As an FYI, I got into this internet thing in '94. I was programming Basic as a kid in the early '70s when my father would bring home a terminal to work in the evening. Back when you had to have the standard Ma Bell hand set to fit into the cups on the terminal.
What I learned is that I didn’t want to be a programmer. I put my level of skill and interest at configuring using the application provided tools and interface. I do that all the time for GxP applications. But I depend on a stable application to work. When there’s and application problem, I call IT. That’s why I come here, to scour the boards.
But why? ST can’t be bleeding edge when they have videos of cutsie girls automating their apartments. That’s what the consumer sees. What I really, really want is for Samsung to pay attention and just make it work.
I am new here, really new. But, I also have been in the IT/technical industry for 20+ years. l\Learned that much just like people technology is never perfect. With that kept in the back of my mind, I realize this is not going to be a perfect solution. What does that mean? I get creative with my solutions. I am a tinkerer, so to ME i can accept some issues/quirks.
It’s too bad you’re out. The hive mentality we offer each other on the community will miss you. I understand about the reliability, I too am getting frustrated. But the more I read from all involved, helps me understand what is causing the problem and how close it is to being fixed (each time something goes wrong). For the most part, I am figuring out that most of my items are stable. Anything that requires a schedule, is getting stuck and failing. But according to ST, the scheduler is close to getting fixed. We will all be back to enjoying light at sunset soon! From that point, there will be little hiccups here and there, but at least we’ll be back in the saddle.
I have two switches and one lamp module, all z-wave plus.
Something misses a trigger almost every other day lately. Sometimes one of switches, sometimes the lamp.
Who would build upon a foundation that fails THAT easily. The only reason I am with ST is Echo…the natural integration (no skill required) keeps the WAF very high. She blames the Echo when something doesn’t work.
If I found a hub that did local processing and was integrated with Echo…I would leave ST immediately. I am continuing to buy devices though, as I know there will be an option that works eventually. St or not.
I know you “can” integrate alexa to vera, but it is not straightforward and requires setup. They have said that an integration is something high on their list. That said Vera is by no means a perfect system either, They both have issues.
When I added ST to my HA I was planning to remove everything from my Wink system. After two months of the worst support from any company in 32 years of computer support I have delt with I am moving everything back to Wink. I am giving up a little in speed but my problems are a lot less. Yes Wink has there problems but at least they have phone support and they have made more progress in reliability than Samsung’s smartthings. I feel they care about there customers and they will get local control because the customers are requesting it and they listen to the customer.
Once again, I am very disappointed with Samsung.
I had some quality problems with a BluRay player in the past, and had sworn I would never go with this brand again.
When Santa Claus brought me a ST Hub, I was happy and supper excited about all the possibilities and ideas I had for my home (I used X-10 for years, so I do have some home automation experience).
Needless to say that the excitement has falled back. The App is flimsy and reports errors all the time. The home screen is completely useless unless you are using ST as an alarm system (which i certainly would not trust at this time) and I have to go through a separate tab just to turn on a light (which I cannot even sort the way I’d like).
Programmed functions sometimes work, sometimes do not. Apps do work, then suddenly they stop updating…
Would I recommend ST to someone? At this time, certainly not!
Samsung team, you have a lot to do before you can make a name for it, because as much as it pains me to say this, but so far your product looks very amateur…
I had a Vera 2 running 100+ devices in my house without an issue for 5 years. I was excited by V2, a Samsung product with a great user base and lots of integration. To make a long story short, my smart things experience has been incredibly unreliable. From one day to the next, it behaves differently. Random things turn on or off. Schedules and routines are essentially useless. My wife has deemed that enough is enough. The baby’s room being randomly freezing was the final straw.
I ordered a Vera Plus and I’m excited this little misadventure will soon be over.
Hats off to you guys that can put up with this nonsense. Maybe in five years you’ll have worked out the kinks for Samsung and I can come back. But I doubt it.
