Is SmartThings still in business?

General Discussion
46

A company with 10 employers could support android, iOS and Microsoft store…
I’m not going to justify Smartthings for dropping the ball on Microsoft.

Even more absurd: why Smartthings don’t have a PC/Mac client since the start?
It could have even integrate the smartapp developing and make semi-enjoyable using groovy, have a decent simulator and have direct integration with GitHub.

Seriously people, writing a UniversalWindowsPlatform Smarthings client is a 3 days job.
It’s not much more than just an “always on” connection quering JSONs to populate a couple of listviews/gridviews…

47

I’m gonna troll here, 'cuz I presume you’re being facetious anyway, right? You do know that SmartThings could do “anything” if they decided that it was in their best interest to do so…

But still…

It sure is easy to be an armchair quarterback. Or a backseat driver… You realize that SmartThings is hiring, right?

https://www.smartthings.com/careers/list

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48

I’m obviously being facetious but seriously Microsoft developing tools are a walk in the park.
The backbone of the app is matter of one lazy afternoon (if they did the homework on the server side and they didn’t create unnecessary complications)

It sure is easy to be an armchair quarterback. Or a backseat driver… You realize that SmartThings is hiring, right?

ahahh, Im sure they would have no problem finding C# developers but I have the feeling they are firing people like me…

BTW, I “installed” the Smarttiles things, “enabled” a couple of “things” and at
https://graph.api.smartthings.com/api/smartapps/installations/########-####-####-####-############/launch
I get

{"message":"\"Unexpected error. You may be able to resolve this by opening the SmartApp Preferences for SmartTiles Dashboard named 'SmartTiles [1]' and pressing Done (not Back) to save all screens. Visit http://SmartTiles.click/error and for further support, send complete log lines (xxxx-xxxx HH:MM:SS ...) to SmartTiles Support.\"","mailto":"Support@SmartTiles.click","appVSI":"v5.8.0-+050-Green[1]","error":"\"java.lang.ClassCastException\"","method":"\"html\""}

or
{"error":true,"type":"AccessDenied","message":"You are not authorized to perform the requested operation."}

I’ll give a look tomorrow and let you know: it’s 1.30 am and I have a mild indigestion.
Would be nice to have a ST dashboard on the Xbox or the LGTV webOS browsers

49

That error is, sadly, normal. It always goes away on its own (or possibly delete and recreate the dashboard). It’s a propagation problem on SmartThings’s cloud.

Anyway … if it doesn’t go away, please email: Support@SmartTiles.click

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50

You realize smartthings is probably losing money? They have a 100 dollar hub that you can connect everything to. No subscription, I mean no one uses scout thats a joke without entry delays. Just saying, we are “early adopters” in the sense that it is not complete and they are still trying to figure out how to monetize it. Be patient and someday we will get local processing and a stable platform. Even without local for almost anything but official items, stability has improved a lot over the year.

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51

I’m pretty sure they’re not losing money on the hardware (hub and sensors). The hub is pretty cheap to manufacture and $99 price tag should more than cover their manufacturing cost. Sure, there’s operating expenses (server maintenance, support, etc.), but the idea was that SmartThings would be a value-added proposition to help Samsung sell their TVs and appliances. At any rate, I don’t think anyone here should feel sorry for not paying monthly fees or use it as an excuse for their failures. :slight_smile:

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53

Salary of $25,000??? What third world country do you live in?

SmartThings average annual cost per employee, factoring in benefits and other overhead, is likely well over $100,000!

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54

Not responding back to one specific person… but we are not trying to get rid of developers.

The stuff we are working on will actually make devs lives better as well as the people who consume those products. “From the ground up” doesn’t even cover it. And the amount of resources that Samsung has provided to us (not from us) doesn’t cover it either… We are intentionally not saying a word about it outside of that.

This is also not me saying it is going magically be done tomorrow. Expect a little bit of a wait.

There are three aspects of product development. Time (Deadlines), Quality, Scope.

