SmartThings Outage - Jan 03 2018

Good idea.

Seems mine never encountered an issue. We’re in blizzard territory today. I’m sitting at work, and two minutes ago got the “Washing Machine Is Finished” message. Apparently my wife just completed a load of laundry. So I went into a few devices, and my statuses have been working all night.

So it’s not system-wide; it is apparently limited to one shard.

A 10 hour outage does not exactly inspire confidence in platform stability. Was broken such that I couldn’t shut my lights off when I went to bed last night, and is still broken now the next morning.

I just found my hot water recirculation pump running when ST said it was off. These kinds of things just can’t EVER happen…

Bit of a mess today.

Must be fun at the ST office today.

Some observations…

Latency appears to be getting worse, not better. I left the house a while ago and just received a notification that the door I exited had been opened. Using the timestamps from Automatic Pro on when I started my truck, to receiving the notification, a full 26 minutes elapsed from when the door was opened until the notification was received. Also, of note, device history shows the same door being open for 6 minutes, when in reality it was open for no more than 20 seconds.

It will never happen so long as any system is cloud-dependent. That includes Wink, SmartThings, Iris, Alexa, etc. That reason is why I am a fan of pushing as much out to the edge as possible. I do not believe cloud-based execution of a smart home system will ever be as resilient as an appliance with local processing.

To give SmartThings credit, they’re making a serious effort to push out more local control. The last hub update moved a lot of core device handlers to the edge. The next update is rumored to take that even further, and if it happens, it is a win for us all.

They can happen, they do happen, the question is how often.

My own personal requirement for MFOP (maintenance free operating period) for these type of use cases in this price range is at least six months, and preferably 12. Which is the same kind of performance I would expect from a dishwasher or another home appliance. I don’t expect it to be perfect and I don’t expect it to last forever, but I do expect it to be “set and forget” for much of the time.

I do get that kind of performance from Amazon echo, the Phillips hue bridge, Lutron Caseta switches, Logitech Harmony, and Apple HomeKit.

But since November 2015 I have yet to go more than 10 days without smartthings requiring some kind of hands on maintenance or having some kind of outage. (I myself am quadriparetic with very limited hand function, so I have to pay someone else even to pop the batteries in a device. That makes me very aware of maintenance requirements. )

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

Even if you just check the official status page, they’ve had at least one outage a month in that time except I think for January 2017. And that’s not counting the planned outages where they shut things down in order to do firmware updates (which cannot be delayed or refused by individual users).

So over that time I have moved all of my critical use cases to other systems.

I still like SmartThings for convenience notifications, which it does better than pretty much any of the competition in the same price range. Stuff like getting a reminder if the guestroom window is open and the guest has left the house and rain is expected. But I no longer use it for anything where reliability is required.

Obviously this is a decision that each person has to make for themselves, but SmartThings’ own product usage guidelines say it’s not a good match for anything that requires high accuracy or reliability, and I’ve learned to accept that as true.

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.

So I do expect this outage to be resolved in a day or two. But I also expect there will be another outage next month, if not before. Not everyone is affected by every problem, but most people are eventually affected by some.

So each person has to make their own assessment as to how SmartThings will work best for them. It is a very powerful, flexible system at low-cost with a great vision. When it works as intended, it is hands down my favorite Home automation system (pun intended :wink: ).

But for use cases which need to have high reliability day in and day out, I use other platforms. They all have pros and cons, but there are some where I am trading off flexibility for reliability, and that just works better for me in some specific use cases. And I don’t attach anything to SmartThings which would be unsafe if unexpectedly left on/off for 24 hours unattended. But that’s just me.

FWIW

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Glad I hopped on the forums before doing anything too drastic. I noticed my phone app was reporting a ton of devices in error; i.e. wrong states, automations running for no reason, etc. Tried cycling power, restarting, even began individually testing the water sensors and noticed no response.

Looks like I’ll just let this sort itself out.

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I hate when I’m right!

