I came home from being away for a few days to find all my legacy virtual switches stopped working. I realized it when a bunch of automation that fires when I got home didn’t trigger. Opened some switches in the app and they look fine, but when I try and switch them I get a network error. I also noticed once I did I got like 10+ notifications from Google Home firing saying removed from my home.
I can’t remember if these were created via the IDE or the Labs, but definitely long before Edge. My Edge ones are still happily working.
Are these dead and I just need to make news ones and adjust all the automations attached to them, or is there a way to recover them? I kind of assumed they would get migrated to a new world version of the virtual switch, but kind of seems they’ve all been just killed. Just didn’t want to spend a bunch of time rebuilding if I could avoid it.
They were done so long ago I just can’t remember. I mostly used the IDE but think I dabbled in the android app version off and on. I suspect most are IDE based.
I have been asking smartthings staff for over two years What would happen to virtual switches created under the old architecture. And each time I have been told that “we’re looking into it.” In August 22 there was an official announcement that there would be a future announcement about this device class, but it never happened.
And now, today, again, without any announcement or documentation, they just don’t work.
There is no scale that can measure the depth of exasperation I feel at the way this has been handled. Why not just tell us three months ago or six months ago or two years ago that these devices would all have to be re-created under the new architecture? And give us some warning about when they would be turned off? Why make every day a minefield for those of us who depend on home automation to be more than just a gimmick?
And I’m not the only one who’s asked the question about automatic migration of virtual devices. But I don’t think anyone’s ever gotten an answer other than “we’re looking into it.“ So frustrating.
Note that the following question was posted almost a year ago.
Like others, mine just disappeared without warning. I had dozens all created using the IOS App over the past few years. Every one of them is gone leaving most of my long list of automations and scenes useless with red dot/exclamation marks next to them. This is complete BS and may be the last straw causing my move to Habitat.
I know it’s totally ridiculous, but I’m going to stick it out for a day or two and see if SmartThings can come back and fix it. I have very little hope, but also didn’t want to get into dealing with it right after getting home. Just didn’t have the energy tonight. Agreed it is truly disappointing there was no automatic solution to migrate to a supported virtual switch and no specific warning at all.
Upon further investigation, my virtual switches are still visible in the old IDE. They are not visible in the IOS App or in the new Smartthings Advanced Web App. So, is the Virtual Device Creator functionality going away completely?
Information in the old IDE is inaccurate or incomplete in many cases now. You can no longer rely on it. It may just be that the records still exist there just because it’s not being kept up-to-date but the devices may in fact be gone.
I had 8, none of which I bothered to proactively convert to new edge devices since they were “stock” ST devices that I believed would be auto-migrated. 7 of the 8 were auto deleted today. At least the automations that depended on them were not also auto-deleted, just red flagged to help me identify and fix them. I don’t object to the manual effort, just how I had to find out about it. But nothing unusual for this platform on that front.
I was rather assuming that devices using the Virtual Switch and Virtual Switch Dimmer DTHs would be migrated somehow, and there are certainly local and cloud based replacements for both. That said, it isn’t clear if they were ever intended to be created outside of the creator app which is apparently in ‘maintenance’ from June 22th (sic) to July 14th. However they were presented in the same way as other stock handlers and if they quack like a duck …
A number of users kept clear of the creator app, feeling that having devices as children of an app could be a little precarious.
There is also the issue that a lot of users will have switched to the Simulated Switch if they were using virtual switches in support of STHM in third party apps. Those, and the rest of the Simulated devices, were only ever meant for simulating real switches in test environments but, as with the Virtual Switch, they were presented as stock devices in the IDE and the repository.
In the new advanced viewer, the API viewer, and in IOS they are still showing up- but they are not classified as “virtual”. Wondering if these have moved or are in limbo?
Some of my virtual switches disappeared but some remained, I don’t see a pattern why. Hopefully SmartThings fixes the problem soon and they will appear again.
So what are people’s thoughts on best replacement? I’m using some community Edge virtual switches elsewhere since I wanted the switch/button capability, but outside of that I wanted to use stock to avoid later on disruption. Is the new advanced UI of the my.smartthings the easiest way now to create stock virtual devices?
Engaging my suspense of disbelief for now that using stock will be less disruption later on since I created these legacy ones through officially supported channels and you can see where that ended up.
