I love how they call it “migrating” when it’s basically starting over. There is no migration.
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There’s no automated migration, but the act of moving stuff from A to B can indeed be defined as migrating.
It’s (a little) painful, but it’s still a one time thing. Or at least a once in a blue moon thing.
V2 Migration Utilities - Grade F
I completed the V1->V2 migration (aka Completely Start Over) tonight. It took over 10 hours. I emailed the SmartThings Migration desk in the morning which several issues. I was promised they would give priority & hold my hand in case I needed any assistance (See below).
If you’re making the change to a Hub version 2, please note that we’ve updated our Terms of Service to reflect support for video/audio streaming. We also have explicit instructions available on how to migrate and we’ve set up a dedicated support queue at migrationhelp@smartthings.com to assist you.
My heartfelt thanks for being a SmartThings customer and supporter. We hope you’ll enjoy the new SmartThings experience.
Thank You,
Alex
I tried to chat with support in the AM which was unavailable due too a high volume of support calls. I finally received an generic email back tonight from ST Support, and basically they gave no support, just a “Yea, it’s a long process at this point, perhaps migrations tools will be created in the future” (wink wink)
This long long day was spent removing 25 smartAPPs from the 57 devices that I had installed and/or connected/integrated over the year, fighting with the new IOS mobile client when it reported “Unexpected Error Encountered” when I selected “Uninstall” and a device had incorrectly thought that is was still being referenced by a non existent SmartAPP.
Two of my Zwave devices had to be forcibly removed from the V1 Hub since they would not delete after waiting 20 minutes. After much research, I found out that these forced devices will not exclude unless the V1 hub is 12" away. To correct this issue, one must perform a Z-Wave Exclude from the V2’s Hub’s Utilities menu before the new V2 hub will include it. This extra step was not described anywhere in the non existent migration tips and required a call to the specific vendor’s device support for a How To.
My Honeywell Alarm system raspberry PI python code and SmartThings API had to be reauthorized for a new V2 application ID, client token, along with the reauthorizing Ecobee, IFTTT and Harmony API’s.
The new SmartThings GUI needs loads of improvements to organize and manage the devices. For example, only ONE device can be assigned to ONE room. This is wrong, since a motion or open/close device could be assigned to an ALARM, MOTION DETECTORS, and exist in a LIVING ROOM. So I have to place it in the living room, but if I want to easily see all my MOTION detectors, I have to go room by room. Even Gmail allows you to classify a single email in multiple folders since 2001…come on!
All in all, I completed the conversion to the new V2 hub because I believe that local processing feature will speed up the response time for my events and actions and allow for more polling schedules than the cloud allows. But I will not be so eager to ever do this upgrade again without the consideration for the effort involved. I imagine I will have so many SmartAPPs and devices by V3 that a conversion will take a week or longer.
I am not sure what SmartThings staff was thinking about those of us with a medium size home automation network. Did they really vote for “Tell em to Start Over” option?
I am usually bleeding edge and impatient and the first to try something out but not for this one. I knew it would be painful and this is why I am holding off and waiting till all of the bugs and kinks are worked out and the migration tool is available. My time is way too valuable to spend on this and the return on reward is basically nothing unless you have one of those cameras supported.
Right, this is a joke. My old system never worked right and now I have to spend an entire weekend moving everything to the new hub. I guess it’s really no different from what I have been doing all along, since I spend most weekends correcting problems with the system. I’m the idiot though because I purchased the new hub. Joke is on me I guess.
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What a (insert explitive) joke. No migration path. I reinforce my previous post about the laziness of the ST development team. This is completely rediculous.
You guys are not going to succeed with this kind of lackluster support.
Give us a damn migration tool like now.
Kurtsanders they probably absolutely voted for a start over migration. Companies like this take the cheap path and during development meetings will say things like “it’s easier for the customer to do this than for us to do it right and don’t worry they will get over it.” That is likely exactly their mentality I guarantee it.
I would also love to see their “explicit” instructions that Alex told you about… yeah explicit is a good word for how I feel right now after receiving my hub and having NO method for “adding and migrating devices” to it in the Smart App.
They should be embarrassed.
