IFTTT and SmartThings (UK accounts)

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Another new UK user effected.

Least you could do at this stage and until resolved is have an official page we can reference for updates on the matter and some kind of notice at point of sale (PCWorld it seems) pointing out the current limitations. You could have easily informed me at registration time ideally in the app itself or an email since you have my email address. We should not be left wondering why things are not working when you know there is a problem lasting several weeks.

I discovered this from the SmartTools author when I couldn’t auth the app. I’d not even got as far as failing to integrate IFTTT. After having to mess about to get Nest integrated by trying to create a SmartApp having logged into the US server only to find out I need to login on a different URL. Don’t let us login to the wrong server or redirect us appropriately please.

It’s time Management spoke up

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How’s this for an idea - very simple (to me, but I’m not a coder)

all apis make connection to the one url, and they’re load balanced at this point


If the IP is in the EU, push to Server B
If the IP is in the US, push to Server A

If the developer queries the API, the SmartThings api server checks the US server, and if it doesn’t find any devices, it checks the UK server and makes a permanent record that the hub is an EU product, returning all the devices to the developer in a seamless manner.

Its’ not fair that small app developers are going to be the ones hurt by the move in the goalposts on a supposedly production-ready system, and SmartThings should be doing as much as they can to make changes to code unnecesscary.

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Here’s what I had from ST support earlier today about the Server outage last night:

Hi Dean,

Thanks for getting in touch via webchat earlier.

I have been informed that the update last night was for a server improvement for speed, efficiency, and reliability.

I hope that this information is helpful, and please do get in touch if you have any further queries.

Kind regards,

If it was simple, they would’ve fixed it already.

I used to work for IBM, and one of our projects was for the Olympics. We had a ton of resources, a lot of very smart people, decades of international experience, and dealing with access from multiple regions still took months to get right. (We did have it right before launch, however.)

I don’t know what the exact problems are, and I don’t know how many resources have been assigned to it, but I do feel sure it’s going to take more than just checking the IP address on the query.

We’ll see.

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Sometimes, the reason that things are complicated is because people make it too complicated.

Some of the government IT failings lately are a classic example
 A database that costs a quarter of a million to get written and rolled out and runs over-budget, and I look at it and think I could do a better job with MSAccess, upscaled to a SQL server and some good encryption


Too many IT companies move away from the KISS model.

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All true, but since this is a private company whose profits are being affected, I’m sure they would triage it if there were a quick fix possible.

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I agree - but I’ve worked in IT departments with 25 geeks in them back in my IT days, and it’s taken little old first line support engineer me to state the obvious (especially with our AS/400 guys) and save the company a week of man-hours and re-programming
 You never know how deep in to “their way” with tunnel vision an implementer sometimes is.

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Just to throw another frustrated user into the pile of those who want this sorted
 really feels like this shouldn’t be an issue customer’s see


Jay

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Any update yet, need third party integration with life360 and IFTTT. :frowning:

Not yet. Was secretly hoping that Thursday’s server update was a potential fix but no luck. Anyone know whether customers get to see a changelog or release notes when updates happen?

The announcements category of the forum includes subcategories for platform release notes, mobile app release notes, and new device type release notes:

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Hi, A quick message for Dan (@dlieberman),

As Head of Standards for SmartThings, would you have any comment on this current problem affecting your UK customers?

I only ask as an early v2 adopter who has many friends who are pestering me to find out how great your product is. At the moment I cannot truthfully tell them that it’s as good as it could be. Could someone internally at least officially update the UK cohort?

Kind Regards,

Lyndon

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I’ve been lurking here for a while hoping for everything to be fixed, and feel like I need to add my voice to the pot. The fix is taking too long, and while there are some aspects of ST that look really promising and make me want to stay, the fundamentals are missing and make me wish I’d gone a different route.

At least most things in my house are Z-Wave, so I can still do that.

My only requests are that it’s fixed properly, and fixed soon (in that order of priority). If not, I need to move to something that does work.

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ditto that.

This is getting extremely frustrating.

I have to add another note to this - We really do need a fix or an actual update of progress at least. Saying “Its being worked on and it will be weeks rather than days or months” is not really good enough anymore.

If we had an explanation of why its taking so long the community might be a bit more “nice”

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I have to say I take the same view as many other people in this thread.

Had this been an offering on Kickstarter or some other crowd funded development type site, the audience would have accepted that sometimes things are late, not yet complete or require a degree of technical competency to work - and would have known that when they parted with their hard earned money.

But it isn’t. This is a consumer offering, resold in a regular store as a complete product. It claims a degree of functionality which is quite simply missing at present. At best it is the misalignment of the marketing and commercial teams to get a product to market and the expectations set by the technical team as to the readiness of the product - at worst it is the deliberate and fraudulent misrepresentation of the product to the consumer.

As consumers, we are relatively well protected in the UK, and any one of us would be well within our rights to demand a full refund as the product right now is not fit for purpose. Samsung are currently benefiting from a combination of ‘we really want this type of product tolerance’, inertia and goodwill but every day this continues it chips away at the credibility of both SmartThings and Samsung.

From my perspective, I give Samsung 2 weeks. If I cannot connect to the services that I care about listed on the supported device list within 2 weeks, I will have lost my remaining faith that they are committed to this market and return all the products. Whilst I will get my money back, I will have to chalk the time lost and frustration felt down to Samsung and it’s reputation to me will forever be tarnished.

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Indeed - I’m on the Insiders ‘word of mouth’ trial. The words coming out of my mouth right now are not positive! The communication on this has almost completely ceased - it has gone from disappointing to shocking now. It’s pretty obvious that Samsung bought Smartthings, funded the marketing but put zero into the actual product and support.

An update is all I ask for


I commented on this post on sept 13th after hitting this issue.
It’s been too long without proper communication.
It’s the most expensive useless device i have ever bought.
Maybe we should be using a different forum to express our difficulties as i’m sure it doesn’t impact them much being their own forum.

Arron

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The hundredth post now on this, in this thread alone !

Samsung you are treating your customers with absolute contempt on this now. No recent communication at all, I guess because all previous ‘soon’ synonyms have now been exhausted
 Come on guys. surely you have enough technical capability to fix a fundamental software glitch ? Or at least revert us to the US servers until you can fix it.

Wouldn’t trading standards support a view that you ought to suspend selling these until you have fixed the inaccurate advertising claims about what the product can do ?

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