The “Removed Apps” is also the smartthings app, as I tried all suggested fixes, including reinstalling the app. This is only mobile data, adding on wifi data it has used 13 gigs of data total in 15 days. That is just absurd for any app.
I’m still on a verizon unlimited data plan, so ultimately it doesn’t bother me that much, but for someone on a limited plan this would destroy it. It also eats through the battery using this much data, as my phone (Droid MAXX) would originally last 1.5 days without charging, now it can barely go 12-16 hours without dying on me. I use the phone as an alarm, and it went from a 60% charge to dead in 7 hours last night, as I didn’t hook it up to a charger.
Killing the app “fixes” the issue, but killing the app everytime I open it is beyond annoying. What in the heck is it using so much data on, and why is it doing anything when the program is not active in the foreground?
What version of Android? I only ask because that looks like 4.4?
I’ve been using ST exclusively on Android since it came out and never had any issues with data usage. I’ve gone through several devices (up to a Note 5 right now) and so far so good.
The last full cycle I have (8/28 to 9/27) the app used 88.55MB. Of that 70MB was foreground and the rest was background.
Since 9/27 the app has used 33MB of data for me.
I have a truckload of custom apps (laundry monitor, diskstation, etc) and a lot of devices including cameras, door locks, motion sensors, thermostats, two garage doors, etc.
Android 4.4.4 - Yeah, I thought it was a rare issue, otherwise there’d probably be pitchforks on the forums.
Do you have any Samsung SmartThings Outlets (2nd gen) connected? The only possible cause I can see is the log-spam from that device. It updates the wattage every 2~ seconds, and I have 3 of them connected. I imagine it shouldn’t update the log when I’m not at that screen, but I can’t think of anything else that could cause it.
I just read this thread and checked the data usage for my SmartThings android app… 500MB since 10/11! It’s not a HUGE amount of data, but come on, it’s right behind YouTube for gosh sakes. What is SmartThings doing that puts it on the level of bandwidth usage of streaming video?
It might be related to using Dalvik instead of ART runtime on Android. :UPDATE: Nope. Still eating data, just a coincidence.
To those who have the issue, can you post a list of the items/smartapps you have on your hub? Maybe we have an unusual item in common.
Non-ST Devices:
2 x Life360 Users
1 x MIMOLite - Z-wave Mulit-Input/Output Dry Contact Bridge
1 x Nest Thermostat
1 x Hue Bridge
17x Hue Lights (Mixture of Color/White)
2 x Harmony Hubs
1 x Netatmo Basestation
1 x Netatmo Outdoor Module
4 x Virtual On/Off Button Tiles
1 x Quirky GE Tapt Switch
I found an app that would monitor realtime usage of data (NetLive), and Smartthings is downloading 15-20 KB/s (Kilobytes, not bit), and uploading 3 KB/s. That adds up if the app is running all day, roughly 50 megs an hour, a little over a gigabyte a day. It doesn’t end up being quite that much per day because it seems to download in bursts every 3-4 seconds.
I went through all my apps/devices and slowly removed them, killing the program and reloading it after i removed each.
The only thing that has reduced the amount of incoming traffic is removing Hue lights, and the difference is significant. It went from 15-20 KB/s to 1 KB/s after killing the ST App and reloading. I added Hue back (without smartapps linked to it) and now it’s sitting around 7-13 KB/s, with spikes up to 20.
Something is going on with hue connect. I’m going to try another implementation of hue connect, or try to connect ST directly to the bulbs, rather than going through the hub.
Also, this is what I see under live logging for Hue connect. I don’t know if it points towards anything, but thought I’d post it in case someone else has seen it.
:edit: It’s a combination of the smartpower outlets + hue. Hue seems to be doing a majority of it, but the outlets are contributing roughly 20% of the traffic.
I checked again, and it’s at 536MB as of this morning. Just for kicks, i enabled the wifi tab on the data usage screen on my phone, and over there, it shows that SmartThings has used 1.3GB on wifi. So between the two, that’s almost 2gb in the past 2-3 weeks. I just can’t figure out what ST could be doing to cause that much data traffic.
One thing I miss on Android 6.0 is the per-app graph on the data usage screen. Now, all I can see is overall aggregate usage on the graph, and the individual apps only show total current period usage. It was much more convenient to see individual app graphs to see if there was a sudden spike in usage or something.
For all I know, it could have been one or two solitary events that drove the data usage up so much, and not constant background streaming.
Why is Hue(Connect) showing twice? Do you have 2 Hue hubs? Also, the messages logging are Zigbee messages that look like they’re power metering updates every second. What devices are dni: 5795 and 6A4C in your My Devices list?
That picture was taken while I was in the middle of deleting/readding devices, which is why Hue shows up twice as it was the connect that I had just deleted.
Those devices ended up being the smartpower outlets that I had temporarily removed, as the spam went away after I added them all back. The data usage remains high, though.
Download ‘NetLive’, it’s the only decent app I could find that would tell me what’s using data at any given time. It only shows the largest consumer, but it’s good enough.
Do you have a bunch of hue lights and/or smartpower outlets?
I have no clue why they have to update my mobile device so often. I did send an email to support, but they seem rather backed up with emails at the moment.
Update – I replaced my droid maxx w/ 4.4.4 android with a Nexus 6P w/ 6.0 android.
Issue still exists, and after 10 days ST Support responded to my email asking me to try and remove hue from my system to see if that fixes the data usage. when I had already specifically stated in the previous email that removing hue does fix the data usage.
It’s an unacceptable fix, since a majority of my automation is done with lights, and also because Hue is an official smartthings integration, not a random github repo.
I inquired with ST support as well, and they said that my usage was coming from my HEM / PlotWatt usage. That made me think, how can that cause data usage on my phone? The answer must be that the status messages are being streamed to the app continuously.
Why would this be acceptable, or even desirable? Why do I want hundreds or thousands of occurences of these messages being streamed to my phone while I’m not even looking at it?
Home is currently using 377w.
Min was 328w on 2015-11-14 3:03 PM.
Max was 9732w on 2015-10-18 4:01 PM.
Seems like basic utility would demand that the app only load this kind of data when the user is looking at it. What’s the point of running in the cloud or on the hub if the client is going to be stressed so much with useless information?
