A Message from Alex on Platform Improvements and Our Plan Forward

I agree that it’s a young product and I don’t think anyone in their right mind would pay for this service the way it is right now. I think the sentiment is people would be willing to pay for a STABLE platform with 99.9% uptime such as myself. However, before ST would even entertain this option, it would have to prove it’s reliable first, which it hasn’t done to this point. With as flexible and open at ST is at the moment, stability is all it’s really lacking from a purely technical perspective. From a support perspective, they would need to improve their response times, hours and phone availability as well if they were to charge.

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Well I did. Bought the hub + 7 months of Scout + some ZigBee devices package a few months ago. So I don’t want to hear anyone even whisper premium service - I’m paying for it already. Get it working, team.

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There was a lot of criticism on the forums when ST announced this partnership with Scout as most of us veteran community members knew it wasn’t ready for level of maturity. I see that your relative new here, so you were one of the unfortunate ones that probably didn’t see any of this before you committed to your purchase. I know ST was offering a way for some customers to get some sort of money back for the lack of reliability. I would reach out to support via email and inquire.

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Possibly foreshadowing the demise of the cloud for synchronous workloads…

Ummm. No it wasn’t. I didn’t get it. I wonder if it was a state issue :wink:

I also did not receive the email, Which is really strange because i’ve subscribed to the announcements, have 2 shop accounts and a community account…

Same. I have one email account I use for all ST things.

+1 no email here.

Guys, pardon my ignorance, but what returning kits, missing emails and debates about paid services have to do with proposed plan of platform improvements and the plan forward. Can we create new topics for spin-off subjects, and leave this topic open for constructive criticism on what @alex said?!?!

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fair enough, I wasn’t complaining about the lack of email, but I do think it’s interesting.

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That’s the old dashboard before they revised it for the Hub v2, at least that’s my understanding.

Thanks for the thoughtful questions and suggestions. In that same spirit of transparency, I do want us to get in a place where we can share more of the roadmap. There are indeed some things coming that I believe will really excite the developers in this community. However, we are lasered in on the basics for you all right now and the roadmap updates will need to wait until you are all feeling good about the progress we have made on reliability and foundational product goodness. It’s my hope that that isn’t far away, and I will keep your suggestion in mind as we make the weekly community updates that I promised over the coming weeks.

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@SBDOBRESCU, Personally I’d consider communication about the platform stability part of platform stability. The missing email isn’t that big a deal, obviously I got the content. If this were the first time email was a issue I’d probably say ehh whatever and not bother responding. However we all know how v2 promotion emails went… So to me it kinda speaks to a lack of incident management, root cause identification, implementing solutions to correct problem re-occurrence. You know the whole ITIL incident management processes that produce platform stability…Anyways my thoughts on relevance and thus reason for posting.

@alex I remember that when I bought my SmartThings hub, I read a post about a super smart home, that had some super futuristic automated features.

"[When I arrive at home my garage door opens appropriately depending on what car I am driving. It then closes behind me automatically once I’ve parked and enter the house. The lights come on and everything else wakes up or sets itself according to my preferences automatically.

When I leave the doors (including garage) let me know if I forgot to close or lock them and then lock and close themselves as needed. If no one else is at home, the thermostat automatically turns itself down to save energy, the lights go off, and it enters a secure mode.

My toddler’s room isn’t insulated well and so gets cold at night when his door is shut. When that happens a virtual thermostat kicks on that measures the temperature in his individual room and controls a space heater automatically to keep it within 1 degree of the desired temperature.

When we wake up in the morning, the secure mode automatically turns off (it knows that motion started in our bedrooms and emanated outwards thus it’s not an intruder) and the lights come on in the kitchen. The coffee pot starts brewing so that it’s flowing by the time I get downstairs so that I can combat the feeling of the all-nighters we’ve been pulling in building the platform.

My cat gets fed automatically on a schedule.

When my wife and I are watching a movie in the basement or doing something else when the kids are supposed to be in bed, the lights flash wherever we are as a warning if the kids are up and around.

Lots and lots of smaller and larger examples, but its really only limited now by the new SmartApps and Things that will get added to the platform by the open community. It has already changed my life completely, but it’s unbelievably awesome to think about the possibilities that are going to come from the community working together!]

(So what’s everyone going to DO with their SmartThings? - #5 by eschuld)"

Three years later and after being acquired by the largest smartphone company in the world, is the vision for SmartThings to be the “most open platform in the world” for Home Automation or has Samsung influenced that vision towards using a smartphone, for example.

The reason I am asking, is because some of the recent promotional videos emphasize home interactions via a smartphone, rather than smart automation.

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This is mostly because they are easier to film and show in a clip like that. Pulling out our phones instead of flipping a light switch is not our goal. Easy to configure yet powerful automation is what we are striving for.

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@SBDOBRESCU… I’m inspired!

Thought you might accept the challenge to replicate, today - now that the platform is at normal levels of functioning - what @alex had in his home 3 years ago. Here is a nice idea of a spin-off thread. :slight_smile: BRB

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Great articulation of the possibilities! If anything, our vision is even MORE aligned with achieving the type of ambient smarts and automations that you are outlining. I’ll definitely participate in the spin-off thread.

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Will I ever be able to mute my sirens when dismissing a false alarm? The issue hasn’t ever been resolved or updated as far as I can see. Still get a button I cannot press to mute.

Hoping that one day I’ll be able to quickly respond to a false alarm trigged.

I think the goal is… You won’t have to.

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