Samsung just turned its soundbar into a SmartThings hub

In its annual developer conference Today, Samsung once again put its SmartThings smart home platform front and center, announcing that his The newest sound bar, the HW-Q900C.It’s now capable of being a SmartThings hub, complete with support for Zigbee, Thread, and Matter.

The electronics giant has been aggressively pushing SmartThings for the past few years as it works to connect all of its home appliances, TVs, smartphones, and third-party devices into a unified IoT-based smart home ecosystem. Adding the sound bar to your Hub Program Everywhere It’s a continuation of the company’s quest to place its smart home hubs everywhere, with the goal of making it easier for people to get started with the connected home.

The company also announced that more new and existing smart TVs and monitors now have the full core experience, being a matter controller, thread edge router and Zigbee bridge. Samsung is one of the founding members of Matter, a new smart home standard designed to make the connected home more interoperable, secure and easier to use.

Samsung confirmed that its multi-center network is now active, allowing you to run multiple centers in your home at the same time. This will help with speed and reliability and will make changing your TV or sound bar easier and less likely to damage your smart home. It launched a new developer portal and new smart home APIs designed to make it easier for manufacturers to integrate SmartThings devices and services into their apps. Additionally, Samsung showed off new integrations with Aqara devices and announced that its SmartThings map-based user interface for smart home control is finally coming to smartphones.

After exiting the hub hardware business a few years ago, Samsung said it would begin integrating its SmartThings hubs into more devices around the home. And now it has been fulfilled. Starting with the SmartThings Station, which launched at CES 2023 and is also a wireless phone charger, Samsung now has SmartThings hubs built into all of its 2023 TVs. Family Hub Refrigeratorssound bars and monitors.

However, most of these were software-based hubs and could not control devices running locally over Zigbee or Thread without adding a electronic key. Today, Samsung revealed that some 2023 models have its SmartThings Zigbee & Matter Thread One-Chip module integrated directly, making them capable of being Matter controllers, Thread edge routers, and Zigbee bridges.

The new integrated SmartThings Hub with Thread/Zigbee/Matter support is available in the following models, according to Samsung:

This adds to the NEO QLED 8k and 4K 2023 range Samsung announced at CES 2023.

Additionally, Jaeyeon Jung, executive vice president of Samsung Electronics and head of SmartThings, confirmed to me in an interview before the event that all Family Hub refrigerators will also have the Thread/Zigbee chip built in starting next year.

However, Z-Waze is the one thing missing from all of these centers. If you want to continue running Z-Wave devices in your SmartThings home, you’ll still need a SmartThings Hub v3 (Samsung or Aeotec version) or a V2 hub (although it doesn’t have Thread).

Jung told me that you can activate the hub function on existing devices using the SmartThings app.

With all these new hubs in your home, Samsung is rolling out a way to take advantage of the extra computing power. Jung says his multi-center network is already active, allowing him to create a larger network in his home.

“The benefit here is greater range, especially for Zigbee,” Jung said. She also confirmed that Aeteoc SmartThings centers will operate in this multi-centre network. “We’ve brought this technology together to create multiple Zigbee radios that work together so you can have greater range with multiple hubs in your home.” This is unique to Zigbee devices, which traditionally rely on a hub or bridge to organize communication. If it works, it could significantly improve the efficiency of Zigbee devices, especially in larger homes.

Jung also said that one hub can now be designated as the primary hub and the rest as secondary hubs in the SmartThings app. And he confirmed that any automation involving devices connected to the multihub network will run locally, providing faster response times and greater reliability.

Additionally, Samsung is finally launching a hub replacement feature that will automatically migrate your existing devices to a new hub.

At the developer conference, Samsung also announced two new APIs, SmartThings Home API and SmartThings Context API.

The Home API will allow device manufacturers to create an app that incorporates any connected SmartThings device into their app. Jung said an example of this is Eve, a smart home device maker that was exclusively compatible with Apple Home and iOS but, thanks to Matter, now works with other platforms. The company is currently working on an Android app.

The Home API will allow any Matter Eve device connected to the SmartThings platform to appear in the Eve app. This is similar to how Eve devices work through Apple Home today. “Any device connected to SmartThings will be exposed to our partners’ apps,” Jung said. “Whether connected through Matter, Zigbee or another way, partners can get the benefit of having access to devices connected to SmartThings.”

“We’re excited about Samsung’s announcement and look forward to expanding the functionality of the Eve device on Android,” Eve’s Tim Both told me. However, he declined to provide an updated timeline for the launch of his Android app.

The SmartThings Context API will allow third-party apps to leverage any sensor connected to SmartThings, initially to infer the presence of home and out-of-home automations, but there is scope for more actions, Jung said. “We have a lot of data coming into the platform, from when motion is detected, when the TV is on or the refrigerator is open,” she said. “The API will allow partners to create automations based on this data and understand if someone is home or away.”

Aqara is another device manufacturer that works closely with SmartThings. After integrating its Zigbee devices directly into SmartThings hubs as well as through Matter, Aqara is now adding its Wi-Fi-based FP2 presence sensor and smart lock to the platform. “The FP2 sensor allows for precise detection… we can even infer if there is someone sitting on the couch,” Jung said. That data can then be made available to partners through the Context API.

With all of these devices connected to SmartThings, the company is finally offering an easier way to manage them in the SmartThings app.

SmartThings Map View UI is a smart home control interface that has been available on newer Samsung TVs and monitors and is now coming to phones and tablets. Jung says it will launch for Android users later this month and come to iOS at a later date. A pinch-and-zoom interface that allows for a clean view and direct control of devices, is similar to the map view Amazon is introducing for Alexa; However, Samsung will work on any phone, not just the newest iPhones.

Finally, a new integration between Samsung smart TVs and Galaxy smartphones will let you quickly turn your phone into a TV remote control. “If you are near a TV, a notification will appear on your Galaxy phone. Click on it and the remote control will appear and you can use your phone as a TV remote control,” says Jung.