AYL_Brian

Little tidbit on the Galaxy Home and Mini... I asked the lovely 4 Samsung employees sitting at the desk next to Ballie. They had to talk for about 5 minutes and then said "it's not here". I said...OK, but...are there any announcements about it or any news? "No, sorry." Brett found it at one point, but they literally took it out of CES on Day 3. Tells me something isn't right.

That was quick: Any Tizen 4.0 watch should be compatible, exact watch models will be announced one the version is officially released.

I don't actually. Let's ask Peter on Twitter!

Hey Pete! Good to see you over here and with such an in-depth discussion for us to tackle. I'm not an American as you know so I'm going to struggle with helping in terms of your cell and data plan discussion. It sounds like you need simple at the vacation home, but combining that with not using data all the time is going to be hard. My first thought is SmartThings because you can get many things done without service, and even with the latency of your cellular-internet, it'll run well (for the most part...I'll get to this). I worry about a connected lock though in that situation. Hubitat would be a great option if you were there to set it up for them. Otherwise, it's far too difficult. The thing is, any cellular based service is going to be touch-and-go in terms of how reliable a cloud-based automation solution is. There are delays due to latency and routing, and then when we're talking about the service switching back and forth (ethernet and cell, or even presence/no presence of MiFi), this will likely wreak havoc on the devices you install. So I think you HAVE to have a hub, and I think it has to be mainly local. Alexa likely won't work all that well as the basis for everything you're doing and even if it does, your parents may find it too slow. In general, I'm going to say SmartThings is the right balance here and it'll let you configure things remotely if you need to through the API. Alexa can be a nice addition so they can talk to the system, but I wouldn't rely on it unless your internet is going to be solid and 24/7.

Mine's still been flawless, and I'm beating on the thing (by comparison to most). I'm moving it, sticking it outdoors, unplugging it constantly...like it's had a rough life.

Add in PS4, and Alan tried a Steam VR one at CES and you have my list.

I don't have a lot of the ikea bulbs, so...I wouldn't have a chance to hit an upper limit. However, I haven't hit an upper limit for devices connected! So that's good!

You want the Plex local to the TV? Couldn't you just do a network and then use a Plex app on the TV?

I really hope so...it kinda has to be there for virtual device setup... It wasn't there in the last app update, but you're probably one of the folks that will see it show up first. Cause most of us have already created our first virtual device.

It was pretty spectacular. Best thing about the Alexa Lambo was the color. I mean it's cool to put up and down the windows with Alexa, but...the color was amazing.

All fairness...the car was spectacular.

Yeah so SmartThings doesn't let that channel change on the ZigBee front. You're absolutely right there. That's actually why they use that channel way out there (I think it's 25), but channel 11 WiFi can still get in there and be frustrating. Where I live right now though, in general, I'm not finding interference with my own in home WiFi and I'm also not finding my neighbours doing enough damage. It's still something that I agree...warrants a bit of playing!

I haven't had this issue once Frank....did it sit and show the little blue LED indefinitely too?

So this is something sneaky that Samsung is doing with their connected car platform. See, they have a V3 of their "fin" coming up right away. It has 5G connectivity (I think 4 transceivers), 4G/3G, WiFI, BT, and probably everything else under the sun but that's what I remember. In any case, that's a car...with full connectivity options...and now you have SmartThings...and routers...and...you get the picture.

Yeah I really like the direction RoomMe is heading. They now have Galaxy Watch integration so they know who's in the room based on their sensor that looks just like a smoke/CO detector. Very interesting stuff.