Sorry to tell you this, but its the way technology is moving. There is an trend that has caught on called “Minimum viable product” which is often associated with subscription to an approach called “Agile Development.”
A minimum viable product has just those core features that allow the product to be deployed, and no more. The product is typically deployed to a subset of possible customers, such as early adopters
that are thought to be more forgiving, more likely to give feedback, and able to grasp a product vision from an early prototype or marketing information.
It’s a land rush out there like Oklahoma in 1889. Everyone wants to be the first out there to put intelligence, internet access, etc. into products in hope of grabbing market share. The bugs will be fixed later. As I suggested to you a few days ago, putting things that really have to work like door locks on a system that has reliability issues may not be in your best interest.
And while I have no way of knowing, there may be additional factors at play here. In the summer of 2014 Smartthings was bought by Samsung. That’s probably a good thing overall since it brings a deep pocket to fund development and makes it less likely they will suddenly close the doors and turn your purchases into junk. There can be dark sides to an acquisition, though. Often in these kinds of purchases there are clauses that make some of the payout conditional on meeting certain milestones. You can bet that when discussing the sale the roadmap of future product development was covered, and it is possible that release of the gen-2 hub was written into the contract. Like I said, I have no way of knowing, but if this happened there is a powerful incentive to get the product out the door. The timing seems at least consistent with this, sales of the gen-2 hub beginning in time to ramp up volume production for the Xmas season.
Let me say, though, that I personally am happy with the system. It gives me something I didn’t have before, monitoring for leaks and intrusion that works most of the time (which is better than none of the time since I didn’t have monitoring before). I have some technical experience so I was able to cobble together a workable presence detection using 3rd-party apps on my Android phone, although I understand this isn’t available for a non-technical person.
[quote=“cuboy29, post:41, topic:27324”]
am now trying to build a better presense detection system. I have an ultransonic car detector in the garage now so If the car is parked then ST thinks i’m home. Still trying to figure how I can AND the car detector with the phone as my presense (2 factors presense sensing).
[/quote]If you have an Android phone you can use Tasker and the AutoLocation plugin to figure out where your phone is. Watch the demo at https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.joaomgcd.autolocation&hl=en, that is what you want to do in order to accurately sense your location near home. Next, set up a virtual switch in Smartthings following any of the several examples here on this site. Use Tasker to turn the switch on and off based on your location, and in turn configure Smartthings to respond to that virtual switch to change modes (home, away, etc). To make the detection in Tasker more reliable, add a clause that only marks you as away if the geofence says you are gone and you are not near your home wifi.
I have an ultransonic car detector in the garage
What product is that? It sounds like something that could be useful as a detector for somebody at the front door. The PIR sensors don’t really work that well outdoors.
I use a two factor system based on two different devices tracking my presence (at this point, one is an ibeacon). Took about 6 months to shake everything out, but it now works well for me. Other community members have come up with other approaches. So it can be done, but takes some work.
the ultrasonic detector is something I built with the Spark Photon and one of the ultrasonic range finder. I have a device type that will tell me which car is currently parked in the stall.
Actually, SmartThings does not fit this definition. When Amazon released its Echo to a limited set of customers (by invitation only), it was an MVP. It lacked many features it has now, but it was a fully functional and reliable device nevertheless. This was an example of a well executed MVP strategy.
SmartThings released its product more than two years ago with a wide set of features, most of which didn’t work quite well. Then they’ve added more half-baked features (so called “Labs”) and then broke some more of those that did work. There’s a world of difference between an MVP and a buggy POC.
I agree this is what they’re going for and be pushing hard the ST people for it. If you don’t like to spend your time tinkering things, having to install a SmartApp to get things done is a pretty “dumb” idea. This is why non tech-oriented people wouldn’t like ST. If you look at the Samsung products (TVs, phones, tablets, appliances, etc.) they are easy to use. You don’t have to overthink to use them.
Changing the subject, while I comlain about ST I also believe it to be positive to actually acknowledge when it is working. And it has been doing so for the past few days, without a hiccup. I hope it stays that way, but who knows.
Today I finally invited my wife to the ST app and we’ll see how things work. Although the first thing she said when she opened it was: “what do I do with all this?”. My reply: Don’t worry, I have everything set up. That should earn me some points.
Nest week I’ll be getting my new phone and we’ll see how ST behaves.
So, ST, please continue to behave and I’ll be happy.
Some of my light switches that used to work don’t work now. Some of my routines and smart apps that worked fine are broken now. It is as I need to completely wipe out the whole ST, exclude and then re-include all of the devices and re-do all of the routines.
ST has not been working for me in the last week AT ALL.
