Yeah I’m still having this dance. I have about 5 or 6 Zigbee devices that routinely go off line. As I’ve mentioned before, sometimes a battery pull is all that’s required. Other times the devices have reset and I have to scan to add them back. Notably, at least one will report offline then it will eventually stop reporting as offline despite actually staying offline. Been going on for months.
‘???OFFLINE???’. ‘!!!NOT!!!’
I just had a multipurpose sensor stop working apparently on Sunday afternoon since looking at the logs, that was the last time it recorded temperature to SmartThings. However, SmartThings ‘NEVER’ showed the sensor as !OFFLINE! at all. I noticed it this morning when I open the door and did not receive a SmartThings notification that the sensor was Opened. I looked at SmartThings and the sensor was showing it was Closed and Online. WOW!!!
So I pulled the battery and saw the light inside the sensor flash when I put it back in, but still it wasn’t reporting anything to SmartThings, and SmartThings still was showing that it was Online, not Offline. WOW!!!
So, I ran the SmartThings ‘Add Device’ scan, and after about 30 seconds, the multipurpose sensor was found and finally started reporting and working. But it ‘NEVER’ showed as ‘OFFLINE’ at all!!!
Unbelievable…
Anyway, I wish there was a way that will alert me when the multipurpose sensor(s) stop reporting temperature since they do that every 15 minutes or so because I can’t rely on SmartThings to show them as Offline now!!!
Off line, on, off… the new small tile indicators are not working correctly at all, definitely should not be relied on, ST is aware and last i heard they were looking at the issues which are multiple
We havent had an app update for 2 months and there is new FW currently being tested, lets hope somewhere among the coming updates a fix appears
10 Likes
When update 
I suppose the issue cannot be fixed then.
Yea ive also noticed a few of my rgbw strips keep falling offline… sometimes i just hit the power button on the app and they just work right away… but other times they dont respond for a few minutes… its very annoying.
Is this still the biggest smartthings unsolved mystery? I suppose someone here has tried rebuilding the zigbee ? That is my next step but given the number of people having this problem I am just sad
So what are people moving too to replace smartthings. I bought a new st v3 hub hoping this would fix the problem but nope. Just a bunch of useless water sensors waiting for the next flood to cost me thousands of dollars cause smartthings been broke for a while now…
Friggin shame since it worked great for many many years
Hubitat? Whats the closest to ST that actually works?
Do you have any powered Zigbee repeaters such as smart plugs and if so how many? We would need to know a little more about your setup. Have you tried rebuilding your Zigbee mesh by unplugging your hub for 30 minutes? How many devices do you have in total? Layout? There are many users with V3 hubs that are not having any problem. Its all about your mesh and how good it is.
i moved to home assistant with a mini-pc and a uzg-01 zigbee module.
Instead of a device turning on every 0.5 - 1 second in the living room like with smartthings, all my ~25 devices in the living room come on in around 1 second in total. Boom, what a improvement.
Oh, did i mention that devices randomly going offline with smartthings is now also a issue of the past? Never had it in the 2 months i use home assistant now.
There’s also negatives about home assistant. You can’t make routines/automations based on conditions alone. something has to be a trigger. It makes you have to build additional routines for some tasks, but it’s a small price to pay.
Hi!
Thank you very much for responding!
I have roughly 100 devices with the vast majority being Zigbee. I do have some Zigbee plugs that serve as repeaters and my setup is a Ranch home with basement (which is where the water sensors are critically located). For at least 5 years both zwave and zigbee devices furthest from the hub (v1 original, v2 in place for past 4 or 5 years) worked just fine and did not experience this offline/online headache that I am trying to resolve. The problem started I think over the summer but I was travelling a lot and didn’t focus too much on it. Being home for holidays I became acutely aware of how many times online/offline cycling the devices are going through. I installed a few days ago the Aeotech hub hioping my hardware went bad but still have 35 - 50 offline devices at any time. I can usually repair manually a device and get it back online but the sheer number is overwhelming and after doing 15 of them over a weekend they just started going back offline again…
I did try taking the unit offline for 20 - 30 minutes I think twice but will try again.
I know I have some phantom zwave devices and the repair doesn’t seem to fix so kinda at a loss as I really don’t want to repair every device unless there is reason to think that will be the silver bullet.
I know when IDE disappeared and EDGE became a thing I had to reinstall some drivers but I don’t think this is the main issue as I had every water sensor repaired manually and right now for instance 3 of 4 are offline in the same room right now. 2 seemed to go offline 1/3 and one 1/4. they all have batteries that were replaced a few weeks ago.
