Is SmartThings dead? (March 2018)

+1 for porting all Routines and Automations into WebCoRE, discovered this little nugget at the weekend after SmartLights randomly stopped working and found it to replace about 5 custom SmartApps through complex logic rules and triggers :slight_smile:

1 Like

Eh maybe this upcoming update will breath life into the platform. Barely knew groovy… I guess never stop learning applies everywhere.

2 Likes

You’ve clearly never designed a logo before and had to have it approved at all levels by a company as big as Samsung. I’d much rather develop code. It’s a nightmare swamp of subjectivity.

5 Likes

Certainly in the UK Smarthings appears to have all but disappeared. All major retailers have abandoned sale of Smarthings branded devices and other than those available as clearance stock there are no devices available. I am trying to find some additional outlets nd no one stocks them - can find them on eBay bet that is it,

If retailers done stock stuff, I’d say its dead.

1 Like

It’s possible that this all has something to do with the Samsung/SmartThings rebranding effort. Just a guess at this point.

1 Like

Or getting rid of old stock in anticipation of newer version devices being released soon?

2 Likes

Or everything related to ST in the UK is a fire hazard and they recalled everything :joy:

Oh the possibilities are endless.

3 Likes

Based on recent experience it seems pretty self evident that ST’s support for the UK , or indeed any International market is over.

K

1 Like

To the contrary!

Samsung is determined to see SmartThings available in every country in the world that Samsung serves. They are spending extraordinary effort, for example, in adding international language support throughout the system.

I suppose they may be temporarily pulling-back from existing overseas markets while the new SmartThings Cloud and SmartThings App are evolving… I guess.

1 Like

I’m sorry but the current circumstances show the opposite.

Their UK support champion spokesperson has vanished.
Their product is becoming increasingly unavailable in every retail store
Their release of UK versions of their drivers / apps is almost non existant
They do not release US versions of their apps to UK users or create UK versions
Even long promised releases are shelved and never released anymore eg Honeywell EvoHome
We are very much second tier / neglected users, other language markets will fare even worse.
Some UK product is defective and dangerous but they ignore the issue and user requests for replacements
Store offers are invariably US only.

In fact I can’t think of anything positive to say about STs UK evolution over the past two years

1 Like

I’m not saying that the current situation isn’t good; and this is particularly painful for UK customers and fans. (Only about 10% of SmartThings’s total sales, though.)

I’m just saying that the future is one in which Samsung SmartThings is everywhere :world_map:.

1 Like

Roll on the future then.
Because it’s almost impossible to buy any smartthings in the UK.
And when was the last time support for any new devices was added?
The promised Gear S2 app didn’t appear, neither did the Gear S3 app.
I’ve got 2 apps both called smartthings on my Galaxy S8 and neither of them work properly.
As a customer, should I be happy with this?

The U.K. retail shops are in crisis, Maplin Electronics has closed, that was where I managed to get some additional ST stuff. The starter kit I got from Curry/PC World, but it was very old stock and a battery inside was leaking. (I had to buy a replacement and clean it up myself as it wasn’t covered by the warranty).

So many of the links to purchasing other items in the app are dead or out of date.

It doesn’t inspire confidence.

I understand that of course that we have different standards in the U.K. and use different frequency bands for ZWave, which stops us from importing non U.K. products.

Off topic comment:
Smoke and heat detectors and CO detectors are another problem area, as our regulations are about to change and it will be a requirement to have such things in all properties, new and old, private and rented. They will have to mains wired it seems, and interlinked and so on.

I’m glad now that I didn’t go ahead and try and add something myself to my ST hub because chances are it wouldn’t comply with the new regulations.

I am not complaining about these new regulations, they are a very good thing, too many have no detectors, or no batteries in them if they have any. It was not right that some types of premises were not subject to having mandatory detectors, as all lives are equally valuable and everyone deserves to be protected from fire and smoke and carbon monoxide poisoning in the home.

So as soon as the new regulations for Scotland are formally published I shall be fitting whatever is needed. But it won’t be ST. How could we depend on that?

My previous AlertMe system had detectors that sensed the noise that smoke alarms made and alerted me via the app, that was a good system.

3 Likes

My wife had a Gear watch that I bought her as a gift. It was that debacle that put me off Samsung as an entrant for any future purchases of anything. Because they would not do anything about the charger that, literally days after the warranty was over, would no longer connect to and charge the watch.

