Why I'm Leaving SmartThings
For the past few years, I’ve been building up my home automation system piece by piece. I’ve set up automated lights activated by voice assistants, timers, and motion sensors, configured cameras, temperature and humidity sensors, and smart thermostats. I’ve even configured several wall panels that act as control centers for much of the system that show different information based on the day of the week and switch to a camera view when my doorbell rings. Powering this all is a system called SmartThings, an automation ecosystem owned by Samsung. SmartThings has always been an interesting platform because of its cloud-based nature. I purchased the hub several years ago and linked all my lights and systems to it. However, all automations and custom code are stored and run in Samsung’s cloud. This means developers have nearly unlimited computing power at their disposal for running automations. This gave rise to automation systems like WebCore which gives SmartThings a program-like i