network (typically this is the same process)6) you should see a confirmation on the app the device has been excluded7) factory reset your Schlage (just for good measure)8) restart the hub8) pair the lock to the hub following the normal pairing procedureAfter doing the above, everything worked perfectly. I didn't even have to factory reset the locks. I could even sync to the locks by just scanning for devices in the SmartThings app. After getting this to work so easily, I highly recommend. (I also recommend Aeotec include this instruction list in their documentation directly. 😉)