My thoughts summed up

I was just having a conversation with a pal on Facebook regarding Smartthings, and the negative reviews he’s finding scattered about the internet… My reply, which is the first time I’ve put all of my thoughts in one place, so I’ve copied it in below… Interested to find out if there’s just a few of us negative old gits expecting too much, or if there is a consensus?

Smartthings is in unofficial Beta mate - they have launched it about three months too early IMHO, and it’s going to cost them dearly…I think Samsung need to start treating it as Samsung, and stop treating it as the little side project they brought out that runs autonomously.

Little things - I can’t control my brand new Samsung Smart TV through it,

I can’t link to any platform that requires OAuth, as SmartThings’ system isn’t clever enough to automatically map the app to the server involved (they’ve set up a completely separate server for UK and IE, which means that the web urls developers etc need don’t work.

The mobile app feels very beta-like, and the macros (sorry. routines) are very basic and don’t do what I’d like. Ideally, I’d like to be able to set up a screen or two on my phone so it looks a bit like a Windows 8 interface (I know, but for this I think it would work great)

THEN… there’s the massive kicker… to re-add a device that’s acting up (My Hue bridge wouldn’t announce a new bulb to SmartThings), you have to manually remove every sodding routine that uses that device or take the device off of routines, and remove, re-add the device, and rebuild stuff - In a setup like mine with half a dozen devices, it’s not the end of the world, but in a full setup, I can see this being a clusterf*ck

I do think it’s going to get better, and I think it’s going to be brilliant… But I also think I’m going to get lots of cheap sensors & plugs from fleabay over the next few weeks where people have brought the kit and got pissed off with it.

Buyer beware.

@aaron, how nice would it be to be able to add to the bottom of this when asked for an opinion “But in fairness to Samsung, they are owning the problem and have given a couple of extra bits to expand our networks to those of us that stick with it” - Would change the message massively :wink: :smiley:

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agreed there are a lot of problems… but I like the system compared to others ive tried… it is open and has many more devices that work, and if not we can right our own drivers and apps… agreed more money needs to be thrown at support to get the issues fixed quicker etc.

As to the removall of devices. how would you do it… if it is used in an app. it needs to be removed from the app first or it can break all kinds of shit…

as for the windows interface use smarttiles very nice, although new version is in the works because current one does not have fire, and door control tiles and other issues

Hi Larry - I’d have it suspend the macro from working (after telling the user that), and if a new device is added with the same name and the same properties (i.e. I’m not replacing a plug with a motion sensor), I’d have a UI prompt along the lines of “Hey, you’ve just added a device with the name “Bedroom TV plug”, shall I shoe horn this in to where you took it out of?”

This would mean if a device or sensor went faulty there would be no need to reintegrate.

But it’s not really ‘open’ . By forcing everything through the cloud and Samsung servers you are trapped within their operating model. When that’s broken and not promptly fixed you,re left with a closed partially functional box.

It’s an embarrassing mess up from Samsung TBH, both that it ever happened and that they can’t fix it promptly. I suspect the marketing department won the Xmas launch date debate forcing the abandonment of any beta test period. Maybe even launching with already known problems.

Even within developer apps you are not yet able to create something that runs locally on the SmartThings hub for example to communicate with a local IP device. the app still resides in the cloud.

(Lgkahn). …Unfortunately SmartTiles doesn’t work on UK SmartThings.

K

You can do exactly this for a zwave device using the “Z wave replace” utility under your location in the mobile app.

It can’t be done for Zigbee devices because each zigbee device comes with its own unique identifier rather than receiving a controller assigned network ID. In the process could be automated further, but some of it’s just a matter of the protocol.

The Hue bridge integration (which is still technically in Beta) is different yet again, because that has to do with the custom Interface that SmartThings developed for local connection. That’s the one where it’s really painful if you have to re-install.

So you can avoid some future maintenance effort by sticking as much as possible with z-wave devices, but I don’t know if it’s important enough to most people to make a device decision on that basis.

It was absolutely launched with “known problems” – the CEO and CTO fully admitted this. This is an MVP / Continuous Improvement (i.e., perpetual Beta) Platform. It’s par for the course in the “platform” industry (I can’t recall how long Google Mail was officially called “Beta”).

