Lost everything! Any way to recover?

Devices & Integrations
1

It appears that I lost all my ST setup…
Some background, when I started with ST and tried to setup my IDE account, I created an account on https://graph.api.smartthings.com/; however I eventually found out that I had to use the new server at https://graph-na02-useast1.api.smartthings.com. From there everything was great and I created an elaborate setup with 20+ sensors and many CORE automations. Because I created an account on both servers, i would received emails from ST twice, so today, for whatever reason, i tried to delete the first IDE account. Long story short, I ended deleting my setup in My location for the right server. Is everything lost? Is there a way to recover my setup?

Thank for any help and advice.

PS: I posted that in the general discussion but this may be a more appropriate place.

2

Ack… sorry about the troubles.

What do you mean by “deleting my setup”? I presume you hit “DELETE LOCATION” on view viewing the Location Details under My Locations?

If so, there is a chance that Support@SmartThings.com can restore the Location and its data…

(but I would avoid being too optimistic. This information may be buried in a backup that they might not be able to easily extract from, unfortunately.)

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3

Thanks for the feedback and sorry for the cross posting.
Yes I hit delete location from the incorrect server; however I failed to notice that I had been redirected to the correct server. I’ve put a ticket with ST and will keep with finger cross…

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4

Got contacted by ST support to hear that they do not have backup of location. I basically lost everything, I’m totally gutted…don’t even know if I have the drive to rebuilt…

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5

Sorry to hear you’ve lost everything.

It does raise an interesting question or two for Smartthings.

How can we back up our locations / configurations / apps if Smartthings does not?

6

Various of the “migration help” threads mention that folks manually print out the relevant lists and detail pages available on the SmartThings IDE website: https://account.SmartThings.com

That’s currently the only way to backup, since SmartThings does not have an API into the configuration functions. (ie., there’s no way to automate reading or writing of the list of Things, SmartApp preferences, etc.).

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7

Please let SmartThings Support know your concerns: they log requests like this. You might also consider posting a review comment in your App Store of choice (Android or iPhone) — marketing probably drives priorities & they are more likely to notice public-facing comments over this forum. If you purchased your hub from a retailer (Amazon or whoever), consider feedback there, as well…

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8

I’ve been in communication with ST support and have discussed the lack of backup option. My request was logged…

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9

webCore can backup it’s pistons but ST…

@ady624 have you ever thought of tackling ST backup?

Has anyone ever tried to manually pull something out of memory on one of these guys? Is it time for root? :wink:

10

The Hub better not be hackable.

Regardless, reading (backup) may be possible if clever with JS (actually, almost trivial), but writing (restore) is impossible without an API into SmartApp config & Add Thing.

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11

Almost everything is physically hackable. Even encryption is vulnerable before encrypting and after plus under a few other circumstances.

Sleep well. :smiley:

12

I can restore SmartApps - devices are a different beast as the underlying link on the zigbee or zwave protocol involves extra stuff - first, the low-level link info on the ST side, secondly the security tokens provided to the physical devices themselves - that second part makes it close to impossible to restore devices in bulk as those security tokens need to be renegotiated. Zigbee should be easier to handle as they retain their zigbee ID, but zwave devices get a hub-assigned incremental ID, ie 2, 3, 4,… making it perhaps impossible to restore (no physical data link to know which device is which as the ID is regenerated at a subsequent join)

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13

What do you mean by this, Ady?

SmartApp instances with the input preferences, settings, devices assignments? I don’t think that is possible…

14

Yes, I can fully restore Settings and State on a SmartApp instance. That SmartApp needs to have supporting methods for this (ie designed to do it). In webCoRE you can duplicate an existing piston - that recreates everything including device links and subscriptions.

Edit: input preferences, settings, and device assignments are all stored in Settings.

Edit 2: if you look up the piston source code, search for updateSetting (missing s). I believe @tonesto7 was among the first ones to discover this. There is a way to provide an array of device IDs for devices. Yes, it is undocumented (you will point this out, lol)

15

Settings.* is read-only per everything I know and multiple discussions.

But you’ve found otherwise? Please share how! :person_raising_hand:

16

Yeah, it is read only (ahem). Read above. Go to the webCoRE Piston source code and search for updateSetting()

17

Well… Wow.

This is huge, and should be a major Forum Topic.

The availability of this API has serious security implications… @slagle???

18

Can you name the scariest implication you have in mind? I see being able to read password fields from Settings as scary :wink: should be a hash verification function, not a direct read. As for the writing to Settings, the app itself needs code for that, so injection from other apps is kind of impossible without that implementation.

19

Honestly, not off the top of my head…

But we’ve been told many times that Settings is read-only for “security reasons” …

Ergo: If it has now been found to be writable, that must be a security concern.

Otherwise; let’s start a new Topic and discuss all the wonderful valuable stuff that being able to write or update Settings gives us! This opens up useful opportunities.

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20

Yes it’s all fully restorable I did it in my Nest Manager migration tool months back.