I’ll just add my 2 cents to this. I spent around 10 hours “migrating” from V1 to V2. I won’t go into the problems following the migration directions to take apart my old hub, but there were many problems including issues with their Android app. Setting up the new hub had even more issues. This included bugs where the firmware update was not delivered to my hub due to some server problems, but confusing me with hours of wondering why nothing would pair with the new hub, including the Samsung smartoutlet they sent with it… even sitting right next to the hub. Once the new firmware was in place, I could finally pair the devices. Last night I got all the devices paired again (all of which worked flawlessly on V1 hub by the way). This morning my Schlage lock was sluggish and then dropped off the network. I finally managed to exclude it but now I can’t include it. Instead, now, whenever I try to “connect a new device” I always get the Android app rediscovering the same Everspring flood detector (even though I’m pushing it’s include button). It can’t find the door lock, but it finds that flood detector over and over for no reason. I’ve given up and am waiting for help desk to reply before I waste more time excluding and including random things. I wish I could be positive, but, for me, this has been a huge waste of my time, and leaving with me worse off than before I tried it.
Except for the fact that they told you in advance, a) not to migrate from V1, and b) if you chose to anyway there would be no migration tool available. And why is it that you feel slighted?
So that leaves the question of whether it’s fair to call them lazy for a huge product revision, and making it available within one quarter of when they first said they would.
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Oh yeah sure, they put a big sticker on the box that says a) not to migrate from V1 and b) blah blah. Get my sarcasm?
You don’t tell consumers who buy products from Amazon (and I’m sure they sold a bunch of these) in a COMMUNITY POST what not to do. You post it in the damn box in big shiny letters.
Oh yeah and they are late end of story. That’s no excuse. If it wasn’t ready it shouldn’t have shipped. I’m sitting here unable to “migrate” because my device will not remove the previous location. What does that mean? It means that I bought a consumer product that requires me to wait for customer support to answer my ticket. Guess what, they knew this would happen because their document even says so. I don’t know about you but that’s a technical problem that should have been solved before the product shipped. I now have a house of devices that are non functional until the issue is resolved.
Sorry but I have every right to be upset as so many others are. These kinds of things can be resolved with proper staffing and development planning. If you have significant issues don’t ship, end of story.
Unfortunately, or fortunately, Smartthings has huge potential and is the best solution out there right now. Not because it’s less buggy (we know that’s not the case) but because it has the best feature set within a good price point and has broad support. However that doesn’t mean that the app, the migration process or the overall system functionality should be shoddy (and shoddy is an exaggeration).
When you feel that your calm reasoned suggestions, requests or complaints are unheard then we resort to a louder voice. Obviously the reasoned approach isn’t working.
You know, this is a Community forum, not a dialog with the company. You don’t really need to shout at the rest of us; write to the company instead.
Whether you agree or disagree with the path that is before all of us, it seems a bit pompous to presume what anyone else is thinking or saying when you were not around. As @bravenel has stated - they noted that they released this without a migration tool yet. They also have noted that they are not forcing anyone to upgrade. Finally, they have noted that they are working on a path.
As a longtime user, I have a v2 Hub sitting in my cabinet. I will migrate to it either a) when I feel there is a compelling reason that out-weighs b) I will migrate when they have a tool.
Look, it is very easy to complain when you are not part of the discussion. I get it. But it is also not right to scream about something specific that you were not there to experience first-hand.
As someone who has worked for a software company, I have actually experienced the pressures related to release schedules, demand, competitive advantage, etc. I do not fault them for their decision…mainly because they issued the caveat to everyone already…many times. There is no gun pointed at our heads telling us to upgrade, which is precisely why I’ll take my time with it. …although I did get a free smart outlet! So, I’ll be working that into Christmas this year to control one of our 
!
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I suppose it is nice that you and Bruce have such grace and understanding for companies with the backing of a conglomerate with the size and financial firepower of Samsung allowing such a massive disruption in the user experience as creating an upgraded product without any migration path for existing users. I would imagine their are similarly compassionate people on the Apple forums explaining to other users how reasonable it is for a company with the largest valuation on earth and plans for a high-tech car to have such trouble even getting wifi right for a segment of iPhone users. However, I would think it not too much to ask that you have, at the minimum, a comparable level of grace and understanding for disappointed human beings that have just spent their hard-earned money on an exciting new tech toy with much-vaunted upgraded features and reliability (per the company) only to find that all the hours spent setting up the previous edition are for naught, and a substantial new time commitment must be made to setup the device as if you’ve never owned a hub before. I’m sure that the company has their reasons and I won’t speculate as to what they are, but the end result is a highly disruptive and unpleasant upgrade process for existing users that certainly justifies dissatisfaction.