As for actually having released “too soon” – well, SmartThings denies it and I won’t claim anyone is explicitly being deceptive, but I’ll leave it up to the reader to decide how likely it is that Samsung, the opening keynote presenter of IFA, pressured SmartThings to be ready in time for that keynote … which happened on September 3rd, the exact same date as the official release of Hub V2, App V2, and UK Launch. There is no such thing as coincidence. Hub V2 customer Betas started only 2 to 4 weeks before that … definitely not long enough.

Y’all in the UK – please put pressure on SmartThings to make OAuth a priority (I’ve lost track of the other UK specific problems you face, but, well, SmartTiles (and IFTTT and Amazon Echo, and …) all depend on that. :confounded:

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Oh, @Aaron… Consider this more pressure :stuck_out_tongue:

Hi all, well I for one was less than happy when I couldn’t connect ifttt or my Amazon Alexa this morning :frowning: I haven’t even waited as long as you guys! What I do think overall for now though, where the Hue bulbs are concerned and the wemo switches (now I have them working) all work better than anything else I have tried in ifttt etc. I’ve had it for about a week on the Insiders campaign and it hasn’t failed on any routine yet! I’ve never had such reliability… Even more reason for the OAuth to be top priority as this would be a real winner imo! If it was marketed as just ST products only then it still would be great in its own right, but it wasn’t. (I have a huge list of extras I want to add on) :smiley:

One question I have though, has anyone managed to get Nest or any other thermostat working (Tado) or are all these affected too?

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I’ve been looking at Nest and Hive this evening actually as I sit here getting cold and forgetting that I’ve not turned the heating on, and one called Drayton Wish which sounds like a cheaper smart thermostat… I’m interested to know this too.

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I managed to get my Nest hooked in to the ST app, I followed the instructions here https://github.com/notoriousbdg/device-type.nest/blob/master/nest.devicetype.groovy and used the code to get it working. The only issue I have is that the app doesn’t display the .5 incrementation, rather it displays “null”, but it works.

However the ST kit is probably going back to Currys.

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Hey guys, I’m also lamenting the OAuth piece, I desperately want to connect this up to my Harmony Remote and IFTTT - it feels to me like there wasn’t enough forethought in how to segregate the data centres but it’s such a core piece of functionality in my mind its almost like launching without the ability to turn it on - if it’s not all hands on desk over this then there is a problem.

I did specifically want to chime in about the Nest, I had a Nest G2 fitted in the summer, so just about starting to see it actually working and I have to say, its really kind of magical. And I’m not talking about all the remote access and auto-scheduling we all already know about… it’s the way it applies the heat and plans ahead. Because it learns how long your home takes to heat and cool, it pre emptively turns the boiler on and off meaning you get a very constant and smooth temperature with zero swing. I never realised that was a problem with my old Thermostat until I had this one.

Anyway - I got my nest integrated with ST really really easily using the steps here: https://support.smartthings.com/hc/en-us/articles/204733384-Will-SmartThings-work-with-Nest- - just grab the raw code from the github repo and paste it into the IDE as a new DeviceType. Then add the device and set up the credentials for your nest account. That being said, now it’s all hooked up, but i can’t think of anything to do with it yet, other than maybe give each device another signal about whether I’m in the house or not (you really don’t need to trigger anything on a nest with ST, it self learns so having something else manage it is unnecessary.)

anyway - here’s hoping for OAuth so i can get my SmartTiles on (planning to 3D print a mount and laser cut a nice frame for an old Galaxy tab for SmartTiles, to achieve the Spouse Acceptance Achievement :trophy: .

Jay

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I have returned mine after two weeks because I couldn’t connect to anything else than ST devices. It’s inexplicable why so much time is needed to fix the connection issues.
The lack of web interface is also a huge pain, the mobile interface is quite uncomfortable.
Another area not yet ready for public is the platform to add external devices, I mean for some is ok to have to copy and edit text to set up their devices but for the average people isn’t an option.

It looks like that device type code is specifically rounding temperatures to the nearest integer. If you want to change it, you can try removing the Math.round calls in the poll method.

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Many thanks for the information. I’ll give it a go tonight.

This looks like interesting thermostat. I cant find on their website if this would be compatible with any radio TRVs?

I have asked the question of their support today. Will report back :slight_smile:

A what? Just curious…

The ones that can be remotely turned on and off like Honeywell HR92 Radiator Controller

Ah… well, there will always be thousands of Things out there that SmartThings does not have an official Device Handler for. If these have decent published APIs, a Community developer will try hard to integrate.