My mind is still fairly sharp, so I have all these thoughts in my head that come to me as quickly as ever. It is frustrating to not be able to get them out..
So now that I have had the chance to vent a little, let me get down to business.
The title is a little bit of click bait but through my recent foray into the internet of things for my home, I have discovered something that makes no sense to me.
So it started with a Samsung Smartplug I reviewed. It worked, but it had a lot of lag when turning it on and off from my Iphone. It was also really hard to setup initially. I thought it might be my failing. That is until I bought a Smartthings hub, and tried to delete the Smarthings Plug out of the app and reset it, so it would use the hub instead of constantly sending and receiving hand shake commands on my home internet network.
Setting up the Smartthings hub was a breeze, but I found that the IOT devices didn't seem to communicate directly with it but instead still used my router WiFI.
So then why do I need a hub in the first place? The point of a hub to me is to well, act like a hub of communications for all of my IOT devices. Handling each request and priortizing what needs to go to the internet and back and forth to the App on your phone.
Why couldn't I set the devices up to communicate with JUST the hub? After all, the hub was on my network, and the SmartThings app communicated with that?
It seems this could be plug and play. Just use the app to go out and look for devices, enter in a hub password, and they would communicate through the hub to the app.
Once you have a hub, you shouldn't need each and every separate device to communicate through the home WiFI at all. You shouldn't need to enter WiFi passwords, or find networks other than the seperate IOS HUB network at all.
Otherwise, the hub is just ONE MORE thing hanging off your home network using bandwidth. Just like any of the other IOS things, whether they be a light switch, a smart plug, a smoke alarm, etc.
So I am not going to try to pretend I am some sort of technical wiz kid, but I did work in electrical engineering research my whole career, and used the arduino micro controller for home projects like my plug in air quality tester.
Not an authority, but not an internet and tech rookie to be sure.
Thanks for letting me vent!
Mark :)