Sure, profanity-laced tirades and long rants aren’t fun to read and may not be helpful for other users. However, the issue is significant enough that I think it justifies an expression of dissatisfaction on these forums, if only to remind the company that disruptions in the user experience this significant should really be avoided at all costs. I believe Bruce suggested that this isn’t the right place for an expression of dissatisfaction and writing to the company may be a better idea, and while he could be right (and most certainly would be circa anytime prior to 1980), and maybe the message might be read, I think another perspective is that this forum is the perfect place to express this type of grievance because this is not only the place for users to come, but also the place that prospective users come to evaluate the performance of the device based on the experiences of real users. I doubt I am the only one who perused every forum I could for every comparable device prior to purchasing my hub, and I doubt that the company is unaware of the significant sales/marketing power of a relatively positive, or negative, community forum. I, for one, would like prospective buyers to see this issue and understand the company’s current value, or lack thereof, of the user experience. After all, how long did it take to have an app on iOS where the devices could be identified without shaking the phone?
I wasn’t aware that the company explicitly told v1 users not to upgrade to v2. I remain skeptical but will take your word for it. I only received multiple emails excitedly announcing the new v2 hub and heralding its great improvements. I believe some type of deal was even offered to existing users. I purchased it solely because of the claims of improved reliability, in hopes that the v2 hub might work the way I had sincerely hoped the v1 hub would, but unfortunately didn’t. I was aware that there was no easy migration path, but I must admit to still being surprised by the extent of that statement. All devices deleted, all automations deleted, even the locations deleted - essentially anything that might even possibly suggest you had used Smartthings previously has to go. Perhaps I should be grateful that I get to keep my login?
Of course, pointing out that the company did warn of the lack of migration path is certainly fair game, and I do appreciate your suggestions of either waiting for a more pressing need or for the development of migration tool. I’m considering that now, while I sit disappointed and more than a little surprised that the company would think this plan reasonable. And so, as I and other users express our dissatisfaction, I do hope some positive changes are made in the long run. Who knows, maybe after enough complaining, a particularly inventive user might come up with their own method or tool, for which I would likely gladly pay. Thanks for reading.
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I was one who also bought the V2 hub in hopes of more stability and better performance. I started out with just a few smart devices several years back and now am probably up to almost 100 when you include light bulbs. I don’t have 10 hours to sit and set up a new hub, and probably wont until maybe thanksgiving when I need to do something to get away from annoying family members. I will just leave my V2 hub in the box until something is figured out in the way of migration because if its gonna be 10 hours, this hub will probably end up on ebay. only reason im not totally pissed is that I got the customer appreciation bundle, so I got the multi sensor and motion sensor which I needed anyway and added them to my V1 hub last night.
it seems that once you go down one of these technology paths, its very hard to go a different direction, and I think that’s what Samsung ST seems to be banking on.
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This from @Ben, June 30:
You can quote me, but I think most current customers should NOT upgrade unless you really want video streaming. There will not be a migration tool at launch so if you have 50+ devices connected you are tearing that down and building it up again. There are likely going to be a few other disappointments with the impending hub v2 release. Will it be better than v1? Yes. Worth upgrading right out of the gate? I wouldn’t.
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It’s pretty unreasonable to think or expect or use as an excuse a customer buying a consumer product from say Amazon to have come to this community boards and read an obscure post about the potential problems about upgrading. Using that to justify to current situation… well senseless.
Going on day 3 with no fix to the Location removal bug and a the house system being completely down. How very interesting that SmartThings live chat gives a message saying they are completely overwhelmed and unable to assist other than email. Speaks volumes I think.
Is the location removal bug stopping you from removing you old location? Have you tried to create a new location? Or does the location removal bug prevent you from being able to do that?
Yes. I have a support ticket in for migration assistance, but at that point I had already neutered my home. I debated with myself for about 5 seconds about weather to risk trying a new location or waiting on support to fix the location delete issue for me. I came to the conclusion that my house functioning again quickly was best. I was able to create a new location “HomeV2” and add all of my devices into it, configure my SmartApps, etc… I still have the “DeleteMe” location just hanging around that I cannot delete though. I am glad that I did not continue to wait on migration assistance from support though as I have not heard back from them and it’s now been a few days.
I didn’t think there would be any problem with creating a new location, and it shouldn’t matter that there is an undeleted old location. The old location was tied to your old hub. New location is tied to your new hub. I had two hubs at one point, each with their own location.
When I migrated (I use that term loosely) to V2, the ST Chat line was inactive with the auto message that they were handling all support issues via email due to a large volume of support calls.
ST Support did not return any of my urgent emails that same day leaving me stranded to remove all SmartApps, which I encounter numerous “Unexpected Error” in the mobile APP, devices that would not uninstall, hub that would not delete, etc. I made the journey after 12 hours, calls to my device vendors hotlines, etc
“Nightmare Upgrade experience” is a kind description of my experience! If that is what the ST V2 development team planned, “Mission Achieved”.