Migration to V2 - Hurdles and Best Practices

[JDRoberts]

@mbrown

Have the “ghost” events been a major continuing issue for you?

Unfortunately, yes. Along with other instability issues. It got to the point in November when I realized I was paying about $50 a week in aide time just to maintain the SmartThings system. (Since I am quadriparetic, I can’t, for example, reset a device by removing the batteries and putting them back in. Most other people would be spending time on this rather than money.) And the lock continued to unlock randomly on its own.

For safety reasons, since that was the front door lock, we ended up replacing it with a Bluetooth lock. And for maintenance cost reasons moved other essential devices off of SmartThings. We still have nonessential sensors like the guestroom window and nightlights On SmartThings for now.

Adding Home Automation in Phases: my limited investment strategy

i’ve been working on this over the last year and I’m just finally getting around to writing it up. I’m quadriparetic, use a wheelchair with limited hand function. So home automation isn’t a hobby for me. I want to get maximum return on investment, with a pretty small budget, and I want everything to be working and practical from the beginning. [image] At the same time, my personal belief (and this is just a guess) is that while there will be several good candidates for plug-and-play home automation systems that will do most of what I want for under $5000 by the summer of 2017, The reality is that there is no system yet that will fully meet my requirements. (edited to add we did finally get this by 2019, more details when I get around to updating this for 2020. ) There are ex…

(I should add that I don’t think zwave is the problem with the lock, just the ST network. I also have ghost events with virtual switches, where there are obviously no protocol factors. )