My hub v2 has suddenly started showing 3 solid blue lights. It had been working fine since the time I received it, about 1 month back. Nothing I do seems to make the lights go green or any other colour. The message I get on the app is “Hub appears to be offline. SmartThings may not work as expected until is connected”.
I had connected a bunch of stuff to it and everything was working fine until these lights showed up. The connected things still work (I think) but i am not able to get any notifications on the app.
Anyone had the same experience? Any help would be appreciated.
The outage was SmartThings cloud-based, so everyone.
Here’s the reboot info: Users with inactive Hubs will need to perform a reboot by pushing the button on the back of their Hub in order to get it connected again.
It was pretty much everywhere. I had the blue lights and couldn’t reboot the hub until just now, several hours later.
Reboot your hub by first removing at least 1 battery, and then disconnecting power. The site mentions pressing the button on the back, but I prefer the method I just described.
This is a little frustrating- I’m a recent new member of the ST community, having implemented my system in the past two weeks, mostly with door and motion sensors, and lights.
I know ST is not supposed to be a replacement for an alarm system, but if I had been traveling and my automations not able to fire to turn on and off lights and create a semblance of “someone home”, then I’ve lost the peace-of-mind the system gives me that hopefully I’ll know if something is amiss. If this is a taste of what’s to come, for reliability, then it wouldn’t really make much sense to take the next step into water sensors and fire/CO2/locks etc.
Even more frustrating is the fact that I’m able to VPN into my home network and verify no local internet connection problem.
How often are hard reboots necessary? Has anyone tried running the hub without batteries, plugged in on a UPS to provide battery backup, with a different (wifi accessible?) on/off module between the UPS and the hub AC plug? This type of setup would allow one to completely remove power from the hub remotely as long as the internet worked, and allow one to recover from a situation requiring hard reboot remotely.
In fairness to ST, this is the first time since I got my V1 that I had to physically reboot it. There’s always the occasional soft reboot during troubleshooting but usually everything can be handled from afar.
EDIT get a wifi switch to plug into your ST hub and take out the batteries if you’re really worried about this so you can reboot it if the internet is up but this happens again. I wouldn’t worry though. Someone pushed a button they shouldn’t have at HQ and couldn’t Ctrl-Z it. Happens…
Thanks for the reassurance, Keith. Hopefully it’s just a freak occurrence. I like the ease-of-use and community so far, but being beholden to the “cloud” continues to make me nervous. It would be nice if the app could talk directly to the hub with better local control when the cloud is down. Thankfully, ZigBee and Z-wave seem to be well-established standards, and I guess I can take my devices to another platform in the future if necessary.
I do not see these one-off “backend” outages as anything but troublesome and never ending for SmartThings V2 users in the foreseeable future.
I have had to repeatedly reboot my V2 hub (which never happened with my V1) in the frequent problem solving home exercise that I perform weekly when once trusty Z-Wave devices will not respond to direct hub commands in things or SmartApps, or when devices suddenly respond to no commands… SHM is unreliable and mis-reports intrusions when the Good Morning routine does not fire…
Once a very stable platform before V2, SmartThings has lost my respect since they do not answer their support@smartthings.com requests within less than 5-7 days and the once great Support Chatline has been permanently offline.
Don’t even believe that the SmartThings status page reflects what is the actual state of operations. Often times it reports a rosey picture of perfection when we know that behind the scenes we are reporting backend outages and erratic behaviors from devices that were operational a moment ago.
For now, it is the wild wild west in the SmartThings server side cloud…
Guys… I share the same concerns on reliability and Support’s response time. Being new to ST I have had a few instances where I didn’t find the solution online and reached out to support. Not getting much or any response from them I in turn asked the community where I got faster and correct guidance/solutions. ST Community is what’s keeping me going here… I hope someone in ST is reading the above feedback from you guys.
Ugh, 2nd day in a row, I’m at work and receive notice that my hub is offline, at about a similar time as yesterday. Has anyone posted details about the actual cause of lockups requiring manual reboot? The xAF (my girlfriend) is rapidly dropping, since she couldn’t figure out how to turn on the lights manually with the new setup…
I have finally washed my hands off. So, no posts from me lately. Love ST and community. Not doing well heathwise and I have to take a break. Luv you all. Please let me know what’s happening while I am tied to my bed and sneaking to post here and on Twitter. pleas please tag me for anything important. Will appreciate it.
I wouldn’t worry though. Someone pushed a button they shouldn’t have at HQ and couldn’t Ctrl-Z it. Happens…
pleas please tag me for anything important. Will appreciate it.