Schedule not working

I recently got my smartthings set up but am having a problem. I have a lamp connected to a plug in dimmer. I want it to turn off with Good Night. If I manually change from Good Morning to Good Night it turns off. However if I try to schedule Good Night it doesn’t trigger automatically. I read some treads that the can be a delay, but I’ve been waiting over ten minutes during my tests and still nothing. Any suggestions?

Greg

I noticed my schedule handlers didn’t trigger last night (I have three of them). Probably just another outage at SmartThings.

Well again last night my Goodnight didn’t automatically trigger and turn my lights off. This morning Good morning triggered at sunrise as scheduled. I’m sure I could use IFTTT to trigger the good night and morning but I feel like that’s a hack I shouldn’t have to do just to get basic scheduling. Any thoughts?

Greg

@drgregharris

While I didn’t see any schedule related issues last night, my “thoughts” are that SmartThings is a convenience in its current form. I simply can’t use it to make certain the attic is warm enough to prevent pipes from freezing, as it is dependent on my internet, their internet, their servers, and their software, all to be running without error.

While it is nice to be able to get notifications on my phone when I am out, for mission critical stuff, I suggest you handle it locally, and preferably with a hard wired solution.

MY goals for HA devices are that they have an open API; that way I can integrate them with SmartThings, as well as having local control over them. Good examples of this are Phillips Hue and Venstar thermostats. And while I have a number of Z-Wave and Zigbee devices, nothing they control is mission critical.

What attracted me to SmartThings was the open system, and what appears to be aggressive development; none of the competition matches this. I was not aware of the total internet dependence at time of purchase (and almost returned it), but decided to take a chance. I have seen numerous outages in my short time with SmartThings so I know I can not depend on it, but I don’t need to the way I have things set up. Like I said, I treat it as a convenience.

Vera, and Universal Devices (once their wireless stuff goes GM), are worthy contenders for local programs and control, but it looks like Vera is in trouble, and Universal Devices takes forever to do anything; this is why they are currently crossed off my list. Indigo is quite capable, but their mobile device support is spotty, and does not support Android.

With the exception of big, proprietary installs, I think everything else out there is also internet dependent. While “Internet” is a very catchy marketing term these days, “dependent” is not so much. Systems should provide status and control to your mobile devices over the internet, but not be totally dependent on it for local devices to communicate with each other. SmartThings has the first half of this down pat, and I have seen numerous comments that they are working on the second half.

My scheduled stuff didn’t happen at all yesterday either – lights didn’t turn on in the evening like they were supposed to, and then my landscape lights didn’t turn off at sunrise like they should have either.

This kind of basic functionality shouldn’t depend on a central service. The hub should be able to operate independently enough that it can manage the home in a limited fashion even without a working connection to the SmartThings services.

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I agree that I can’t use this for anything critical, but the frustration is that something as simple as following a command at a certain time should be easy enough to get right. I’m not asking for a nested command with 5 levels of complexity here. Just a simple at 11:00 execute a command. The funny thing is using my iphone for both my wife and myself works great for tracking our presence and turning the lights on and off based on if one or both of us is there. Seems more complex than just do this a this particular time. I’ll play around with it some more tonight to see if it works. Thanks for your input. I hope at some point I can rely on this to be as “automated” as it’s marketed. I do agree however, I love the convenience of turning my lights and fans on and off with the touch of a button. Still happy with my purchase just wish it was living up to it’s potential.

Greg

The problem is that when things are out, they’re out. It doesn’t matter how simple they may be. I am seeing an outage right now, with serious delays.

The best way to get them fixed ASAP is to Email support.

Event processing was slow for a time.

http://status.smartthings.com/

Are you still seeing this?

Nope…

My schedules seemed to work as directed last night. We’ll see how tonight goes.

Greg

I’m noticing some lag with my schedules. But the status page looks ok.

Me too. My TV switch is programmed to turn off at 8:45PM, but it actually fired 11 minutes behind the schedule tonight, at 8:56PM.

Here’s my event log to prove it. It’s been on schedule Aug 19-21. But since Aug 22 it’s 10 min behind:

19 Aug 2014 03:45:13 DEVICE /digital switch off Family Room TV switch is off
20 Aug 2014 03:45:13 DEVICE /digital switch off Family Room TV switch is off
21 Aug 2014 03:45:29 DEVICE /digital switch off Family Room TV switch is off

22 Aug 2014 03:56:01 DEVICE /digital switch off Family Room TV switch is off
23 Aug 2014 03:55:37 DEVICE /digital switch off Family Room TV switch is off

My experience has been that the status page only catches major outages.

I also have been experiencing lagging or just not occurring schedule response for light switches. I wish it was more reliable.

Please email support@smartthings.com as soon as you notice any issue. The more we bug them, the more chances it will be addressed.

Its been one week none of my scheduled events works, I sent three emails to support, they are very responsive but my problem has not been fixed, I invested too much in a very short time on home automation, it is very frustrating to know some of the basics didn’t work properly.

@missourian, create a simple scheduled event. Like turning on a light at a certain time. Bring up the IDE site for SmartThings and go to the log. Does anything appear there after the scheduled time? And a bit basic here, but when you turn on and off lights from your phone, does it work correctly then?

My scheduled event is very simple, turn 2 lights at 8.00 pm and turn off at 10.00 pm. this evening at 8.00 pm the event didn’t fire (I waited until 8.03 pm), so I went back selected everything including all the modes and all the days and configured to fire at 8.10 pm and it worked, tested few more times and it looks good.

still not sure why 8.00 pm event missed, I will play with it some more, support confirmed this was escalated will wait and see what they see on their end.

And a bit basic here, but when you turn on and off lights from your phone, does it work correctly then?

yes every single time without a hitch

Well, you may have hit on something here. So it was firing, just late. SmartThings is a Cloud oriented HA system. What that means is that ST is doing all the automation currently for everyone on their system. So think of it like this, when a event is scheduled to go at the same time as many others, it will take longer to process your event. Apparently there are more events at 8:00, and the server cannot currently handle all of this.

I know eventually they plan to make more automation local to the hub. I am sure that scheduled events will be high on that list. Sounds like you found a workable way around the issue. And frankly for automation purposes. it is something that I can deal with as well.

Sorry most of that was me rambling to myself. I do that often, you should see me at work when I have a brilliant idea and run around telling me about it…