If you’ve been keeping up with all of Samsung’s announcements regarding its SmartThings smart home system, then you probably knew that they are already transitioning to a next-gen platform. We’re expecting the discontinuation of some of its hardware as they encourage users to upgrade to the newer technology. One casualty of this upgrade is the SmartThings Link USB dongle and that means the integration with Nvidia Shield will also come to an end. We finally get confirmation that day will be June 30.
According to Android Police, Samsung has sent an email to users of SmartThings Link informing them that support for this product will be discontinued effective June 30, 2021. This means that you will not be able to connect your smart home system with Nvidia Shield and vice versa. You will also lose support for other connected devices like Zigbee, Z-Wave, or any LAN devices connected to the hub.
This will prove to be pretty inconvenient to those who have built their integration of smart home products with SmartThings and use the USB dongle with Nvidia Shield as well. Samsung will be offering discounts for those who want to upgrade to a third-gen SmartThings hub if they want to continue using the system. As for Nvidia Shield, there is no news yet when support for the new API system will come to them.
The email also tells users to check the Samsung Refund Portal to check if their current hardware is still eligible for a full or partial refund. And if you see that you are, you can already submit your claim but you will need to do a factory reset of course. You need to remove all of your data before you ship it either for refund or recycling. The best thing would be to just get the new SmartThings hub which has a retail price of around $300.
There’s always the option of course to just choose to switch to a different smart home integration system like with Google, Amazon, or Apple. You still have a few months to decide whether or not to stick to SmartThings and just do a hardware upgrade.