Hello all, I’ve been close to giving up on Smartthings, it seems no matter what I do, the hub keeps loosing connection to my two Smartthings motion sensors. Tried some Xiaomi sensors, but stability didnt improve. Sometimes it works fine for a week, but more often one or both of them gets dropped within a day or two. I’ve tried all the tricks I’ve been able to read here. As a last attempt I’ve now tried a factory reset of the v2 hub, and want to give the new app a shot in case that’s better (have been using the classic app till now). I do not have a Hue bridge, I am connecting directly to 4 Hue bulbs using the method I found on here (service app). But how do I do the same with new app ? I can’t find a way to add that service. Or should I try using the classic app again after the factory reset ? Apologies if this has been covered before but I coundn’t find an answer for this.
If you are directly connecting hue lamps to the SmartThings hub without using a hue bridge that may be the cause of the other issues you are seeing, as your zigbee network may believe the Hue lamps will operate as zigbee repeaters but they may fail to pass along messages from other zigbee devices, such as your sensors, thus making the sensors look defective when it is really an issue with the lamps. This is why the direct connection is not recommended by either SmartThings or Philips.
FAQ: Do I need the Hue Bridge/Hub to Use a Hue Bulb with SmartThings?
The Ikea Tradfri smart bulbs tend to be a much more reliable alternative for direct connection.
If you do want to use the Hue bulbs with a direct connection with the new V3 app, you will probably need to use one of the stock zigbee DTHs. Hopefully someone who has done it will post with the specifics. But I did just want to mention the flawed repeater issue in case you were unaware of it.
Thank you, I was not aware of the network issue. I have been using the no-bridge custom code for a while, but I can not remember if the issues I have with the motion sensors started at the same time. Regardless, it seems I should either get mysef a Hue bridge or have a go with the Ikea lamps. Now that I have already factory reset the ST-hub, are there any advantages switching to the new ST-app compared to Classic ? My use case is quite simple : I use the motion sensors to trigger the lamps 24/7, and use the Goodnight/Goodmorning ST-routines to arm the system at night and send notifications when the motion sensors go off at night.
Since it has been announced that the classic app will be going away eventually, just no specific date given, I know many people are trying to do as much as possible with the new V3 app and then only going back to classic if they absolutely must. That makes sense to me, but it’s a personal decision.
Although you can use both apps with one account without difficulty, if you have them both on the same mobile, presence detection may prove unreliable. But if you only need the classic app for a few specific devices, and you have a second device like a tablet, you could put the classic app on that and just use it for configuration.