Frustrated by the state of things

It worked. Better stated, my title is VP Developer Advocacy but sometimes it gets stated as Developer Community and shortened. Even I do it. :smile:

This community has 14,414 active members registered as of me typing this and we have had over 18k developers write either a SmartApp or device type handler. It is a large community of people and needs more than we are providing. We are hiring 3-5 more people into this team that also encompasses documentation and developer support.

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Sometime it feels this way, but no, it is not the case. As for your other characterizations, you have been very right before, but are off base here—especially with this “And they are highly unconcerned with the tiny fraction of Customers who participate in the Community.” sort of comment. You’re also wrong on this. A system for showing known issues is in the works. Also wrong. We use these forums, user and beta testing and more to learn how to deliver better products.

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My whole hub has become utterly useless. Support cannotnfigurenout what is wrong. The whole system worked fine until I decided to upgrade to v2. Was a huge mistake. I’ve had nothing but problems now. The zwave works only sometimes. Devices that are 5 feet from it aren’t talking anymore

The thermostat has gone completely offline. My lock no longer works. I cannot even get a ge link bulb to connect to the hub when it is 6in away or 50 ft away. I just don’t understand what has happened to the company. I’m so frustrated at the state of things. I really don’t know what to do and support hasn’t gotten back to me for 5 or more days. I’m about ready to give up personally. I believed in this company from the start and now I just don’t know…

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I appreciate the rebuttals, and apologize for making such strong assertions that you feel must be called out as “off base”… ie, baseless. It’s based in history. But not easy to move forward without evidence of forward progress.

Your assurances are good to hear, because I believe that the Community could be the key to SmartThings’s long term success, but we do, really need a you, @Ben, a leader and advocate to represent us and keep us reassured.

I speak with cynical emotion here quite often, but I love the positive posts, even as I express support for those that are frustrated by specific problems or the justified fears that there is no resolution in sight. There is plenty of indication that, while I speculate and dramatize, it’s not… baseless.

Sure, thanks for the pointing out I’m “wrong” with respect to published issues tracking lists (as requested for 2 years, by many, and yet nothing is published, not even detailed release notes, pre-release alerts, or consistently timely accurate Status Entries). So I’m “wrong” to assert that SmartThings designers and management clearly appear to not be actively attentive to our suggestions, requirements and feedback (something that with issues tracking could be easy to view and celebrate the progress delivered)? How many posts express frustration that bugs reported months ago are not fixed, that features are removed rather than added, that UX took as many steps back than as forward?

I participated in one of the customer feedback sessions you refer to, but under an ambush NDA… Why the gag orders? In general, I can say without exaggeration that not a single substantive suggestion and concern I raised, (strongly!) has been reflected in the product. In fact, the top concerns I emphasized in the session, turned out to be among the top complaints coincidentally expressed by the Community after it was too late.

I really like you, Ben, and @slagle was an inspired choice from the Community to join ST and your team. But pre-Samsung, you felt more attuned to us, and there were fewer reasons to doubt either your sincerity or influence, or that of your Founder colleagues. There were no Hub V2 promises broken.

I am empathetic to the challenge you face in rejuvenating the faith of the “long-suffering” among us. I want to be wrong about all my pessimistic viewpoints: Since they are well published now, your job is easy; just deliver on what you promise and don’t be defensive about mistakes, and, well, at least try to look like ST is not repeating those same mistakes again and again.

As usual, my peers here will be on a spectrum of pessimism, realism, and optimism. Respectful and lively diversity reflecting the openness of the product and forum. I hope everyone believes I am just sharing what I can only call… “my truth”.

Here’s to partnership, renewed faith, growth and success! :beers:

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Ben; we’ve seen numbers like 10,000+ “developers” in the past and even brought it up for discussion.
I’m curious as to what defines a “developer” and if even minor cutting and pasting of SmartApp or Device Type code is considered “development”. It’s hard to reconcile the “18k developers” quote with the number of truly active Community members, as well as the barely few hundred (or much less?) published SmartApps.

Having that many developers actively participating in the Community would be a much more representative sample size when it comes to assessing consensus on prioritizing concerns or technical feature ideas. Yet at the semi-weekly Developer Conference calls, the attendee list is only 20 to 50 people, right?


http://mashable.com/2015/01/05/samsung-smartthings-ces/#laZRuHwG6iqr
… The Korean electronics giant acquired SmartThings last August for a reported $200 million. Since then, Samsung says its platform has seen “tremendous growth and innovation.” According to SmartThings founder and CEO Alex Hawkinson, the number of developers has doubled to more than 10,000, and more than 1 million apps have been installed. …

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I have asked for this for a year now.

