HELP: SmartThing Scenes that include locks are not passing through to Google Home

[shanecmiller23 (Shane Miller)]

Background Information:
I run SmartThings for many smart devices and lights in my house (upwards of 50 total) and I use Google Assistants to interact with these devices through my SmartThing Scenes. I have some Z-Wave Yale locks in my SmartThings that I was able to lock when I told Google “Good Night.”

However, I have a problem:
Today I reconnected SmartThings to my Google Home to apply the new update. However, once the reconnection completed, it seems that any SmartThing Scenes that included a lock were no longer discoverable in Google Home Routines. So now I am unable to lock my SmartThing locks by having my Google Home Routines trigger those ST Scenes. I tested by adding and removing locks to my SmartThing Scenes and it seems that is the differentiator for whether or not a SmartThing Scene shows up in my Google Home or not. I have always used the new SmartThings app and this was not an issue that I ran into until I reconnected today.

So 2 questions:

1. Is this a known issue or is there a simple known fix?
2. If there is not a simple known fix, what would be a good workaround? For example, a Google Routine could trigger a third-party service, which then triggers SmartThings Scenes

I will be incredibly thankful for any replies!

[nathancu (Nathan Curtis)]

Scenes containing locks and doors are not supported in either the google or Alexa skills. You probably wont see a change to this for liability reasons.

That said, you can work around it by activating a virtual switch in your scene and then either chaining another scene to it or activating your lock directly through automation

[shanecmiller23 (Shane Miller)]

Thanks for the reply! I may give that a go

I have always used the new SmartThings app and this was not an issue that I ran into until I reconnected today. I would have Google Home Routines trigger ST Scenes which locked my doors at night or when I left. Do you know if something changed?

[nathancu (Nathan Curtis)]

this changed with the new Google and Alexa skills. It’s always been the case with Alexa, I suspect it’s new to the Google integration.

[thedjm (David)]

So disappointing. I guess I won’t be using Google Assistant to control my smartthings in that case. That’s a non-starter and blows a huge hole in my scenes and automations.

It’s just as easy to open the app and push a button.

[JDRoberts]

As @nathancu mentioned above, The workaround is to have the scene that is controlled by the voice assistant turn on a virtual switch, and have that virtual switch coming on unlock the lock. And you can have another scene turn off the virtual switch and have turning it off lock the lock again.

So you can do it, it just takes the extra step when you set it up.

[shanecmiller23 (Shane Miller)]

Yep, I did what @JDRoberts just mentioned and works fantastic for me

@JDRoberts Apologies that this is unrelated, but it seems that my SmartThings hub gen3 runs into errors if I have over 52 devices in a scene. You’ve been helpful before so just wanted to ask while you’re here. I’m wondering if there’s a good workaround - in the meantime, I set up a scene that flips a virtual switch that then triggers 2 smaller scenes (though the switch doesn’t throw errors like a scene that directly controls devices, so hard to verify it 100% succeeds every time)

[thedjm (David)]

Unpacking “just set a virtual switch” actually looks something like this. And it took me a while to find that.

That’s far too complex and too many moving parts and opportunities for things not working correct to bother with.

I can almost get the kneejerk reaction to liability but workarounds like this seem even less secure, so why even bother?

Very disappointing to cripple such a critical piece of home automation as “I just want to lock the doors at go to bed”.

[JDRoberts]

@thedjm

I can almost get the kneejerk reaction to liability but workarounds like this seem even less secure, so why even bother?

Understood.

There are two different company philosophies at play.

SmartThings does not block what devices you can have in a scene: historically they have allowed customers to access all features of all devices through an automation if you can figure out the code to do so.

The voice assistant companies, however, always have. They are obviously concerned about their regular users causing trouble for themselves. The limitation is on the Google/Amazon side, so they’re the ones you need to talk to about a change.

As for why bothering, it just depends on your own needs and preferences. Some people don’t mind extra setup work if daily operations are then easy. And some, like me, really do need handsfree control of locks. (I am quadriparetic, and while I can open the front door lock manually, it takes me 10 or 15 minutes to do so.)

[JDRoberts]

@shanecmiller23

Yep, I did what @JDRoberts just mentioned and works fantastic for me

@JDRoberts Apologies that this is unrelated, but it seems that my SmartThings hub gen3 runs into errors if I have over 52 devices in a scene. You’ve been helpful before so just wanted to ask while you’re here. I’m wondering if there’s a good workaround - in the meantime, I set up a scene that flips a virtual switch that then triggers 2 smaller scenes (though the switch doesn’t throw errors like a scene that directly controls devices, so hard to verify it 100% succeeds every time)

I don’t know if there’s a hard limit: @jkp might know. However, I believe support has often recommended not more than 30 and some people have run into trouble with more than a dozen or so.

Technically, SmartThings has never, as a platform, put much emphasis on groupcasting for any protocol, so multiple scenes as you have done would make sense if you’ve run into trouble with a single.