Ok, I have to vent. ST sounds like a good idea, but for the past three weeks that I have it installed in my home it is a constant battle trying to figure it out.
I think it is still half cooked. For those of us who are not programmer/developer or thinking like one I am sure it is a constant battle of trial and error with ST. It is very much not intuitive. I feel that every time I make a rule or use smart app it is a hit or miss - more of a miss, and on top of it the existing rules braking and stop working.
ST TEAM, if you are reading this, I as a consumer don’t want to think in the programming logic, all I want is 4 rules to JUST WORK:
Have ST open the door and set thermostat for me or my wife if getting home during day time.
Open the door, set thermostat, turn on lights if either one of us or both of us at once come at night.
Turn off lights at night and set thermostat to lower temp.
In the morning, set thermostat to a higher temperature.
These are the four rules that I’ve been struggling for the past few weeks. Every time I create one rule and think it takes care of the thing with the collaboration with smart app like smartlighting I ether brake other rule or this new rule not behaving as expected.
I am just toooooooo frustrated. Seems that I want a few simple things, and you’d think Samsung would make it right with the V2 hub!
Check out the SmartRules iOS app and simplerulebuilder.com.
These are two community developed solutions to create a rules engine which is lacking in smart things. The current ST framework required you program your own apps or find and modify existing ones to create simple solutions like you listed.
I agree that simple lighting and door lock automation should be built in and run locally on the ST platform. They are still struggling with these and other simple features like multiple accounts/phone presence.
1, 3 and 4 can be tacked with just routines, step 2 will require the smart lighting app
Setup with minimal smart apps:
Welcome Routine: unlock door, set thermostat, when someone arrives
Sleep Routine: Turn off lights and set thermostat to lower temp at set time
Day Routine: set thermostat to a higher temperature, and set set mode to day at set time or sunrise
Night Routine: and set set mode to night at set time or sunset
Smart lighting setup to compete step 2
turn the light on, on arrival, when mode is night.
Checkout “Routine Director” under the “Modes” section in the marketplace as well. It can do a lot of what you want based on sunrise/sunset and presence
That is the thing guys, we are trying to have a workaround with this and that app. You can do this with this app, but for that other thing you have to use that other app. As a consumer, I expected a much more built in capabilities, especially when I learnt that ST is owned by Samsung.
Currently I have following routines set up:
Good Morning! Week Days. Turns on lights in the kitchen and set heater for 73 M,T,W,Th,F. Changes mode to “Home”. This routine worked for a few days and for the last two days ITS STOPPED WORKING!
Good Morning Week Days. Simply turn on heater to 73 at 9am Saturday and Sunday. Changes mode to “Home”. It worked past weekend
3.Sleep time! Turn on my bedroom lights, turn off all rest of the lights, lock door, set heater to 69. Change mode to “Night”
First Back Home (when me or my wife arrives or stays home). Set up my heater to 73, opens front door. Changes mode to “Home”.
Second Back Home. Simply unlock the door when someone (me or my wife) arrives. Do not change mode.
I also use Smart Lighting app set up for “Arriving Home at Night”. It is triggered by presence if someone arrives (me or my wife) and turns on lights and unlocks door if it is after sunset. It DOES NOT WORK! I had a at first mode set to kick in if mode is “Away” then as “Home” now I removed the mode specification altogether.
No, I use phones for the presence. At first it was a problem, ST was not always recognize my phone. However, lately, ST recognize my and my wife’s phone no issue. I see it in the log that it recognized the presence, but it just would not do the dam thing I am asking it to do at night for instance or during morning.
Yes i do, i have 3 and i have have been using them for years. Their reliability is based solely on having a SOLID zigbee network. As things such as wifi and bluetooth can interfere with zigbee devices having a SOLID zigbee network can be a challenge. In my home i have 3 zigbee switches near my entryway, 2 to the right of my door and 1 in the bedroom above my entryway.
Good Morning! Week Days. Turns on lights in the kitchen and set heater for 73 M,T,W,Th,F. Changes mode to “Home”. This routine worked for a few days and for the last two days ITS STOPPED WORKING![/quote]
Try rebooting the hub. There was a problem with one of the recent updates where timed events (that is: Run this task/routine/app at this specific time) stopped working. ST applied a hotfix but you might need to reboot the hub before everything starts working.
Okay, is Good Morning a routine that your running? Is it the same routine as the weekday routine?
Again if this is a timed event, try the reboot of the hub.
[quote]4. First Back Home (when me or my wife arrives or stays home). Set up my heater to 73, opens front door. Changes mode to “Home”.
5. Second Back Home. Simply unlock the door when someone (me or my wife) arrives. Do not change mode.[/quote]
This is a bit more complex in that there are more conditionals. It’s doable, but I don’t know if built in stuff can do it.
I’m assuming you don’t want to change mode in case one of you comes home after the home is already in night mode, correct?
Here’s how I’d tackle it. Setup for your door to unlock when someone comes home. This should be a separate smart app from everything else, not a routine. This SmartApp will ALWAYS fire when someone comes home regardless of mode.