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Not to be nitpicking, but I’m also curious where does this number come from. The forum stats show 13738 “all time” users. Clearly, not all of those are “active”. To me, “active” means someone who checks in at least once a month. By this criteria, there’s only 3225 active members.

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Maybe there needs to be a new thread “Defending the best and 2nd largest** home automation community” where I post stats like we have over 8,000 daily visits*** and where members author 14,569 posts per month. We don’t define the 18k number in a great way—I would love it to be a measure of “high performing developers” but for now it is those developers who have ever saved a SmartApp or device type handler (de-duped, and aggregate over all-time)

This sort of drains me guys. Everything is pulled apart and analyzed to the nth degree. Every time I make a statement here there are 20 more comments “not to be nitpicking” this or that. It is exhausting. I have more important things to do—specifically making sure that the needs of the developers on the SmartThings platform are being recognized and addressed, growing the SmartThings team and making sure they are brought up to speed as best we can, and generally curating the culture we have evolved here at SmartThings to ensure future success and inoculation from outside forces. But don’t worry, I can spend some more time in Google Analytics checking stats.

** I bet there is some sub-reddit that takes the largest cake
*** The number of unique users who had at least one session within the last day.

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I, for one, don’t care if I ever see another post from you here again as long as the work you’re doing shows results that speak for themselves … Oh… That came out wrong, :cold_sweat:

Ben, I think you know what I mean: it’s great having you part of the discussion and having you say you’re listening, but that’s not worth distracting you from making actual progress. You do have better, more rewarding, and less draining things to do.

Despite posts that may seem baiting, my feeling all along is: There’s no need to respond to nitpickers & trollers, make promises, or write apologies.

I changed my position a couple months ago on needing to see an “Issues List” from SmartThings – Rather than see the list, I’d rather that the issues: just. get. fixed. (to paraphrase Nike).

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Personally, one of the reasons I came to ST was because of the company involvement on this forum. But that was second to the good feeling I got just from the users on the forum. This was before the V2 release date, but only by a few weeks.

I understand that the company is growing. They are expanding. And now that they are owned by Samsung, they no longer make all of the rules, the answer to the big guys now. But none of that is really relevant.

I am work st because the product is a quality product. It does stand on its own two feet, even with the hic cups, those happen.

I see the postings by guys that have been here since the beginning and I understand their frustrations. But, I hope they begin to realize that the company will and must grow beyond the forum, at least in the sense of being here for constant contact.

Personally, I want to see the device and the product expand and grow.

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So do I … I hope I haven’t given the impression otherwise?

But with ~150,000 units sold and the platform continuing to be shaky, perhaps SmartThings needs a little less growth at this time in order to let the foundation solidify… no?

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Amen, Ben. Go do the work and let the nitpicking folks talk into the echo chamber. I am here less it feels because of all the post dissection and assays on just how right they are and how ST is bumbling around.

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Has anyone seen this with their routines? Are you thinking what I am thinking this is?

6:56:09 PM: errorjava.lang.IllegalArgumentException: Command ‘setLevel’ is not supported. Supported commands: [on, off, poll, refresh, indicatorWhenOn, indicatorWhenOff, indicatorNever] @ line 322

PS I get this on old routine and newly created one…

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Nope. Which device? 20 stupid chars.

exactly, one would expect this when issueing a setLevel command to a switch…
Sounds like a generic zwave switch. maybe the device type is a switch and the actual device is a dimmer?

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I cannot see the code, is where the routine stops running.

Yup, removing the ‘set dimmers to this level’ makes the routine run through…Where setting the level breaks the routine. This has been an issue for a few days. Glad I figured it out…

I thought they fixed that in the last app release?
So one of the devices in your list is a switch, and it’s still trying a setLevel on it?

They actually unfixed it couple of days ago. I never had problems with my routines breaking in the middle and I didn’t make any changes to them recently.

Thanks for posting the stack trace, I can see where this is happening in the code. Please still report this to support with the error as well.

We’ll get this fixed; thanks!!

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Thanks for jumping in Jim, ticket was in, since Sunday I think. But was driving me crazy not to know why routines break. Now I do :smile:

@Jim You know what I failed to recognize? That are now logs for routines, a week ago there were none. Was this pushed recently, or is part of enabling the ‘display extra events’