I believe I’ve asked this in the past but never got a definitive answer. I’m always trying my best to have 99% of my ST running local and I’m getting there.
I obviously wouldn’t expect things like Alexa to run locally , though I believe this will happen eventually.
Anyways, my main question is this.
With local automations, I know that these still run if the internet drops. Cool.
But what if ST themselves have a server error, downtime etc? Do these automations still hum away in the background and continue to run?
I’m not expecting things like the app working, or notifications or home monitor, I mean my actual automations that have the tick on them and run local.
Good question. I suspect it depends on whether the outage throws the hub into a loop, which we have seen sometimes. So a server error would be more likely to cause a problem with your hub than just cloud downtime. But I don’t know for sure.
I think this should be addressed.
Giving that they are moving to edge and want things running local, which is great but I’d like to know whether things still run on the hub if ST has errors from their end.
As far as i know, Hubitat could have errors or even close down and all your things would still run.
Hubitat was designed from the ground up to run as much local as possible. It’s not the only platform with that approach: Vera, Homeseer, apple HomeKit, etc all run primarily local after initial set up.
smartthings was designed from the beginning to have the cloud central to operations, and it still is even in the new architecture. One staff member recently wrote that the design expects that the hub itself will be cloud-connected most of the time. So it is what it is. Unless matter ends up changing everything.
I can’t confirm it, but I can’t immediately imagine how they could design it not to work. Internet outages take a while to identify so you’d think the automations would need to assume they need to run locally and then leave the housekeeping with the backend till they’ve finished. I guess cloud side issues could screw the hub up but you’d hope the communication was too robust for that
So you think they would still run as normal should ST have any back end server issues or whatever?
I don’t pretend to understand the ins and outs of how all of this works but it would be nice and reassuring if they could officially confirm or deny it.
Test it for yourself, set up a few simple routines and then turn off your internet connection and see what happens. If the Smartthings server has downtime then you wouldn’t be able to connect to their server. You can simulate this by removing your internet connection. Now as JD and Graham said, if they have an error on their server then that’s a different story all together. Their server error could become your hub error.
That’s what I’m asking for clarification for.
I know if I unplug the internet from my hub the automations will still run. But ST having a server issue or any other issue for that matter, is a different story is it not. Maybe it isn’t. That’s why I’m asking.
Think of it this way: if the cloud tells the hub to do something, the hub is going to do that, even if it doesn’t make any sense. Even if it throws the hub into a loop.
Just as one example, more than one community Member has reported that the cloud attempted to start a firmware update on their hub and something went wrong and then after that the hub was nonresponsive. As customers we have no defense against that because we are not allowed to either defer or deny hub updates.
There was another set of issues that occurred one time when super LANconnect went bonkers. The cloud was telling the hub to run some discovery that was clogging up the network.
The smartthings architecture just doesn’t have any way to protect us against that sort of thing. I think those occasions are going to be rare, but they are certainly possible. It’s one reason smartthings has always said their system should never be used for anything which might endanger health or financial investment if something went wrong.
So it doesn’t sound like the answer you want to hear, but I think it’s the answer that is. This is still largely a cloud-based system, and since the cloud takes priority over the hub, errors in the cloud may show up as errors on your local set up.