Funny I should see this post, just as I have also decided to SCRAP Smart Things. I have had many, many issues over the last year and the last one was the straw that broke the camels back. I woke up to my ST’s Siren going off in the AM. When I tried to disarm the system, I couldn’t. Each time I set ST to disarm, it reset back to armed. Nothing I tried worked with the exception of disconnecting the Siren. Resetting the ST Hub didn’t work either. After contacting ST support I was basically told that I should delete or reset everything back to default and re-configure my security programs. They told me this is a known issue and they are working on a resolution. Honestly, I cannot put my trust in a security system that isn’t reliable and that I need to maintain, reconfigure and tweak, This is just too much work!! Anyone interested, please see my Smart Things listing on Ebay. The “Smartest Thing” I’ve done is dump Smart Things!
I’m making use of some ST gear because of the programmability. But I’ve also got much more reliable lighting than most folks. I went with Lutron Radio RA2 lighting because it’s hands-down the best. Rock-solid reliable and VERY quick to respond. None of what I see others struggling with for z-wave devices.
Unfortunately, at this point, there’s no RA2 support. Which isn’t a big deal at the moment because I’ve learned to not get overly inventive when it comes to things that other non-technical folks (ie, the wife) would get VERY annoyed with should they behave unpredictably.
Instead I’m having a pretty reasonable time of integrating a number of sensors and having some pretty clever bits of integration. It’s a little challenging, figuring it all out, but for the most part it’s really been working nicely for me.
I should add, as far as cloud support goes, ST is really pretty far ahead of what’s possible in other automation gear at this price point. It’s not easy to wrap your head around just “where” things are happening but when all the pieces work there’s some pretty slick stuff possible.
Well, I just pulled the trigger. I have spent far too much time on this labor saving home automation device. I’ll keep an eye out for other home compatible automation systems. But in the meantime, I’m just going to go back to the old fashion way of doing things. I don’t need HA that much. I was just supposed to be a fun little convenience.
SmartThings should keep in mind that the $99 to purchase the product came with a lifetime contract to provide the services necessary to use the product as advertised. SmartThings is knowingly selling a defective product because they have not and cannot fix the inability to provide the service of running time based rules that is integral to the functionality of the product.
I can’t tell you how hard it is to throw in the towel and give up. The only thing more disappointing than a product that doesn’t meet you expectations is a product that does meet your expectations but is unreliable.
Your disappointment is totally understandable. I, like many others, am also frustrated with instability and overall flakiness of the platform. However, I cannot call it a total write-off either. Some things do work and for others there’re work-arounds. Sure, Smart Home is not a necessity and anyone can live without it. But it’s still a fun hobby, if you don’t expect too much.
I’m so tired of dealing with smartthings issues and unreliability that I just leave it plugged in and if it works it works, if it doesn’t whatever. I’ve started to think about switching over to wink for the local control, not smartthings local control…which is a joke!
Been using wink for a little while now. Things are mostly smooth except for one fatal flaw. Triggering lights with motion sensors usually takes 8 to 15 seconds for the command to be sent. If that type of automation is important then think twice. If not it has been a very good alternative.
FWIW, I have both Wink and ST in different parts of the house and use motion-driven lighting automation on both systems. My Wink’s response time is 1 - 2 seconds, just a tad slower than ST. Not a single failure for the past week.
That’s awesome! I wish my robots fired that fast. Maybe it’s something I’m doing wrong? I think I will try and delete and re-add my robots and see if that helps.
I’ve installed 2 sconces in my bedroom. I was bold and decided not to include a light switch with the sconces. I thought I’d let smartthings do the job. Tonight I had to unscrew the bulbs to be able to go to bed because the smartthings hub decided to stop responding. And for about a year now tech support can’t figure out why scheduled task just decide to stop working from time to time. They say they are aware of the problem yet no fix.
Cloud based home automation is just not the way to go. Probably the only companies I’d ever trust a mission critical task being done in the cloud is Google and Amazon. Everyone else just dosn’t have the resources to guarantee when I hit a button, that button does what it should do.
I install Savant for a living so I know good home automation. You just can’t beat having the hardware onsite doing the work. What Smartthings is trying to do is make a huge profit from selling you cheap hardware and supplementing it with cloud services. The cloud is fickle my friends.
