Hi, I'm new.....and scared

If you want the apex of:

  • App looks good, seems with the times.

  • Lots of integrations through IFTTT or custom device code.

  • Custom code flexibility

  • Community support and help (although I’m getting a little depressed being in this forum lately…)

then this is the place to be. It has some problems, but I think this was a necessary kick in the pants to get the platform nice and stable before Samsung makes ST put Samsung device integration before platform stability. In other words, their back on the case and chompin at the bit to get it working smooth again.

3 Likes

The problem with that is that the CTO promised stability would be the number one corporate priority in March last year.

Yet since last October (6 months after that stability pledge) my system has yet to go 10 days without an impactful ST failure.

When ST is running as intended, it is absolutely my favorite HA system. It has amazing flexibility and versatility, and I really like the vision. But it requires a lot more patience and tweaking than any other system I have, including harmony, echo, the Phillips hue bridge, my security system, my sprinkler system, and my medical monitoring system.

I know there are many people who are willing to put in the time and effort of the maintenance that SmartThings requires in order to get the value of that versatility. But I will believe they have made stability a top corporate priority when I see the system run for 60 days without a failure that requires customer intervention.

Just sayin’…:sunglasses:

8 Likes

Yea. In the moments it stops being a good little platform I shake my fist, do the action manually and forget about the platform for a week or so. Then I resume my hobby when I think of something cool to try.

I wasn’t aware of that pledge… I haven’t been paying as much attention lately since the community has gotten so big / overwhelming which can be a good thing.

Long story short. Whenever I take a step back from my frustration or evaluate other options available I always come to the conclusion that my eggs are in the best basket. That being said I only have plastic eggs, none of those fragile, critical, has to happen eggs. :grin:

Yet…

2 Likes

One really hard thing to recover from is alienating your household members to automation. You are always on a losing foot then, even when it’s working. ST will unfortunately do that pretty immediately in its current state.

However I’m sure ST will get there with a dependable , albeit still Internet dependent product. My advice would be to hold off for a (length_of_a_piece_of_string) weeks until the feedback in this community shows things have been fixed. They are working really hard on fixing it right now.

2 Likes

You should be scared - this is a hobby and not a production system. I trusted it once. I got my family hooked on the benefits of home automation and now when things don’t work (50 per cent of the time) they blame me. I just want it to work with odd better than flipping a coin!

4 Likes

If all automations were as trivial as this, I wouldn’t be interested in home automation at all.

1 Like

Well if there’s something you’ve setup that doesn’t have a manual way to do it then it’s just asking for trouble. That’s why I don’t buy “smart” lightbulbs.

1 Like

Smart lightbulbs work just like regular lightbulbs when the home automation isn’t available.

If you hotwired the circuit you have a problem, but you’d have a problem with dumb bulbs, too.

There are plenty of other ways to use smart bulbs without removing the ability to use them like dumb bulbs. :wink:

As for Plan B, we don’t all have one available. Before we started automating, when I went to bed at night I just left the lights on in the kitchen and the living room and hoped that my housemate would remember to turn them off.

2 Likes

Really?

Is there a manual way to turn out a light when I’m asleep?
Is there a manual way to cycle lights while on vacation?
Is there a way to slowly ramp up a dimmer over 30 minutes in the morning?

I mean, these aren’t asking for pie in the sky. And they work perfectly when your software isn’t broken.

3 Likes

It’s easy to get upset about all this stuff but aside from needing assistance due to medical conditions most of these situations are just in the “nice to have” category.

Bottom line is if anybody reading this topic who cares about the topic title needs to be aware that it’s not 100% reliable at the moment. They should also be aware that there are options out there that are much closer to that level of reliability but they don’t support as many integrations nor are they as “open” seeming. The ones that are very open are a little hard to approach like OpenHAB. If I expected the amount of reliability that some people in this forum expect I would spend thousands of dollars on a professional home automation system, but oh wait I don’t have a budget for that, so here we are.

I’m more satisfied than dissatisfied. I disagree with the system architecture, but it works most of the time for most of the scenarios I wish to accomplish.

3 Likes

We are a little over two weeks in with owning a ST hub and we are happy with it. There has been a few quirks along the way but it has made our life easier.

Give it a shot.

2 Likes

You’re scared? You should be.

I would only recommend this system
-to someone who has a lot of time to play with it on a daily basis.
-to someone who does not depend on the system
-to someone that wants a remote control system not home automation
-to someone that wants a new toy to play with
-to someone that wants a cheap alternative to a true automation system

6 months in and there’s rarely a day that everything works. I pretty much gave up on the automation part and use it as a toy now. That is after tons of issues and Smartthings Customer Support telling me they had bigger issues to deal with then mine and they didn’t support Smart Lighting because it was a 3rd party app. (it’s a ST app)

My ST presence sensors have never worked reliably/consistently and when I go to get support I’m sent a link on the sensors FAQ’s. Night before last the senor was reporting me leaving every 10 minutes or so when the fob was only 3 meters from the hub.

Again this morning simple time based routines are not working. Yesterday it was lights coming on for no reason. Day before Modes were not changing. Monday all connected Philips hue bulbs were dropped from the system.

The mobile app will crash 20 times every time you use it.

Just keep in mind they are working on it a one day they may come through everything the promised. Till then, keep a big bottle of Valium handy.

3 Likes

The good news is that I qualify as 3 out of the those 5. And I think it won’t be up and running for a couple months, so here’s hoping a miracle happens between now and then.

But just in case, I’ll look into that valium…

1 Like

I got the same score. Is it worth it then?

@Takeagabu and @HJohnson

Just make sure that 2 of the 3 you identify with are the 2 below, in my mind these are musts with the system in its current state.

-to someone who has a lot of time to play with it on a daily basis.
-to someone who does not depend on the system

May also want to add this one…

-to someone who doesn’t have to please a partner/spouse

3 Likes

Understanding this article solved 90 percent of my issues. I tore my system down and rebuilt it and added some repeaters and things are very stable now.

3 Likes