Are you serious (repeated problems every night, May 2018)

Normally I am a very kind and calm person.
But right now I am furious.
4 nights in a row, my stuff stops working. I have to unplug St hub, plug back, repair zwave network.
And the next day same shit all over again…

I spent 15k on bulbs and sensors etc…
For repairing shit every night…???

Are you guys a joke???
Seriously
Are you kidding…
And your status website reports everything is working…

Whoever hired you should be fired.

15k on bulbs…
Wow. Do you live in the White House. :wink:

11 Likes

The majority of bulbs are ZigBee. If those are the kind you are using, repairing the Z-Wave network will not resolve anything. The best way to resolve ZigBee network issues is to turn your hub off (and remove batteries) for at least 15 minutes. Then restore power to your hub.

Also, unfortunately many ZigBee bulb vendors use hardware that make poor ZigBee repeaters. The network they create can sometimes just be unstable by themselves.

If you continue to run into issues after rebuilding your ZigBee network, I’ve found that the majority of instability issues like you describe are from issues with the strength of or devices in your ZigBee or Z-Wave networks. Those are independent to the status pages reported by SmartThings as they are unique to your setup. Unfortunately SmartThings does not offer tools to pinpoint network issues. Adding appropriate repeaters may strengthen your network and/or support may be able to pinpoint if there is a troublesome device.

5 Likes

That’s a good thing. It means the problem is local, not in the cloud. Did you try to email support? They are hired to help you with local problems.

1 Like

If only that were true…

Historically the SmartThings Status page has only listed major problems that affected almost all customers, and even then often sometime after the problem was known to support.

Just as one example, in late 2017 the integration with Samsung televisions (which had previously worked fine) broke and remained broken for months–but never made it to the status page.

There have been many other platform problems never posted on the status page as well. That’s why we always suggest people also check the “first bug reports” page in the community-created wiki also. Even that isn’t 100%, but it’s much more complete than status.smartthings.com

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

The OP’s problem might still be something local (zigbee devices going offline at a specific time each day might be caused by increased boosted WiFi activity in the area, for example, such as a neighbour’s kid getting home from school), and it’s always a good idea to put in a support ticket, since they can see things we can’t, but not seeing a report on the status page doesn’t really mean anything with this platform. There could still be a widespread issue of any of many different types.

Submitted with respect.

2 Likes

I’m sure that’s very frustrating. :disappointed_relieved:

First things first: as others have said, have you had a chance to put in a support ticket yet? There are a lot of things they can see on their side that we can’t, so it’s always a good idea to get them started.

Next, there are now about 8 different models of the ST hub, and some problems will only affect one. So which model hub do you have? And which region are you in?

Next, ST is a multiprotocol platform, so we do need to know the specific brand and model of the affected devices, or at least 4 or 5 of them. In particular, is this affecting zwave and zigbee and WiFi Devices, or just one protocol? Battery-operated Devices as well as mains-powered?

There are also multiple ways events can be triggered. So when it fails, does that mean a smart light switch:

A) won’t toggle on/off from the app?
B) won’t work with a voice assistant like Alexa?
C) won’t “mirror” another device, like a 3 way setup?
D) won’t run from a local automation, like a SmartLights rule to have a light come on when a sensor detects motion?
E) won’t run from a cloud automation, like a LIFX or a eWeLink app Light?
F) won’t operate on a time-scheduled automation, like coming on at sunset? Or runs late?
G) won’t work if Geopresence is involved?

Is it all devices every night? Or randomly different ones?

Do any Devices unexpectedly turn on while this is happening?

Have you added any new devices/automations recently?

Do you have anyone new visiting the house? (I’m sure you’ve heard of fictional mysteries where a new visitor was turning off a critical device every week, maybe when they needed to plug in a vacuum. The same thing can happen in Home automation systems. :scream: It’s not very common, but it can be a bear to troubleshoot, so it’s good to get the question out of the way upfront.)

