A warning to anyone considering Smartthings

I can from the Iris v1 users, and was really happy with the system until when they “upgraded to v2” and it was a real disaster.
I switched to Smartthings hoping everything would just work but I also experienced many issues in the past… but to be fair had a period where everything was working fine until several days.

But there I am today with a messed up Z-Wave network… so not happy camper to have to troubleshoot and potentially have to remove everything and pair back… still working on it… What a pain…

How Smartthings plan to make money selling one off hardware, having a such open (and great) platform where basically any developper can create their own program and having to support the product which has so many flaws…

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Why not share with us what kind of programming you have and the details of the issue, I’m sure many can’t wait to help you :wink:

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Sadly, I have to agree with the OP. I was an early adopter of SmartThings (Kickstarter supporter way back in 2012) and have somewhere over 100 devices in two different homes. However, I have decided to reclaim my valuable time that has been wasted over the years trying to get SmartThings to work as advertised. The dropped devices, the new devices that won’t pair, the events that won’t trigger, the poor execution on hub v2, etc. SmartThings was a good idea but has been plagued by poor execution. I have reached my limit and will be replacing both my SmartThings systems with something else. I cannot recommend SmartThings to anyone. No more for me.

Hey Guys-

Thanks to everyone for chiming in. I didn’t share the details of my programming primarily because I can’t even fully characterize the bugs I’m seeing. It just seems to be that whenever I look at the state of my hub and my connected devices, I can’t figure out how, given the rules that I’ve programmed, it ended up in that state. That and just… sh*t happens randomly. Things will turn on when I’m not expecting them and turn off when I’m not expecting it.

So, my first issue is that nearly all of my programming is in SmartRules. I did this because the omission of a rules engine in favor of “smartapps” and “routines” is baffling to me.

At a basic pseudo code level I have 2 rules per room, one for the “default” state, usually a scene with one dimmed light, and one for the “occupied state”, which turns all lights up. When motion is detected the occupied rule fires, and when no motion is detected for a period of time the default rule resets the room. I’m using smartrules “stays that way” for the timeout to reset to default, so basically “if motion ends and stays that way for 10m…” then.

I control the entire house using modes and a series of rules based on sensor data and presence to turn the house to one of 4 modes: on, off, away, vacation.

This all used to work reasonably well, not perfectly but in a way that I could live with it. ST would miss a trigger occasionally (I could see the motion detect light flash for example but my light would never come on), but generally everything worked well enough. It still does… sometimes, but in the last 4 days, especially in the evenings my rules seem to not be firing as expected. I’m starting to think most of my trouble is with the “stays that way” programming. I’ve seen instances where these rules seem never to have run, and I’ve also seen instances where they seem to have run before their scheduled time. I haven’t spent enough time debugging to say for sure, though I guess that’s my next move. If I stick with ST that is. I’m not sure its worth it.

Perhaps its unfair to blame ST for what turns out to be a smartrules issue, but at this point I don’t care who’s fault it is. If I have to throw both out and move to a platform with a better rules engine and a reliable local event processor, I’d rather do that than live with the chaos of a system that only sometimes works.

And that brings me back to my original post about the hopelessness of this platform. I’ve spent the last 20 some years in startup software shops, and the sense I get about ST is that their core event processing model is shaky at best. They’ve layered a lot of bells, whistles, promises, marketing, and truly nice, helpful support people onto that, but none of that is going to fix the fact that the core of the product doesn’t quite work.

Hmm… seems I have to go shut my kitchen lights off by hand.

Including me and the good looking staff on support. Always feel free to email support@smartthings.com describing the automation that failed and we can help you identify what’s going on.

We’re a bit backed up right after the holiday, but should be caught up soon. If you feel like you are not getting a timely response, DM me your ticket number and I can look into what’s going on.

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It’s probably not a SmartRules issue if it’s in the last few days. There was a known scheduler problem that was only affecting accounts on the oldest database shard, so it sounds like you were in that group. :disappointed_relieved:

They pushed out one platform fix that was supposed to fix it, but it didn’t fix it for everyone. And it may have broken something additional for some people.

It was listed in the first bug reports in the community created wiki a couple of days ago.

http://thingsthataresmart.wiki/index.php?title=Bug:_First_Reports#November_2016_3

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I only have about 20 devices but have had no issues for a while now. I guess the experience is different for everyone. I recommend SmartThings any chance I get.

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I have had to turn many of my rules off because they were not firing on schedule. Smartthings is definitely a good toy, but nothing that should be used in a serious application. I am not going to buy any more devices until I find a good replacement solution. I have been fairly disappointed. I thought Samsung was really behind the system but I am now realizing that it was nonsense to begin with – otherwise it would be inexcusable that more resources has not been allocated to the system to make it functional.

If you have the money, control4 is reliable and full-featured, but costs from $20,000 and up for whole home automation.

At the very low end for cost, which is where SmartThings falls, there are some reliable systems, but they typically offer many fewer features than SmartThings, and perhaps only a few compatible devices.

Every system has pluses and minuses, so it depends on what your own priorities are.

Thanks for the tip. It’s something to bring up with support.

Another thing that seems to have cropped up in the last few days is I’ve now had 2 zigbee bulbs that fail to shut off. I’ll have to remove and re-add in the morning.

I have a friend who’s a control 4 dealer. I’m pretty sure they support zigbee but I’ll have to see z-wave. This is Bllsht.

Funny thing is everything worked well enough for the last few months. I don’t know if they did something to my account or what but I’m not really willing to go on like this. Trying to go to bed but have to get out a ladder to unscrew the bulb. Thanks smartthings!

