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

I don’t agree, scaling is not just about where commands are processed…

  • The code base and supported devices and services still increase…
  • The number of users increase therefore the support required also increases
  • If you want control outside of your home, you still need cloud platforms to provide this interface

It’s not just about infrastructure it’s having the right resources in the right places and a suitable QA process and team to support it… so distributing the processing to local does not fix all problems… especially QA problems…

3 Likes

Yes this topic is maybe another platform debate but, let me explain what my problem and frustration is:
I am a business owner and we sell digital products. 99% through our websites.
Around 2012 we got lots of requests and added an APP where users could also buy and use products.
But maintaining the app, developing (Every time an operating system changes you have to give updates) and giving proper customer service was costing too much and the App side was not bringing that money back. We had two options:
1 - add more and more money in and hope that app side will attract more customers.
2 - Slow down giving app support and development (because lots of customers were already using it) make it cost effective and wait. BUT LET PEOPLE KNOW IN ADVANCE.
Everytime a customer wanted to buy a product we had warnings "We encourage you to buy this from the website and use it in the website, we can not guarantee that the app will work as efficient as our websites.

The smallest amount some one can spend on a smart home is around $500 and that won’t give you much. People do spend serious amount of money on this trend and Samsung ST HUB is almost the brain of it.

Instead of seeing ads, or a website like “We are the best, we rock, ST is the best way to go, trust your smart home with Samsung” bla bla bla… I would rather see this “Hey look, it does have ups and downs. ST part of Samsung is still new and growing slowly. You will have some problems but we are here to help”
I would be more prepared and maybe spend less or maybe spend more but expect less.
At least I would know that my new hobby is going to be reading webcore and ST forums till 2am in the morning.

And my added personal issue is, you built something and you want people to use and appreciate it.
Now this is what I get from family and friends:
" Hey man how is your smart house, still on steroids?"
" Honey it’s dark here???HONEEEEYY"

  • Wave you arms love…nothing?? Did you try jumping??? tap the sensor and let me know how it goes…

so I ended up posting with an attitude that I still regret…

1 Like

Here’s some reading material for you… :slight_smile:

1 Like

If you take platform reliability off the table, SmartThings is the best bang for your buck at the moment. There are many other HA platforms, most others are much more difficult to setup or are prohibitively expensive for most.

The wink hub I hear is fairly good too, but much much more restricted I believe, is not available in the UK and is owned by will.i.am now after very briefly being at risk of being shut down.

Hubitat is the closest contentder to ST, but is not as feature developed yet, currently doesn’t have native remote capability, an app or google home support to name a few… but I believe they are all things being worked on… once GH is compatible I think I’ll probably make the jump, ultimately I just want to setup a system and it work 99.9999% of the time when I need it to work…

If ST announced local processing of custom apps before I moved over then I doubt I would move away… I love ST, I’ve done a lot of development on it and enjoy the community and it will be a right PITA to rewrite my current code and test it all again for the new platform… so if I do move it won’t be a descision taken lightly

1 Like

Although I’m somewhat sympathetic to issues you’re having, you can’t honestly think that ANY company would even contemplate any such thing with its potential or actual customers - do you?

2 Likes

SmartThings actually does do this in their product usage guidelines, it’s just that most people don’t read those before they buy the product.

https://www.smartthings.com/guidelines

Data accuracy and consistency from SmartThings sensors, including those provided by SmartThings directly, resold by SmartThings, or supported by SmartThings, is not guaranteed. Therefore, you should not rely on that data for any use that impacts health, safety, security, property or financial interests. For example, because temperature readings may vary significantly from reading to reading on an individual device, between devices, or over time, those readings should not be used to control heating and cooling in environments where food spoilage, health risks, or damage to physical goods could occur.

And hubitat’s terms and conditions are even more explicit, although again, my guess is most people check the box without actually reading them:

Customer acknowledges that the Hubitat Platform is under continuous development, is not complete or otherwise at the final stage of development and that Hubitat makes no representation that the Hubitat Platform is error or bug free. Customer acknowledges and agrees that the Hubitat Platform may experience unscheduled downtime and agrees that Hubitat shall not be liable for any harm resulting from unscheduled downtime.

So companies do say it, but they say it in the fine print.

3 Likes

In other words, they say it legally, but not very openly - because they know, as you and I do too, that very few people read the fine print. (I know some do and everyone should.)

2 Likes

Hubitat’s Dashboard is native remote capability, unless we’re thinking of two different things. You can create a dashboard (very similar to SmartTiles/Action Tiles) that allows you to interact with the system via a LAN and/or WAN URL.

Google Home and a native Mobile App (presence, notifications, & dashboard) are both pretty high on the priority list from what the Hubitat team has mentioned (no dates, of course.)

1 Like

I’m assuming by wan URL you mean open up a port on your router and access via your wan IP… I don’t class this as remote access… I mean accessing via an online portal… unless they have added this since last time I looked of course…

I’m pretty sure local processing is pretty high on the ST list, but until that delivers it’s all vapour too :slight_smile:

You never need to open any ports on your home router for Hubitat to work. Hubitat hosts an encrypted cloud OAuth2 endpoint server. The Hubitat Dashboard provides you with two URLs for your use. One for the local LAN, and another that hits https://cloud.hubitat.com with a unique app ID and authorization token. This is a very safe and secure method to access the dashboard remotely. Of course, you need to make sure you do not give out the URLs to anyone you do not want to have access to your dashboard.

This is the same method used by SmartTiles and ActionTiles to access the ST Cloud Servers. In this case, though, the Hubitat Cloud Server is just routing traffic between your browser and the Hubitat hub. The dashboard code is running on the Hubitat hub, not the cloud server. This is why the LAN URL works, even if your Internet is down.

1 Like

Ahh great! Sounds good!

1 Like

WiFi calling is just that. You can put your phone on airplane mode and still make/receive calls and text messages.

The phone creates a VPN connection to the server that ties your phone back to the network.

I’ve done a shit-ton of research on this when I was hired to build a firewall for a company that had a lot of restrictions. The firewall wouldn’t let WiFi calls on the network unless certain ports were free, both ways. Took a couple hours to nail it down.

I know it’s off topic but, when you said WiFi calling just uses the cellular network, that is just plain wrong.

You should go back and read what he wrote again.

Emphasis added to the original.

4 Likes

While I understand there can be problems for time to time. Why did ST send out a notification that the sign in/portal issue was fixed and then today I got another notification saying that the same problem exists? Seems like a communication issue to me.

Or maybe it was fixed, then it broke again?

1 Like

Considering it was less then 24 hours I find that hard to believe, either that or there was not enough testing done to really confirm the issue was completely resolved.

Maybe its just me but it seems that there has been a HUGE increase in problems since January. Most of last year I do not remember seeing such frequent problems. While I understand that there is no monthly cost, it just feels like the amount of issues is getting worse/more frequent.

We’re both just guessing :man_shrugging:.

There have been a lot of major platform outages since January. Presumably it has something to do with all of the major changes they’re making to the ST cloud. One can only hope we’ll eventually see the upsides of all this, rather than just the downsides during the transition period.

2 Likes

Historically if you don’t count the firmware updates it’s been about the same number of cloud outages for the last few years, but the ones in 2018 so far have lasted longer, in some cases more than 12 hours.

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

Are you inferring they make these “changes” to the production environment? That would be just hilarious for a company that handles your most personal data.