200 Device Limitation? Really? Any alternatives?

something that crossed my mind is that with everything going on with all the changes and what not, is it possible that they are doing this 200 device limit to reduce the amount of resources and memory used on the hub so that they can get ready to kill the IDE and also for more devices to run local ???

Anything is possible, but I still think it should’ve been announced in advance.

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Highly unlikely, however I applaud your optimism. If Samsung still cannot finish allowing users to select which devices are exposed to Alexa/Google, over a year later from when they said they started looking into adding this capability, I really can’t understand your optimism… :wink:

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To me, more significant, and more disturbing, is that child devices are apparently still not exposed to the Google assistant Integration. That means that there are many devices, like triple gang switches, which work just fine with Google assistant with other hubs, but not with smartthings. :disappointed_relieved:

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they better wake up and start smelling the rice and not just throwing a damn weed on everything.

I am getting the can’t add more than 200 devices error but according to the IDE, I only have 188 devices (physical + virtual). Any suggestions?

The decision to include virtual devices in the total is just bizarre.
I’m about halfway to the limit (I live in a small london flat) but a good proportion of my devices are virtual. For example I’ve got a ton to display switchbot IR commands as momentary button presses rather than the default on-off switch type set up by the c2c integration.

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ugh, i’m really hoping the iOS update doesn’t include this 200 device limit. Although I’m already debating whether to go to HomeKit or Home Assistant. Homekit for simplicity, but having to replace the majority of my devices. HASS I could probably keep most of my devices but would require more tinkering, which i’m getting less fond of as I get older.

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LMAO - Get out of my head, Jimmy… Trust me - there’s some weird stuff there.

I’ve only found one item that’s borderline (my American Standard XL950 Thermo), everything else should work or I can NodeRed my way around the issue. Yes even the Zooz Zen32s as long as you use the Zwave JS integration.

That said - it’s going to be a bunch of brute force moving 148 (yes, I got the final count) physical devices and then the many, many hours rebuilding comparable automation for same. My guess is it’s going to take me 40-60 hrs. total to get to a ‘working’ state and another 2-3 weeks of tuning.

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I thinking double that for me. I’m soo on the fence to just abandoning ST for the only option that I know of that I can continue using webCoRE. It’s really a great rule engine and I’m just not up to trying to figure out the new rules API. Makes my brain hurt!

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Since the 200 limit is only imposed on the SmartThings App, and not on the server, you can get around adding new devices past 200 by downloading an older version. I took one from a year ago from the SamMobile site, and it worked perfectly:

Now we just have to get on Samsung to change the damn app to allow more than 200. I am guessing that the limit is on the main page of the app so it doesn’t have to refresh so many devices, and whoever was working on the app accidentally took out the “work around” where you could add a new app via the full devices page.

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makes sense… I’ve noticed some refresh glitchiness. hopefully they’re just trying to sort out some memory management type thing.

I think it’s a case of the user interface developments is driving server-side decisions. I know for a fact that the server-side can handle an unlimited number of devices, but I am guessing that they clamped the limit down to 200 on the user interface because the user interface engineers can’t figure out how to properly caching and refresh of devices so they set an arbitrary upper limit. (They have had device caching issues for years… Way back in gen 1 of the UI. It’s bizarre.)

As to why we could do it before last week and now we can’t? That’s anybody’s guess. It could be that they didn’t know that the workaround existed and then they discovered it was there and patched it, but I doubt that because I talked to people there last year and they were recommending using that work around.

I think it’s more a case of some overzealous user interface engineer thought they were plugging a hole, or a product manager decided to close up the workarounds. Who knows? We just need to get them to put it back in as a feature, not a workaround.

They are almost there. They’ve made a ton of improvements over the last year, we just need to keep beating the drum.

I agree. In taking a quick look at the competition I noted that several that have a limit of around 200 devices per controller do not have any limit on virtual devices, Wi-Fi devices, and “plug-ins“ which do not require hub addresses. Not every manufacturer takes this approach, but some do.

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Yeah, this just bolsters my theory that this is a limitation of the way they designed the UI. 200 devices is probably as high as they can go without the app grinding to a halt because of the way they refresh the device state UI

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It could be argued that not including virtual devices in the total would be the thing that is bizarre. Virtual devices are still devices. For example, if you ask for the status of a device from the API it isn’t going to take any less processing because it is a physical device. There might be a tad more data in the response but that is about it.

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It depends on why there’s a limit. If it’s efficient processing of address tables by a standard third-party protocol like zigbee or Z wave, then virtual devices don’t impact that in any way.

If it’s something to do with the app, Then of course you’re right, once you get to the UI everything should take about the same amount of resources.

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That is something I have considered too. It could be the API grinding, and it could also be rate limiting, but when the app is slow it reminds me of a couple of my own API client apps when they do a considerable number of individual lookups on things.

As I never tire of saying (sorry about that), I just don’t get why the mobile apps are doing so much as API clients when they could be doing sod all using webviews.

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I didn’t think the app caching issues could get worse…then the June iOS update came out :confounded:

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Don’t think I just imagined it, but pretty sure I saw resolution reduction of the icons after the update. Could have just been re-scaled, I suppose.

But, if they are resizing icons… must be squeezing pretty hard.