Well, that’s more than enough to get started! I definitely feel your pain–I personally want my critical use case Home Automation to have an MFOP (maintenance free operating period) of at least six months, and preferably twelve, and since November 2015 I’ve never gotten more than 10 days from ST.

But the first question is are you seeing a new pattern that wasn’t there before. If so, it may be something fixable. I understand if you just don’t want to spend the effort, but if you do, there are lots of people in the community who will be glad to help brainstorm. And again, definitely put in a support ticket as well.

Good luck!

3 Likes

Well, I get what you mean, but my experience is different. And everyone is entitled to share their personal opinions. I get more outage notifications than actual problems with my hub, so not everyone’s experience is the same. Maintaining a home automation system goes far beyond the cloud flatulence. Anyway, broken TV integration is not the best example. It is a device handler that is broken, and there is no “broken devices” category on the status page. The categories I see there, are all related to cloud infrastructure and apps code. I am glad for whoever started the wiki. It seems a great way to track things like broken handlers and other things that are missed on the status page.

Or he purchased Hue bulbs.

1 Like

I find it fascinating that someone who’s spent that amount of money has never joined the forum until now. Everything else has always worked perfectly for you? Do you have your hub on a UPS? sounds like your hub is losing power every night to me.

And btw…at $40 a bulb, that still 375 bulbs. That’s one very well lit house.

4 Likes

it’s not just bulbs… Sensor, cameras, outlets, switches etc… As far as bulbs I kept it around 50

1 Like

tho i don’t agree with the tone from OP i have had issues yesterday and today.

in fact right now i’m getting “something went wrong” when accessing anything in the app. My internet is up everything else is working. lasts about 5 mins then comes back.
nothing is listed in smartthings status.

is anyone else seeing this?

1 Like

There have been a couple of other reports in the last week, but no clear pattern. What did support say?

I’ll have to disagree on this one most the time support will just send a boilerplate troubleshooting email without actually looking into the issue very far

1 Like

Well they may help you, if you help them to understand what the problem is. I am not saying that their support is most helpful but at least they tried every time I contacted them.

1 Like

I hear you

1 Like

I’ve had about 10 odd zigbee and z-wave device problems over the past week or more. Devices locked up, some zw-lockout errors, couldn’t exclude from network in some cases, still there even after fresh re-joining to the hub as a new thing, the one zw-lockout won’t go away even after freshly re-added. Odd problems like this seem to hit every 4 to 6 months or so just before/after firmware or platform updates.

Never quite sure if the problems are from random local environment interference, solar flares, karma, or ST platform changes…

Hi JDRoberts
Thank you for the help…
this started happening 4 nights ago (and it just happened again 10 minutes ago:)))
Every night around 9.00 - 10.00 PM everything stops working. If lights are on they stay on,
if they are off they stay off… Motion sensors, ST App, Alexa, Action tiles, nothing is responsive… I mainly use WebCore and pistons are not firing because they don’t get anything to be triggered. Basically the whole house freezes.
As if I have all the gadgets but they are like empty fake props:)))))

After unplug and plug back the ST HUB, everything goes back to normal in 40 seconds.???
If this happened randomly through out the day I would even think about Hub malfunction, but same time frame every night???
Normally I would think you were joking with new visitor part but I feel like something weird is happening:))) (LOL no new visitors though) Since you brought it up I just gonna go ahead and say the only difference "Lava coming out of big island and it started about a week ago) (I live in Hawaii but one of the far islands to the big island)

I will go ahead and put a ticket for support…

thank you and mahalo.

1 Like

You need to check for wifi cross over on ZigBee. Search these forums lots of info on it.

Brand and model of the lights that are failing? Model of the hub?

1 Like

When it’s a time based problem not related midnight or sunset or DST, and particularly when it’s something that used to work and now doesn’t, It is often a matter of local interference.

For zigbee devices, you would first look for interference with Wi-Fi.

For Z wave devices, most commonly the interference comes from old style baby monitors or cordless phones operating in the same band.

Same time each night around 9 PM could be a baby monitor. Have you or your neighbors added one lately?