The issues we were experiencing with our Shop pages have been resolved. All customers are able to reach Shop.SmartThings.com. Thank you for your patience.

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So do we. I’M KIDDING!

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Purchasing before functionality, all day. Gotta keep revenue generating to pay the staff to fix functionality issues :grin:

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Add me to the list. My issue posted in this thread (along with another issue. Quick summary below.

SUMMARY OF MY (and others i’m sure) ISSUE (THUS FAR):
• Log display in ST iOS App does not match or correspond to IDE Log (same source, different output)
• Log entries are present for actions (on/off) that I DID NOT TRIGGER (or any known app would have triggered)
• Log entries are missing for actions that either I performed, or did not perform
• Physical device status is ON, yet ST App visually indicates the device is OFF
• Last entry in IDE log (which does not show in ST App log), shows the device is ON, which is correct and matches the physical state of the device HOWEVER, IDE device status shows as “OFF”
• Actions are being ignored, missed, or delayed at random (20 second delay to complete ignoring of actions

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On Na02 East and started last night w/unable to turn off lights in bedroom, which kept turning back on several times after we thought they were off. Wife had to turn lamp off at switch to get hers to stay off (Hue bulbs in lamp).

This AM things are still funky - some door/window sensors reporting open that are closed, lights on that should be off, etc.

Before I saw this I pulled the plug on my hub for 20 minutes to rebuild network, but after reading this looks like I just have to wait for ST to get things fixed.

Odd part is that door sensors (Visonic) that are supposedly running local (using Smartsense Open/Closed sensor DTH) are showing open when they are closed. Didn’t expect that those would be affected by a cloud issue.

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that’s a pretty good summary of what’s happening. An outage like this makes me doubt the architecture of the entire platform. Not the first time I’ve had those doubts either. C’mon Amazon, fully embrace the home automation space and put SmartThings out of business.

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I did. Originally thought i was preventing the links by leaving out the https

Did not want someone clicking the bad one.

6 in one, half a dozen in the other?

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This was the longest unplanned outage I have experienced with ST in over a year.

Outside of some minor inconveniences, nuances or weird idiosyncracies, something like this can happen, does happen and will happen again, so for those of you that rely on HA / ST to be available 100% of the time, you need to have a backup plan in place ahead of time so that you aren’t consumed and paralyzed by an outage. (IE Making sure you can flip light switch off and on to control lighting, or a secondary app ie: Hue Bridge to control bulbs outside of ST, access to normal outlets to plug things back into where they were plugged into Smart Outlets before, access directly to a thermostat or through that devices app.). And if the power goes out completely, well make sure you have candles, a flashlight and a battery operated radio.

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Yep, huge delays for me too as of this morning. I was hoping things like sensors and light switches would be more responsive locally. Good five minutes delays for me

Regarding using Hue lights w/the Hue Bridge to provide control when ST is acting up - the problem for me was that last night when the ST Minimotes wouldn’t turn off our bedroom lamps, I tried to turn off the two Hue lights using the Hue app, but then ST kept turning the lights back on again.

The wife was not impressed with what she called “Your dumb-home stuff.” <eek!>

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[quote=“WB70, post:63, topic:113455, full:true”]
This was the longest unplanned outage I have experienced with ST in over a year.

WAS??? Still IS for me.

:joy: That’s a fun one. Probably pieces of ST still working / communicating (Routines or Smart Lighting most likely). That’s when you run to the light switch and just turn it off so the bulbs can’t come back on again and so she doesn’t see it.

I don’t doubt it. I haven’t opened the app or logged into IDE since I woke up and since I experienced it last night. Staying completely out of it until I hear that things appear operational again. Have my fail safes in place so that it doesn’t impact my home without ST in the mix.

All my Routines / Pistons for let’s say Motion detected to turn on lights don’t function after Sunrise. Then I still have Alexa with the ability to turn on/off Local Devices (Smart Outlets / TV) and Nest Thermostat functions.

We are all living on the edge. :grin: