a new strange symptom after all the recent driver updates late last month:
Some of my matter/thread lamps cannot be turned on or off from the SmartThings UI anymore. Everything else still works - dimming, color temperature, routines that turn them on and off, 3rd party integrations like Google Home and Alexa - just the On/Off button in SmartThings own UI doesn’t work. It spins and spins and ultimately does nothing.
Also, nothing is getting logged for these lamps. Even the successful operations from routines, 3rd party, or dimming and color changes from the app UI do not add log entries.
Things do return to normal when I delete and re-add the lamps; I’ve deliberately left one of them in the broken state so this can be investigated.
To whom it may concern: My account is open for dev access (email @online.de not @onlinehome.de), the lamp is “Laterne Fichte”.
You have no idea how much I hate the power push button and the spinning in the app, especially for Matter
See, Matter has a native Toggle command, in an ideal world a press of that button would just send the Toggle command to the light, it would be completely stateless, would always work, the power button would not get blocked.
Instead, when you press the power button it has to first communicate to SmartThings servers over the Internet because the app is cloud based, the server checks the current state (on or off) and then instructs the hub to send the opposite (off or on).
That’s not even the worst offender although it’s already a problem if the state known is not correct or there are cloud sync issues. The worst part is when it sends an on or an off it starts spinning until the light confirms the new state (which also needs the cloud), which may as well never arrive if there’s a problem with the subscriptions, cloud and whatnot, essentially getting the controls blocked.
I don’t like the app to control lights, I prefer smart buttons or the vendor apps if available since they work locally and they are faster and more reliable. SmartThings for automations is great, for in-app control not so much since it’s cloud based.
It’s worse than that - even the “On” and “Off” commands from the Advanced web UI don’t work, but setLevel does, and an “Off” from a routine also works. Also no event log whatsoever.
Well, looks like a problem with the on/off handling, either in the cloud or the native on/off handler when receiving instructions from the cloud instead of locally.
No command issued through the App UI is local. The app always communicates with the cloud and from the cloud back to the hub. Then the command is triggered locally by the hub to the device, and the hub reports the status back to the cloud to update the app’s UI.
In addition, the SmartThings cloud “filters” the events that will be shown in the history.
I figured as much. The strange thing is that some commands from app via cloud still work, but even those are not logged. Also everything (including on/off) works from C2C connected services like Alexa or Google Home, also without log entries.
Anyone have any suggestions on what’s going on here? Like I said, this account is open for dev access.
Hi, @Peter-M
Did you confirm you’re logging the events of the driver called “Matter Switch”?
It is strange that none of the actions are logged; we should see at least the received command from the platform, even if it isn’t handled properly.
I’m looking at the device’s Events list, both in the app and in the Advanced web UI in “My SmartThings”. Both are empty, even though the device is being turned on and off several times each day - and it actually does turn on and off.
The events shown in the device history are status changes, and it’s not presented in real time, it can take a few minutes until it’s updated.
For Routines, the execution from the hub to the device can be successful, but if the status reported from the device to the hub isn’t handled properly, it won’t appear there either.
You mentioned the on/off button remains spinning, which means the status is not updating correctly; therefore, no results will be shown there.
In this case, we need to analyze the driver logs to see the message exchange and see if there’s an indicator on why the status isn’t changing.
So, first, open the driver logcat by following these instructions:
You need to set up the ST CLI and run the command below:
smartthings edge:drivers:logcat
The CLI will prompt you to select from which hub and driver you want to listen to events
Then, send commands to the devices so they get registered there
Copy those logs into a file and share it with us. You can send it to build@smartthings.com.
I’m aware of this. The event logs are empty. Completely empty.
Device status is correctly shown in 3rd party UI (Alexa, Google Home) but not in ST (Android app UI and Advanced Web UI). I can turn the lamp on in Alexa, it will physically turn on, and Google Home will show it as On. I can turn it off in Google Home, it will physically turn off, and Alexa will show it as Off.
Right. This is precisely what happens - but only for the On/Off toggle, while dimming and color temperature sliders still respond normally and also visibly change the device!
Sure, that’s what I figured needs doing.
Unfortunately, everything apparently went back to normal overnight. Yesterday evening it was still broken, now at least this lamp is back to normal. No driver or firmware updates happened, the UI presentation also still is on the same version 2.3.61-8.
[Edit: The ST hub updated from 60.8 to 60.9 tonight, so maybe this was a bug in the previous betas?]
I’ll try and find another lamp that might show the symptom. This has been confined to Matter/Thread lamps, and I have a handful more around the house. If I find one with the UI still unresponsive, I’ll go do the CLI exercise tonight. Please standby for updates.