It was in that same timeframe that the stories of the self-decapitating Samsung washing machines came out, and there were other major stories of problems with various products that they were refusing to live up to the warranties… combine that with the shoddy responses to issues here, and it’s a no-brainer.

To be a “Samsung customer” is to be a fool. Which is ok. Fool me once, that’s fine. Fool me twice?

So this year I’m re-doing my entire kitchen. All new appliances. Easily $6K or more in upcoming purchases.

Guess what company’s appliances I’m not even bothering to look at.
Which is a shame, because they are supposed to “work with SmartThings”!!

Samsung is a sales company. That’s all, nothing else.
They are most certainly NOT a customer service company. They are the opposite of that.

1 Like

But Glen, you are still here as a SmartThings customer which still makes you a “Samsung Customer”. :slight_smile:

Yeah, well… lol

But seriously, I’m not here as a Samsung customer. I’m here as a customer of, and hopefully contributor to, a community brought together by its travails with a particular Samsung product. Let’s face it: would this place even need to exist if the product “just works”??

Don’t get me wrong; I grasp all that’s involved in this particular type of product.
But I’m certainly not on a Samsung Gear web page. I’ve abandoned that, as Samsung abandoned it and its customers. I’m a SmartThings customer.

3 Likes

I’m just razzin ya. I get where you are coming from.

Having played with it for just a week (a week during which the UK server has been down for over half of it), I think I’m out. I’ll be boxing up what I can and seeing how much can be refunded.

There are a lot of WiFi plugs out there, which can be controlled from an app on your phone. Much cheaper then the Zigbee / Z-Wave ones too. Same with thermostats, burglar alarms etc. From my limited experience WiFi seems to be far more reliable, especially when you’re at home on your own network. I’m going to hold off for a little while, buy a cheapish burglar alarm system which I can control from an app and wait for the time when there is no proprietary tie - everything just runs direct from WifFi or a generic app which can use the device api’s.

Unless I’m missing something? (Very possible, I haven’t been following this stuff at all).

1 Like

If you bought SmartThings to manually turn things on and off then you bought the wrong system to begin with.

The problem isn’t the protocols that SmartThings uses, it’s the multiprotocol cloud platform that they have designed above the third-party protocols they are using. Zigbee and zwave themselves are fine as far as reliability goes. For example, the new Amazon echo plus is using zig bee, not Wi-Fi, as its primary home automation protocol, and I’m sure Amazon would not have chosen it if they had concerns about the reliability of the protocol since they are about as “mass-market” as one can get.

You can go with Wi-Fi if you want, but be aware that many Wi-Fi routers have a limit of about 32 devices that can be connected, and that would include your laptops, game controllers, phones, and everything else. So people frequently find that there just aren’t enough slots for home automation.

The other issue with Wi-Fi is that it uses five or six times the power of most of the other home automation protocols, which means it tends not to be suited for battery operated devices. Just as one example, it’s very difficult to find a Wi-Fi only smart lock because people just don’t want to have to change the batteries every 6 weeks or so. Bluetooth devices going to a plug-in Wi-Fi bridge are a good alternative as the WiFi can provide Internet connection but the Bluetooth battery use is much better.

as I’ve said previously in the forums, I really like the SmartThings vision, and I like the way it handles complex logic to produce notifications, but over the last two years I’ve moved all of my critical use cases off of it. My own requirement is a maintenance free operating period (MFOP) of at least six months and preferably a year, but with SmartThings I only get about 10 days.

Speaking just for myself, I decided that my highest priority was reliability (I’m quadriparetic) and I was willing to give up a lot of complexity to get that. So these days I primarily use HomeKit, and I choose devices which work with both Homekit and Amazon Echo. It’s not the least expensive system it’s not very sophisticated in terms of rules options, and there aren’t a lot of devices to choose from yet, but it’s very reliable and it’s very easy to set up and use, so I save a lot of money that way since in my situation I have to pay someone else to do pretty much everything, including change batteries. But different things work for different people. :sunglasses: I still use SmartThings for use cases like receiving a notification if the guestroom window is open, rain is expected, and the guest is out of the house. I haven’t found anything comparable in the same price range that can do that, and if it fails, it’s not a big deal. And I still keep hoping that they will improve the stability, but for now I do use other options.

11 Likes