A Message from Alex on Platform Improvements and Our Plan Forward

@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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Ha ha ha! Genius comment :slight_smile: Did they really only double their efforts 16 times? We’ll need a bigger bit count on the CPU soon…

@SBDOBRESCU Reading your comment about the futuristic automated features, I just realized: I’m already there! You must be talking about my house, though I have no cats. And I still feed the dogs manually, kind of a father-and-dog bonding thing :slight_smile: Gotta start working on that Nespresso machine… something must be ah-brewing in the morning :slight_smile:

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Just want to both make the level of automations you and others have achieved with various Routines, Modes, SmartApps both highly reliable, but also much easier to set up. We’ll get there.

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I created an alarm reset routine that is available in smart tiles to reset all my lights and alarm when this happens

I think I’ve seen a “Mute siren” next to the “Dismiss” button when viewing an Alert - that is new, just showed up a couple days ago. Haven’t tried it yet, but I think when I dismiss an intruder alert, my front light goes back to it’s regular color (as opposed to red during the alert)

That is, if the view alert works. It regularly takes 3-4 attempts for that to come up, then the Dismiss button won’t do a thing and I end up killing the ST app and redoing the whole procedure. Annoying as ****.

NOT. GONNA. HAPPEN… Discussed a million times.

Super, then jump on this thread and tell the world how you did it…

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Speaking of plans forward…

Any chance of restoring voiceover accessibility? Since the last iOS mobile app update, the SmartThings app is no longer usable for those of us who rely on voiceover navigation. I really can’t afford to keep paying someone else just to use the app. :disappointed_relieved:

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Okay, I’ll say this: the fact that voiceover is still broken is perhaps more embarrassing than the platform mess of the last month. It would be embarrassing even if one of our most selfless community contributors didn’t rely on it. But it’s doubly so since that’s the case.

As long as we are casting straw poll votes, put me down for making fixing this a top priority.

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We have been working on this JD. It includes blindfolding employees and having them navigate the mobile app. The mobile team has made this a priority.

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Any videos of that?

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Ha! I wish!