While I fully understand that this is a beta test and that we, as participants, accept a certain degree of risk and responsibility for joining, there’s still a serious issue several of us are experiencing with the current beta version. It keeps flipping back and forth between two versions, which is causing repeated and disruptive downtime for our hubs.
It’s disappointing that no one at SmartThings appears to be monitoring or supporting the platform over the weekend. For a beta release of something as central and critical as the device hub, this level of oversight really feels essential. These kinds of problems shouldn’t be left unaddressed for days at a time.
To help prevent similar issues in the future, I’d like to suggest a few improvements:
- Implement a 24/7 on-call rotation specifically for beta firmware releases so that critical problems can be caught and resolved quickly, even outside normal business hours.
- Add stronger automated monitoring and alerting for version stability and rollback triggers.
- Consider more conservative staged rollouts or a dedicated beta support channel/team for high-impact components like the device hub.
I appreciate the work the SmartThings team does and hope these suggestions can help strengthen the beta testing process.
Since it looks like I’m unwillingly part of an A/B test between 0.61.2 and 0.61.3, I wanted to share some concrete observations on reboot/recovery behavior.
61.3 handles hub reboots noticeably better than 61.2.
- On 61.3, devices come back online reliably and quickly after the hub restarts. No extra intervention needed in my experience.
- On 61.2, devices stay offline for significantly longer. In multiple cases - including a very stable device like the Eve Energy - some of them required a manual power cycle before they would reconnect. This has not happened on 61.3.
It’s a clear and welcome improvement in stability during the update process that I have to endure up to four times a day.
On a separate note: what happened to the detailed changelogs between beta versions?
Back in the 5x.x series, SmartThings used to clearly document what changed from one beta build to the next. With the current 6x.x betas it’s become much harder to understand exactly what’s new, fixed, or improved between point releases. Any chance we could get that level of transparency back?
Edit: a new record today:
