Late last year Samsung and RACV announced that Smasung SmartThings would be available to those living in the world’s most liveable city (2011-2017, 2nd 2018), Melbourne. Today they have announced, after experiencing strong demand and positive feedback from the Melbourne launch, the availability of SmartThings to the rest of the country.
Samsung SmartThings is a home hub that can wirelessly connect compatible smart devices including appliances, TVs, smartphones, tablets and many IoT devices. The SmartThings app is then used to control all of these devices.
The benefit of SmartThings and Samsung’s growing portfolio of connected products is that they can operate and integrate with a range of compatible products from other brands.Eric Chou of Samsung
Australians throughout the country will be able to purchase the Smart Home Starter Kit through RACV for $299 + $13.50 P&H. Melbourne metro folks will be able to purchase the kit with installation included for $378. The RACV Smart Home Starter Kit includes:
- 1 x SmartThings Wi-Fi hub
- 2 x SmartThings multipurpose sensors
- 3 x SmartThings motion sensors
Other devices compatible include LIFX and Philips Hue globes, Arlo cameras, Yale locks and Ring doorbells. For the full list head on over to the Samsung SmartThings website. Unfortunately just because a device is Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, ZigBee or Z-wave it does not mean it is compatible with the SmartThings hub. A device needs to be certified before it will work with the hub but the list is continually growing.
To get your own RACV Smart Home Starter Kit head to the RACV website and check out which option is best for you.
This is a bit old, but I’d like to ask a basic question. I have an asus ac5300 router and I have no issue connecting multiple WiFi devices, if I install a smartthings WiFi hub, will it override my existing router WiFi and will my existing router’s WiFi unusable in this case?
Alexa skill doesn’t work in Australia even though they say it does. English AU is broken.
Mesh and hub built in? Interesting. I’m looking for alternatives to the vera hub and remotelock software for my Airbnb properties.. This could be a nice little solution.
Just a FYI. They’re not actually selling the hub, it’s the mesh wifi system that has a hub built in. So the 200 dollars is for a mesh wifi which includes the smart hub.
Unfortunately if this is still subject to the SmartThings server side issues then it will fail. The outages and inconsistent service from the servers eventually kicked me out of the ST ecosystem and I was in it from the start (Kickstarter backer). Latency, outages, poor updates and lack of response from ST. I agree to develop my own device handlers and write my own nearly everything. Still lights would take 5-10 to turn on after motion detection and many server side things failed with no notice. I know that some stuff has been moved to the hub, but even then… Read more »
+1 for Home Assistant. Never used smart things but I love the Home Assistant project. It is a lot of tinkering but your imagination is the only limit. Its really cheap to setup and can do almost anything with Google Assistant/Home.
Home assistant installed on? Rasp. Pi?
Yep. Never have had an issue with it. (Touch wood).
So it is still only available through RACV, and you still can’t buy just the hub?
OK, so I phoned the RACV and the hub CAN be purchased on its own.
But, they want a whopping AU$199 for it. It’s only US$70 in the US. This is an excessing Australian markup. And Australian retailers moan and wonder why people import.
unsure.. oh wait,.. they want a lot for it….ouch i dont like that you can’t install any ZigBee or Z-wave product. This is why I’m heading towards a Vera Plus… although the Home assistant above looks good