I would like to reach out to the community and any of you who may be connected with the development of the smartthings platform and ask why we do not have the option to disable automatic firmware updates for the smartthings hubs? .
Almost every kind of device that I work with ( including samsung phones etc) give you the option to hold off on doing firmware updates, this gives those of us who may have more critical uses of the equipment a chance to stand back for a while and see if there are any issues caused by new firmware releases before we apply them.
These days there are so many different possible configurations of devices that it is very hard for a dev team to make sure a new firmware release doesn’t break one thing while it fixes another.
The most recent firmware updates that came out late last year have pushed my very stable and functional system into an unstable mess which works some of the time and randomly marks devices as offline and because i assumed the problem was with my system all the changes i have made try to fix something (that i now believe is caused by the latest production zigbee firmware ) have only made it worse.
Samsung needs to decide if smartthings is just a toy or a home automation platform that we can rely on. We should have the ability to control the firmware updates, just like we do with zigbee updates for client devices.
This latest issue has cost me real money, not just in all the batteries that went dead on my various zigbee sensors, but also large electrical costs from pumps, fans, air conditioners that stayed on when routines were supposed to have turned them off.
If i had been able to turn off the firmware updates i would have left them off till such time as i felt comfortable that people were not reporting issues that i felt would effect my system.
How can we start a poll or vote for this issue to be raised to the highest levels and some kind of action or official response given?
The best thing is to post on one of their public facing channels like Facebook or Twitter/X. This forum is only read by a very small number of users and is not officially read by SmartThings staff except to control harassment, and spam. So you’ll get a lot more people seeing it and a lot more public attention if you choose one of the other channels.
Personally, while I think it’s a great idea, the reason that’s been given in the past is that smartthings remains a largely cloud-based system. Here’s the official architecture diagram. The SmartThings app, for example, always requires a connection to the cloud, and the hubs require one fairly frequently, maybe every 24 to 48 hours, or things start to get out of synch.
Anyway, the company is concerned that if people are allowed to defer updates, they might end up with a hub which was no longer able to sync with the cloud, and then there would be no way to fix it at all except to physically send in the device, and they just don’t want to do that. So they always control the updates from their side to make sure cloud and hub stay in sync.
So I think it’s a great idea, but I also think it would require a complete redesign of their architecture, which isn’t likely to come anytime soon.
But I applaud the idea, and it would be great to see it get there eventually.
Thanks for that informative reply , I am aware of the cloud connection from the app to the Hub , but with the many initiatives taken by smartthings lately to move a lot more control to be local and in the off cloud arena for smartthings i would have thought it would not be too much work for them to find a way for the app to talk locally to the hub in an emergency situation to turn on firmware updates if that is decided to be a reason why the hub is no longer talking to the cloud.
I think the ecosystem is mature enough now that they could figure this out without much effort if there was some community pressure.
Agreed that it should be an available control. With local control of most everything, once your smarthome is working consistently well why would you want an update that might destabilize it?
I think the point is that with this architecture not updating might destabilize things as well.
Once they made the decision that the app would always require the cloud, it was pretty obvious that there might well be other things that always require the cloud, but just aren’t as visible.
There are certainly hubs from other companies that can run forever without change, it’s just that at the present time smartthings isn’t one of them.
It’s likely never to happen for the SmartThings platform. They are too closely coupled to their cloud, and they probably can’t handle allowing hubs to drift behind in versions.
Many users have already made this decision. SmartThings is not a part of my home automation anymore simply because I learned (the hard way) I could not rely upon it.
To rely upon a platform, I need things such as:
full, reliable, local control
full backup and restore capability (local especially)
full control over updates of the platform and all user-added code
This is just my opinion, but I have said from the time of the initial acquisition, back in 2015, that, for Samsung, SmartThings is a buzzword acquisition. So neither of the two options that you gave. Samsung makes most of its money from big expensive appliances and televisions, and from providing parts to other manufacturers. Selling a Home Automation platform was never going to be a big part of their business. But they want to be talked about as being among the latest and greatest in all the Technology media. That’s what they get from SmartThings.
They have said many times that the majority of their customers have fewer than 15 devices and never use any custom code at all. And since the combination of the apps back in 2018, now the vast majority of their smartthings customers, likely over 90%, don’t have a standalone hub at all. They have a galaxy phone or a Samsung smart television or appliance. Or maybe just a Samsung robot vacuum. Their needs are very different from the needs of the power users who frequent this forum.
I don’t think it’s that they don’t care about us as customers. Rather, I just think that their business requirements from SmartThings are pretty straightforward, and don’t align perfectly with those of the power users who have standalone hubs.
It is what it is.
