Part of the process of designing Marvin is to carefully ensure that all devices within my home fit well into the ecosystem. I severely underestimated the time it would take to carefully plan out each part of my ecosystem.
I’ve started buying and implementing smart home / IoT devices over the last year or so. The devices were implemented with the idea that they will all be managed a central device / hub in the future. For a while, my hub of choice was the Wink Hub. But as smart home hubs evolved, SmartThings continued to get better. While Wink is a terrific hub, SmartThings allows for far more complex automation routines or even create your own SmartApp.
While the hub itself was a difficult choice, the other devices were not a whole lot simpler unfortunately. For one, I’ve been avoiding maintenance costs, as some devices have, like Nest Cams. Secondly, I tend to go for devices that support Windows devices as much as Android and iOS. Thirdly, the devices need to be user friendly enough that I would enjoy tinkering with it. Lastly, I try to choose devices that have mostly favorable reviews. For devices to meet all 4 requirements has been surprisingly difficult.