We traditionally have promised the Time aspect and as a result either Quality or Scope has to slide. Without a public deadline (don’t worry we have internal ones lol) we can focus more on the quality and scope. Unfortunately you can’t have all three most times…

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56

Perhaps SmartThings should move all their operations to South Korea, then…

(These figures are monthly salary … gee…)

58

Sure wouldn’t… lol

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59

Tim,

I appreciate your participation here. What about my (and others) comments about the disappearance of Alex? Don’t you agree that the community here at large deserves some kind of explanation?

60

No, they don’t really owe us anything, and I do not agree, while it is value added, its way different than profitable. Im happy with my purchase because from the research ive done, its hard to find an all in one solution like this hub. Plus as an IT guy, servers are NOT cheap. To buy or run. I am quite annoyed at the hub from time to time, but we all have to realize this is an all-in-one solution, hence it takes more work to synchronize everything. Price out a zigbee dongle, a zwave dongle, and a solid ha software and tell me its not a good deal. Homeseer is hundreds of dollars for the software and doesnt support all the protocols st does. Plus as devs, they do not have to enlighten us to anything, most products do not have that. Looking at you iris by lowes ;D so Im around for the fun, because the devs actually talk to us, and because honestly this is the most future proof hub on the market currently.

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61

Perhaps you weren’t around when Alex the CEO was posting regularly here promising transparency and weekly updates going forward. After a time he completely disappeared from the forum without a trace or any explanation from any staff member why. While you certainly are entitled to disregard the importance of holding a companies CEO responsible for his actions, I doubt many here would agree with you.

I see you have Iris familiarity too. You have my condolences. I dropped that heap of junk back in April and moved over 200 devices to ST. I had a direct line to management at Lowes and it still didn’t help. Things here are nowhere near that bad, not yet anyhow. But having the CEO interact in the forum if nothing else, gave a comforting sense of commitment.

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62

Amazing, please tell me more why it’s ok for SmartThings to marginalize some of its customers. Can you do a graph next time? Is the sarcasm coming through yet? They failed everyone with a V1 hub, everyone with a Windows phone. Yet as a community we still say it’s ok since it’s only a small portion of the customers. We applaud them for showing great response times on virtual hubs with 4 devices while our REAL deployments are corroding from the inside, suffering from random lag, dropped devices, and tens of others problems. It’s like Stockholm Syndrom or something.

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63

Never said that it was “ok”, but I’ll remind you that I’m sure you know “life is unfair”.

SmartThings isn’t a charity or your mother. They’ve made a business decision to leave the Windows Mobile market and explained it (though they don’t “owe” anyone an explanation either… Read the Terms of Use Samsung Account). I don’t like the situation, as half my household uses Windows Mobile, so to us, it’s 50% of the market, not 1%, but I can sure see SmartThings’s perspective.

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64

The terms of service you agree to when you start using said platform.

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65

Correct. … Not that I don’t have sympathy and wish there wasn’t “legalease” … Most Customers would be surprised at how little SmartThings “owes” them.

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66

Anyone who is still using a Windows phone has marginalized themselves :grinning:

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68

Sure, his time is better spent executing the direction of the company. I hope you would agree with that.

I am here speaking for the company. :slight_smile:

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69

Tim I know some emotive stuff is being said on this thread and even the title is unnecessarily antagonistic. You always take the high road and continue to engage like a glutton for punishment. I absolutely respect and appreciate you for doing so. I do however have to disagree with you here… Alex’s professional time imo is best spent maintaining his commitments to his customers.

Now that’s a pretty bold commitment to make but he made it. I’m certainly glad he’s diligently working on the execution of the company, but I’d like to think he can carve out time to keep his word. And sure you can argue that the “foreseeable future” just magically came to pass on 7/23/2016. However you don’t have to be a marketing major to know that if that’s true a simple transition post where he sums up what has been done so far, provides some hints as to the efforts for the future, and official communicates end of his weekly update commitment transitioning further ad-hoc transparency responsibilities to yourself would’ve been a good idea.

Instead he just kinda disappeared from public view. Like I said I don’t want to pile on, and honestly didn’t really want to get involved in this thread at all. But surely you can understand how “being focused on the direction of the company” isn’t a great explanation for his seeming disappearance.

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