Power Outage Causes Hub Format Error

Thought I would post what I hope is a very unique experience from last night. Let me preface by saying I’m 3 days in to my SmartThings experience, with a new USA Version 3 hub.

Completed setup of all the door sensors, plugs, and alarm yesterday. Everything was working as intended. Last night during a thunderstorm we lost power briefly, 2-3 seconds max. When everything was done rebooting I received an alert through the app (new app) that the hub was offline. Did some searching, attempted to reboot twice by disconnecting power and Ethernet for 3 minutes. Still no luck.

Contacted Samsung support and after 40 minutes or so of the rep trying to figure out what was going on his final solution was that he couldn’t help me because the Hub is region locked to Europe (I live in US and bought from a US dealer). Basically, whatever he was looking at in the system said the model was a European hub. I was baffled, as was the rep, because the unit was working great up until the outage. His final solution was to contact the dealer for an exchange. This made me mad, obviously the unit is brand new and I just set the whole house up. Very frustrating…

Before getting off the phone, I asked if there was a way to do a factory reset on the hub. We did that (unplug, hold reset button while replugging in, keep holding reset until solid yellow led appears). The unit went through the whole start up, downloaded updates and was now connected and showing online. After the reboot it even showed correctly again from the reps end.

At this point I was satisfied, got off the phone and began attempting to pair my devices once again, nothing would respond. I got some help from another post I had read on this site. What I did to rectify was create a new location and delete the old location (my home), factory reset again, add the hub to the new location, and pair the devices to the hub in the new location.

Now everything works great, just wanted to share to see if anyone had ever experienced a similar malfunction related to hub region. We have power outages at least once every two weeks here in FL due to the weather, hoping this is not a reoccurring issue.

Also, is there any method that is preferred to keep the hub power during power flashes and outages?

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I keep all my devices on UPS. I even have a v2 hub with the 4xAA battery backup, so I don’t need that, but I’d rather keep from using the AAs every time I have an outage (which is 2 times a year or so, since we live at the end of a branch circuit with lots of trees to take down the above-ground lines).

(soon our Powerwall will come in for a whole-house battery backup)

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There’s no one preferred method, but different people do different things. Usually a variant of some kind of UPS system just like you would do with your router. If the Internet goes out you will still lose a lot of functionality, there’s nothing you can do about that. :disappointed_relieved:

There is a thread in the forum on planning for outages if you’d be interested in that:

How to: Planning for Outages

As far as the system thinking your hub was in a different region, I’ve never heard of that one before. Really crazy. I’m not even sure how that would happen. But I’m glad you got it resolved.

Tagging @Brad_ST @posborne

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Do you have a support ticket #? The hub wouldn’t be expected to switch regions like that.

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Reference #977805

Well, day 5…
Got a random email from ST support, RE 979050, asking me to do ANOTHER factory reset procedure because something in the “automated system did not configure correctly.” 3 factory resets on this hub in 5 days. Now it is offline and I can’t get it reset. This is absurd, how can I trust a system that has given me this many problems to setup home security?

I’m sorry you’ve run into so many problems, and I’m just another customer, but smartthings is not fit for purpose as a home security system. It’s not UL listed as a home security system, for example, because it can’t be at the present time. It’s a home automation system, with a much lower level of expected reliability.

That’s not just my opinion, the company says so themselves in the product usage guidelines:

https://www.smartthings.com/guidelines

Data accuracy and consistency from SmartThings sensors, including those provided by SmartThings directly, resold by SmartThings, or supported by SmartThings, is not guaranteed. Therefore, you should not rely on that data for any use that impacts health, safety, security, property or financial interests.

There are many other inexpensive systems that are designed specifically for security, such as Abode, Ring, ADT Blue, and Simplisafe. They don’t give you as many options in terms of home automation, but that’s in part because of their emphasis on reliability.

If you were looking for a system for security, I would look at one of those or similar purpose-built systems.

(If you follow the links on the smartthings website to “home security” the only model it will take you to is the ADT/smartthings dual logo system, Which has a number of features not available in the other hub models. But it’s in the end of life stage and I can’t recommend it at this point. For one thing, it’s very hard to find any of the sensors anymore. And ADT has moved on, acquiring A different company to be their DIY line, now renamed “ADT blue.“)

Anyway, I hope you get your problems worked out, but I just wanted to mention this at this point before you get too far invested if your primary purpose is a reliable home security system.

Also, just so you know, there is a widespread outage today, so not a good time for troubleshooting. :scream:

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This is understandably extremely frustrating. Ultimately all of the hub issues you’ve had tie back to the same cloud configuration issue which is now resolved and won’t cause further problems. It might offer little solace right now but this rocky of a start is extremely uncommon and most users go years and years without ever needing to reset their hub.

That said, we’d love to help you get to that point of stability. What does the Hub’s LED do when you try to reset it?

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Thanks for the helpful replies. I have returned the hub because of continuous pairing and network issues and will be going back to Hubitat. I hate the Hubitat mobile app lack of design, but never had any outages with it. I was hoping ST could have been a reliable alternative with a nice mobile interface, but it did not give me that impression whatsoever.