These days, there are several other options for competing products if you want a standalone hub with local operation and the ability to defer updates, or to continue to operate, even if the company discontinues the entire platform. But every platform has its own pros and cons. SmartThings has a very nice app which appeals to the entire household, and considerable versatility.
As I have mentioned before, I moved all of my own mission critical use cases over to a different platform Several years ago, because SmartThings just doesn’t give me the reliability that I need. But that’s just me. I still use it because of the cool new features and the versatility, I just only use it for convenience use cases, and to try stuff out before it becomes available on my more reliable platform.
IMO, all do-it-yourself home automation is just a convenience. Real building automation, commercial or residential, is built to a much higher reliability standard and at a much higher price point than off the shelf hubs and devices. It typically also comes with an ongoing maintenance support contract, again more $$$, which is not something required by most of the home automation tools and platforms we are interacting with.
IMO, all do-it-yourself home automation is just a convenience. Real building automation, commercial or residential, is built to a much higher reliability standard and at a much higher price point than off the shelf hubs and devices.
I don’t disagree with the higher standards in commercial products, and I don’t want to hijack this topic so we can take it to a new thread if you want to discuss it further, but I think most wheelchair dependent people would disagree with you. Including me. My Home Automation, all of which fits into the lower cost DIY category, is essential to my everyday independence. I literally couldn’t turn on the lights, adjust the thermostat, or get out my front door without it.
I have mentioned in the past that my housemate used to ask me which one television channel I wanted on for the day and we would turn the TV on to that and leave it on because I don’t have enough hand functionality to work a button remote. (so we usually picked ESPN. )
A $150 Amazon fire tv cube, DIY-installed, Changed all that for me.
Similarly, I had to leave all the lights on when I went to bed and just hope that someone else would turn them off. Now I have options.
It’s not perfect, and I don’t expect it to be. But as long as it meets the same reliability standard as a typical home appliance like a washer or a dishwasher, it’s good enough for me. I look for a “MFOP” (maintenance free operating period) Of 6 to 12 months, and I get that from several other home automation platforms in the same price range. Just not smartthings. It has a lot of definite pluses, which is why I’m still here, but not basic reliability.
But again, we can take this to a different thread if you want to talk more about it.
I’m finding ST nowadays to be quite reliable. The nature of the current Routines is (obviously) less comprehensive than the old Webcore and therefore certain things can no longer be automated, but virtually all my automations have run flawlessly for a long string of weeks. I can’t say that was ever the case before.
Which is kinda why I’d love for things to stay as they are right now
While true, I will very much credit Samsung with embracing SmartThings (and home automation), by embedded it in so many disparate devices (TVs, fridges, Galaxy phones, etc). Other huge companies have acquired small companies and the product has all but disappeared. That definitely did not happen here!
The Thing with Smartthings for me is that when it works its great and the features and integrations are very good. The problem for me comes with the changes that they make which break things that have worked for years and then i am out of control and just have to go along for the ride and hope that they fix the issues at some point.
At the moment the biggest frustration for me is that I have read from other users who are in the “beta” program for the hub firmware that the issues introduced in the last update seem to have been fixed in the latest beta release ( zigbee issues) . The thing is those issues have now been out here driving many of us nuts for many many months and still no release or even official acknowledgement that there are issues !
I know there are a lot of transitions in process for the ecosystem with the new matter and thread integrations and I have made compromises and adjustments to my system as was to keep it functioning in the new EDGE world but when they blindside me with a firmware update that i can’t delay its very painful. I already have Home Assistant setup and running on a test bench but its a very big migration for me to do and the family relies on smartthings every day for so many routines and functions that it never quite gets bad enough for me to pull the plug.
Just being able to choose your firmware adoption rate would be good enough for me, like you can with some other systems, you can be a beta user , an early adopter or just public release user so you can give them time to fix bugs before you update.
I guess in my heart i know i need to move the core of my most necessary routines to Home Assistant for stability but it’s so much work that i don’t know where to begin and im guessing having competing zigbee radios from Home Assistant , Hue , and Smartthings won’t make it better in the short term!
You’ll probably be OK with three Zigbee networks in one home. Lots of people have more than that and don’t even know it, because they have a smart energy meter, and a set top cable TV box, which both use Zigbee but separate networks. I’ve had as many as seven Zigbee networks running in an 1800 square-foot home with no problem. You might need to do some channel management, but that’s pretty straightforward. Zigbee is designed for tiny messages sent infrequently, so there aren’t usually a lot of collisions.
, I am aware of the cloud connection from the app to the Hub , but with the many initiatives taken by smartthings lately to move a lot more control to be local and in the off cloud arena for smartthings i would have thought it would not be too much work for them to find a way for the app to talk locally to the hub in an emergency situation to turn on firmware updates if that is decided to be a reason why the hub is no longer talking to the cloud.