Next, setup the “I’m Back” routine to run when someone comes home. But in the additional settings in the “Don’t automatically do this if I am in one of these modes…” select night mode.
This way whenever you come home the routine will run and set mode to home and the thermostat to the desired level. If the wife comes home, it sets mode to home, temp to 73. An hour later you come home. ST sets mode to home (no change, you’re already in home mode) and temp to 73 (no change, you’re already at 73).
But if you come home late at night and mode is set to night, none of those changes happen.
This is known not to behave as expected, which is why i recommended to use modes instead. Also there are several long treads on timed events aka schedules not firing correctly consistently. I find that things seam to happen more consistently when they are fired by events, like arrival/departure, motion, sunrise/sunset, acceleration. This is my personal experience wth ST over the years and will hopefully help ease your HA frustration.
Yea I get a TON of value out of seeing rules in a linear progression, so if this1 or/and this2 then that1 & that2. It can be organized top down like simplerulebuilder.com not left to right. Also I really value configuration on a web browser on a laptop. I need to see everything, not just scrolling up and down on a tiny phone screen where the trigger text looks more like a paragraph due to the line breaks required.
My 2 cents. (Pleading @slagle to give us an official ST created rule maker with all capabilities and actions…)
I as a consumer don’t want to think in the programming logic, all I want is 4 rules to JUST WORK:
Have ST open the door and set thermostat for me or my wife if getting home during day time.
You have bought a system that provides convenience (the ability to operate devices & receive notifications) at a cost well below previous systems. That’s the good news. The bad news is that ST and similar systems are still an evolving technology. Knowingly or not, you are an “early adopter” and have to be willing to tolerate the occasional glitch and malfunction.
With this in mind word of advice/caution here. Think carefully about the consequences of a malfunction of the door lock. The most likely error is unlocking the door when you are at home and have locked your door for the nite, although if you are using your phone to detect presence it is possible for the other error to happen (unlocking when nobody is at home).
There are 2 notification types available for ST to unlock your door, the Presense fob and a geofence on your phone. Back when I was using the fob to arm my system I would get alarms in the middle of the night due to motion inside my house. Turns out that every week or two the ST system would lose detection of the fob even though it was sitting on my keys right inside the house; thinking I had left it would arm the system. Those motion detectors are pretty good, and it doesn’t take much stirring inside the bedroom to trigger them.
I enabled the geofence on my phone but that also had problems, one that are not the fault of ST but cause problems nonetheless. Every few weeks, for some inexplicable reason, my phone will decide I am a mile or so away from my actual location. I can look at the dot on google maps and wonder “what the heck?” Not everyone has this issue, some phones are more reliable. But if my phone tells ST I have left it will arm the system.
One way this could affect you is the boomerang effect when the fob detection is lost and regained, or the phone geofence tells ST you have left and then returned. Expect the lights to go on and the door to be unlocked, depending on the time/mode and other settings. Another, if you use the geofence on your phone, is if you are visiting someone in your neighborhood. You leave and lock the door, if the geofence is on the border of in/out and it happens to switch from out to in, again an unlock will happen.
I am Frustrated with mine as well. I have everything set up almost exactly as my V1 Hub and my routines only work half of the time. I have contacted the customer support about 10 times and they have been no help what so ever. I ended up going back to my old hub.
I have had my ST2 hub for just over a month and not very happy with it. I only have a few light bulbs and a Sonos connected right now because it is so unreliable that I can’t imagine connected more things until I can rely on it to work. I have kept things basic and for some reason, sometimes it works and then all of a sudden the lights won’t turn on when they are supposed to or the music won’t play or for the last two weeks my Sonos says that it is playing in the smartthings app but it isn’t playing. I have rebooted, reset up the devices multiple times but it is still flaky. And I can’t setup presence with other smartphones because that doesn’t work. They say to use Life360 but I can’t see setting up another program just to get things to work with ST when it should work already!
Ya, my phone works great as presence sensor but the ST presence sensor is junk.
St presence sensor’s battery didn’t even last two months, stay away from those things.
Mine worked the first 6 weeks I had it, then started false exiting and returning in the middle of the night.
So, now my ST system is just about useless without some way of arming and disarming it without a smart phone.
St has a minmote remote but $60 come on?
Oh, I can use it to turn on a z-wave switch that has a light hooked up to it.
I keep seeing this about the zigbee network that ST uses with it’s presence sensors; "Their reliability is based solely on having a SOLID zigbee network. As things such as wifi and bluetooth can interfere with zigbee devices having a SOLID zigbee network can be a challenge."
Well, I don’t know a thing about zigbee or his networkings, but I did put a new battery in my presence sensor, placed it 4’ away from the hub and it still false exiting and returning. So I deleted it’s push notification settings and can watch it come & go all it wants without bugging me. So after about 6 weeks of watching it come & go I uninstalled it. I guess 4’ away from it’s hub is not good enough of a reliable network for ST to work with.
