One of the premium soundbars Samsung released earlier in the year will get a software update letting it serve as a SmartThings hub, the first of other soundbars and TVs that will have smart home functionality included in the device, the company announced Thursday at its Samsung Developer Conference.
The HW-Q900C, first unveiled at CES 2023, is being upgraded to use with Samsung SmartThings’ Hub Everywhere program, per The Verge. The reveal is part of a broader announcement that other older and newer TVs and smart monitors will be upgraded to serve as hubs to control the various Matter, Thread and Zigbee smart home formats.
In more SmartThings news, users can use multi-hub networks to run several hubs in their home at the same time. The redundancy should make it easier for users to swap out other hubs, like soundbars and TVs, without upending the network.
Samsung also overhauled its developer tools, introducing a new developer portal and smart home APIs to make it easier for product manufacturers to integrate SmartThings into their apps, per The Verge. Also, the Map View UI used on SmartThings-enabled TVs to control the home network is coming to smartphones.
Repurposing older devices and launching new devices as hubs follows Samsung’s transition away from dedicated hubs toward multipurpose devices, as it showed with the SmartThings Station revealed at CES 2023. As more devices launch that are compatible with Matter, the IoT format the Samsung has helped develop, more of the company’s device lineup will be intrinsically able to connect and network with smart home devices.
