Lost control of my Castle! Help!

Bottom Line Up Front: I’ve lost control of my house and nothing I’m trying seems to be restoring the connection/control. I think my HUB may be bad and I may need to replace it, but I don’t even know how to do that (will I need to manually re-configure all my devices/routines/automations again?)

Background: I started converting my home to Smart Things when the Hub V2 first rolled out. Initially it worked fairly well, with a few quirks like challenges getting things to pair with it or trouble with connections across the mesh network. Overall I was happy with it, and thereafter invested thousands in switches, outlet controllers, thermostats, door locks, etc. At this point I have over 100 connected devices spread across dozens of rooms, paired with remotes, etc.

Over the past 6 months, the control has become really unreliable. I get notifications of water leaks from magnetic door sensors that have nothing to do with water sensing. I get notifications that my thermostat/door lock batteries are low even when I just changed them. When I try turning on lights using phones/remotes/Google Home, sometimes it works, but other times it tells me the command was executed successfully without ever actually doing anything. My Smart Lighting seems to do better at turning things on than turning them off. My outdoor lighting is supposed to be bright in the evening while people are coming and going, but dim during the night while most people are sleeping. Right now it just turns it on and leaves it on all night, despite previously having worked the way it was setup/intended. It’s to the point where when I see the ads for Smart Things Security and fire/water sensors, I feel like it’s a really bad joke -how could you rely on a system this unreliable for something that’s so important?

Twice in the last couple months, my connectivity/control has been totally dead. Once it seemed like a firmware update fixed it, but this time it doesn’t look like there’s a fix in the works.

I share my home with 8 other housemates who are all accustomed to depending on Smart Things for their routines. We also depend on it to control the outdoor lighting at the appropriate times of day, etc.

This kind of service interruption really isn’t acceptable for any of us, but so far I’m not even getting a real (human generated) response from the support desk. I feel like I’ve been abandoned by Samsung/Smart Things.

Action Requested: Does anyone have any recommendations on how to proceed? Should I just buy another Hub and try to swap them? Will it require me to set everything up again (this could take days)…? Is there a better way to reach the support team to see if they can troubleshoot on their end?

Sorry you’re going through all that! Are you in the US or the UK?

In either case, support doesn’t read these forums officially. So you need to use the support link at the top of the first page of the forum to contact them.

US support:

https://support.smartthings.com/hc/en-us

UK support:

https://support.smartthings.com/hc/en-gb

I would definitely start by getting in touch with them. If you just buy a new Hub you’re going to have to start all over ( there’s no migration tool) and it won’t necessarily fix all the problems you’re seeing, as it looks like some of them are related to the cloud. :disappointed_relieved:

If by chance you are in the UK, you may be running into the following:

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Thanks for the link -I’m in the US and will try that now.

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If you’re in the US there are phone and chat options that will put you in touch with a real person. :sunglasses: Just use the link I already gave you.

2 hours of chat and extensive troubleshooting from their end indicates that I need a new hub.

Welp, this is probably a full day of work coming up…

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That sucks :confused: - I wonder if some sort of cloud backup/restore option will ever be on the cards, so you can quickly swap out a faulty hub.

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It won’t happen just by “wishing” it, unfortunately… Since it is now 2 years overdue.

I estimate that at most 1% to 2% of Hubs / Locations require a reset each year. It’s too small a number for SmartThings to make this a priority unless everyone asks for it directly to Support or whatever channels their product manager listens to…

It’s like waiting for companies to realize that passwords are obsolete and that they can easily do better.

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