I can’t seem to find how to get logs anymore and really just not sure what a next step would be. I also recently added a dedicated repeater for zigbee that seems to be -58dbm right now 1115pm EST and seems to go between -52 and -55… it is in the same room with all the offline water sensors (the samsung rectangke ‘water leak sensor’)
Ideas?
Thanks - Michael Watson above seemed optimistic my ST problem is solve able but I did also want to start to ‘look around’ so I’ll definitely take a look at the setup you suggested. Like most here, for the fire, water stuff the smart home has to be dependable… I can live with an occasional light on or off when it shouldn’t be but the home safety stuff isnt negotiable.
Happy 2024 
Could you give an example, please?
Triggers/conditions are very similar things.
ST also need a trigger.
in home assistant, you HAVE to define a trigger. not in smartthings. In smartthings you can set “if all following conditions are true”.
smartthings therefore works better as i can turn on lights if a motion sensor detects movement, if the lights are not on yet, if a light/lux meter detects x amount of light. they all have to be correct in order to start the routine.
in home assistant, if i want to turn of the lights in our garden when multiple devices detect no movement for 1 minute, then i have to add them all as trigger, and also all of them as condition.
Furthermore, with some statusses/devices you cannot use a “for” time in home assistant. (if this device does not detect for x minutes) while this was rare. it was possible to circumvent this by making a virtual sensor that goes on when the real sensor does not detect anything for over 1 min, and using that virtual sensor then in the condition field.
Glen, Happy 2024
The Zigbee mesh repair takes time to rebuild and you have to wait 24 to 48 hours after you plug the hub back in to see results and everything comes back online. Just let it sit.
There is another topic on this subject below and ST is aware of the problem and working on it. In my opinion, these are phantom messages and not phantom devices.
I would check the drivers on the devices and read through the forum and see if there are better ones, possibly from Mariano_Colmenarejo’s MC drivers.
You cant, but you can find a lot of information in the Advanced API Click Here
You can also use this Command line how to install and use written by @JDRoberts with logcat and see the messages comming from each device.
I would just get 3 or 4 smart plugs and spread them around your basement. You can never have to manny! The more you have the better your mesh will be. Also keep in mind that your Wifi can cause havoc on your Zigbee mesh and if you made changes to your Wifi mesh, that may be causing your problem. There is an excelent topic on this here.
As far as jumping ship and going to another platform that is your choice and choice is good. Just read a lot before you do! My thoughts on platform switch below.
Just a +1 for the value of checking Wi-Fi/Zigbee/Z-Wave channel frequencies for overlap.
I had issues with drop outs/poor responses from ST and Hue in the past. After channel separation all my issues resolved and have stayed away.
I operate Wi-Fi mesh, Sonos mesh, 4x Zigbee (ST, Hue x2 & Ikea), and ST Z-Wave.
I have devices on the extremities of all of these channels which are as separate as I can realistically make them and all have been pretty reliable.
Hubs are in 2 physical locations for reasons of range. One has Ikea & Hue wired through Wi-Fi mesh node and the other has ST, Sonos and Hue on main network switch adjacent to Wi-Fi controlling node. There is no special physical separation beyond that.
UK v2 ST hub.
Zwave and WiFi won’t interfere with each other: they are on very different frequencies. It’s one of the reasons that zwave was so popular for fixed position devices like light switches: unlike Zigbee, Bluetooth, and thread, it’s just really unlikely that zwave would ever run into interference from Wi-Fi.
Zigbee is a different story. Zigbee, Bluetooth, thread, and Wi-Fi all broadcast on the same frequency, 2.4 GHz. Of these, Wi-Fi is many times more powerful, so it’s easy for it to drown out the messages of the other three. So, getting them all to work together happily can be tricky, which is why the “channel“ becomes important. The 2.4 GHz frequency is broken up into multiple channels which are different parts of that band, so you can separate the messages somewhat by choosing different channels for them.
See the community FAQ for more details:
FAQ: What WiFi Channel is least likely to interfere with SmartThings?
I changed my Zigbee channel to 25 and blocked channel 11 on my Wi-Fi mesh years ago and haven’t looked back since. This may not work for everyone, so don’t try it unless you know what you’re doing.
I also have a thought recently that all of these Zigbee issues of recent may have something to do with ST’s implementation of Thread. Just a thought though.
This is your trigger on SmartThings platform. You always need some kind of trigger to have automation happen.
”if a motion sensor detects movement"