What kind of light bulbs are these? There are a couple known issues with a few known issues with some models light bulbs where they will periodically become unresponsive (or suck as repeaters). Powering them off for a few minutes usually helps in the short term; we are working with the third party manufacturers on a longer term fix (via OTA firmware updates).

I’ve had ST since V1 (now own V2) and it has been very frustrating at times. One thing is for sure that unless you want to spend a lot of money on a complete proprietary system - HA is not a set and forget experience.

Having said that certain functions like closet lights activating on closet door opening (aeotec sensor in the door) have seemed to work very reliably. My keypad lock in the basement with RBoys custom app seems to work consistently as well. Also Amazon Echo integration has been great.

Issues I’ve encountered:

  • The routines not firing periodically. Really a pain but I’ve started to “code” defensively having catchall routines that fire after the original event just in case which has helped a bit.
  • Device failures - had 2 old ST motion sensors just stop working, motion always detected. Also had several cree lightbulbs completely fail to respond (lighting part worked but the remote control did not) after about a year or so in service.
  • Low battery levels in devices like motion & door sensors cause issues as well.
  • On my network Zigbee devices seem to be a lot more troublesome than Z-Wave devices.
  • For me SONOS integration is awful and causes system instability. ST does not seem to be focused on this likely because there are larger issues that need to be resolved first, SONOS’s API changes and Samsungs own offerings wireless audio.
  • Lack of local control for certain things (which things? hard to tell) is annoying especially when the internet drops. Not thrilled about things being managed in the cloud.
  • Smart Monitoring issues - sometimes smart monitoring is the way to go other times it seems better to use a smartapp or a routine. Really never sure when or why.
  • App errors (red bar of death). Happens a lot less these days and the system seems a lot more responsive in general.

I’ve come to accept that HA is a more active process than passive. Also have tried to keep things as simple as possible. I do have a fair amount of devices and understand the complexity and potential for failure goes up with each new device added.

As far as alternatives I have not found any that make sense for me yet. ST still has the edge functionality and flexibility. I’ve looked at a few like CastelOS etc.

Well, my zigbee bulb that wouldn’t shut off last night seems to be working this morning. I have noticed that I have more problems in the evening that in the daytime lately.

The issues I’m seeing are:

Zigbee bulbs that become un-responsive.
Routines that fail to fire
Routines that fire incompletely
Routines/triggers that fail to execute from 3rd party apps unless triggered two or more times (from alexa and simple control)
Time based events that execute at the wrong time
Modes that seem to switch randomly, or perhaps because of mis-firing time based events
z-wave motion events that fail to fire their events (zigbee seems more reliable for triggering)

I think the idea of defensively coding is a good one and I’ve been starting to do some of that as well. I’d also like to move more rules out of SmartRules and into Smart Lighting so they execute locally, but Smart Lighting generally doesn’t give me enough logical control. Specifically, if Smart Lighting allowed conditional execution when a mode is not active it would be much more useful to me. Also, the ability to do an “all” or “any” conditional.

Do you live in a neighborhood where the houses are fairly close? Do you have a neighbor whose kids get home in the evening and crank up the Wi-Fi?

You could be running into interference. Try changing the channel.

What should I change the channel of, wifi?

I’m using ubiquiti wifi APs which are auto-selecting their channel. I don’t know how good it is, but the ubiquiti interface has a built in rf analyzer. I suppose one thing I could check on is I can see if the frequency jumped on the wifi APs at night due to other crowding that comes online. Another thing I could do is turn of the 2.4 GHz radios all together.

On the other hand, RF is contraindicated by the fact that I’m not especially having problems with zigbee devices. In fact I’d say that aside from dropping from the network occasionally, they’re generally working better than zwave.

What one of my main issues looks like to me is that many routines need to be issued twice to be go off at all in some cases, in other cases to complete on all devices successfully, so I’m trying that in each of my rules- trigger the same routine twice.

You are using the ST routines? How many devices are in your routines? Are you changing the mode as well as controlling devices within the same routines?

yes, I am changing modes in routines. Yes, I’m using plenty of devices in each routine, like 15-20. Is there a known issue around that?

This is just my personal experience over the past year (since Sept 2015) and it may or may not affect your system in any way at all.

I have learned that when using routines for mode changing, each mode change has it’s own routine, with nothing else in them at all. I have found this to be the most reliable.

I also learned not to have that many devices in the routines. I kept them no more than 10.

This is how my system has been set up since March 2016 and has been almost trouble free…

Each mode change has its own routine, triggered by a specific time.
My “routines” for devices was changed over to CoRE. Each CoRE “Routine” Piston is triggered by the
mode change it is for. In CoRE the number of items does not seem to matter as much… just break a big list of devices into several actions within the piston.

I also created a piston that checks the current mode and if it is not in the mode it is supposed to be it then sets the correct mode. It runs this check every 15 minutes. I have had mode change failures and this piston catches it every time. It keeps my system running very well.

I also use Smart Lighting with any automation that is able to run locally. So, I have SL rules working with my Pistons to make things work. It’s actually running very very good.

There are of course still problems with things, but nothing compared to the past, and it seems that any problems I’ve had have not been with my system, but were cloud based.

Thanks for the tips. I have been wondering if perhaps I was issuing too many commands simultaneously in a single routine and they were overwhelming the z-wave network or something. I also wonder if maybe I don’t have too many SmartRules…

Is Core worth switching to over SmartRules?

In my opinion - yes.

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