Frustrated by the state of things

Ouch…sounds like you have been bricked! The only similar experience I had, was when Wink asked me to send in my hub to them…

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Does it really have 3 LEDs, or just 3 holes in the chassis with one LED behind it?

Sigh. Scratch that, nothing works again this morning.

The other day I had a slowly cascading failure of all devices. However, it has since been fixed, so I thought I’d share my experience.

The first problem I started having was all z-wave devices stopped responding. The app initially reported them as being on even though they were off. It would then quickly change the state back to off.

I attempted to reboot the hub from the IDE, but it didn’t fix it. So, I started writing support about all z-wave devices failing.

Then I noticed my zigbee devices were not turning off. And, alas, all the zigbee devices stopped responding to commands.

Strangely, a few of the zigbee motion detectors still reported motion and the alarm was working, but it would not change state. So, it was alarming even though I was home.

The solution: disconnecting the hub from power and waiting a few minutes before reconnecting. However, upon reboot, routines would fire, but they would not turn on/off the lights. I realized I had to manually turn on and off each device 2 times from the app. The first time it wouldn’t respond (maybe the hub was confused about the state of the light), but the second time I turned it off and on, the light would turn on and off again.

Ever since then, my routines and lights have functioned without issue besides some slight delays which are well within operating norms.

I have a v1 hub, use various GE zwave outlet switches (Outdoor, Indoor Dimming) and various zigbee light bulbs (Wink, Cree, & Osram).

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Things are working better for me however I had a switch just completely stop responding. I tried a network repair, which provides a link to the event log with a network repair filter when you start the repair. This link displays an empty log with not activity. They should fix that. Then I just watched the log unfiltered and found the network repair start stop with no issues but the switch still didn’t work. I was under the impression the repair should have reported that the switch was not responding.

Anyway I had to delete my smart apps associated with the switch, exclude the switch and re-include the switch to get it working again.

The thing that worries me is that a dropped switch is obvious because you can’t control your lights anymore. A dropped water sensor, power monitor etc may not be noticed until something bad happens.

Is there a way to do a health check on all devices. Sort of a ping on every device ?

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@ron, I haven’t checked this app, but it may be something to get you started, if not the solution you’re looking for…

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I’m curious what you have monitoring your Internet connection besides SmartThings. People don’t typically have a mechanism in place that lets them know when their home Internet connection drops. SmartThings does a great job of pointing out how unreliable a typical consumer class Internet connection is.

How long does the hub need to be without connectivity before a message is received?

Most people didn’t typically work as network engineers, either. Or have medical monitoring systems. :wink:

I run multiple WiFi networks (my home automation is not on the same network we surf the web from) and have multiple monitoring mechanisms. (I’m not going to detail them here for several reasons.)

That said, again, many people will typically have many different cloud-based systems operating in their home. And people interested in home automation will have even more.

My point is it’s really easy to compare the reliability of SmartThings to, say, Amazon echo, Siri or hey Google, Netflix, The Phillips hue bridge using cloud scenes, the Lutron smart bridge, streaming games, various cameras, various baby monitors, anything using IFTTT, etc.

If the problem is just poor Internet quality, it will show up across multiple systems. That will be true for some people. Some people will show a lot more problems with a particular system. Sure, it might still be the Internet– – but it might just be that system.

Just sayin’… :wink:

As far as the hub outages, I have no idea what the timings are. I do know that every time mine has gone down, SmartThings support has confirmed that it’s a problem on their side.

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Haha, indeed. I’m an infrastructure manager and hear the complaints all day long from people who obviously have no clue. You are obviously not in that group.

I can see where someone might compare SmartThings connectivity to the other tech in their homes but they all operate differently. You might get a notice from SmartThings when it loses connectivity while Netflix continues to stream because Netflix will buffer content and continue playing during a blip. The Echo isn’t going to send you an outage notification. You’ll only know it’s down when the ring spins after making a request and she says she has no connectivity. etc etc etc. I realize you probably know all that and I’m not saying it for your benefit but that of others.

This is what confirms it all. I have yet to contact support when I’ve taken a brief outage. I have, however, seen notifications of an outage in the past that corresponded with notifications from my hub. I am going to setup an instance of SmokePing on the home server and see what I find.

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My scheduled event to turn off my heat failed again today.

They really should rename this system to “ForgetfulThings”

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I have had my hub for about 3 months now and it has never been working great. I only have 3 lights and sonos on it because I wanted to see how it worked before investing anymore money. Totally not impressed. Lights go on and my app says they are off. Sonos is off and my app says it is playing. I have rebooted, uninstalled, installed, updated but it is still flakey. I would never use this as home security! Right now I don’t even think I will expand on it as it is a hard sell to the rest of the family with all the flakeyness.

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The only way I’ve got my routine firing and related actions reliable is to have 3 . One good night, one good night backup, and if all else fails one good night by rule using rule machine. Same for good morning. Between the 3 it appears to be working. I’ve given up reporting the issued with routines. They keep wanting me to do nonproductive stuff like modifying them etc. Hey if they work a few days then not one day then work more days and work when triggered manually it is not the routine itself but something in your back end. Or an intermittent failure on the hub. My.lights and other devices are very reliable.

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3rd time this last week my Goodbye triggered but didn’t complete ANY of the Goodbye tasks…

Getting old.

Mine randlonly fire good night and good morning whenever it wants, stuff falling off network, and the always glorious not doing all the tasks for a routine. I have 120+ devices so the debate about interference or weak mesh etc doesnt cover my close knit network.

I don’t bother making a ticket because it won’t fix this. They already know how off their system has become. It degrades each release as they don’t have a handle on it yet.

Interference can still destroy a strong network. Not saying that’s your problem, just saying it’s still a possibility.

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same here … network is fine other devices work… just routines either never fire or if they do not all devices are set… but manually executing the routing it always works… which means it is not the routine or interference but some bug in their back end system… I have had to rebuild my routines weekly even to get them to fire… and have backup routines and backups of the backups the damn thing is so unreliable… deivces themselves outside routines work fine.

remove mode change from routines. do not use home, away etc… it will work

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Hmmm, my routines have mode changes in them, and they have been rock solid.

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it looks like if you establish routine when platform is not broken, it works and it is grandfathered until you delete it and if you start routine when platform is broken it doesn’t work. Try start new routine with mode change and i bet it will not work.

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Ahhh, OK, I believe you, no use poking the bear…

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