After last night, I’m about ready to leave SmartThings unless something changes pretty soon. I got this hub in August as my first home automation. At first, it seemed pretty good. Right now I have 3 lights, 4 Sonos systems, one motion controller, one smart presence, thermostat and front door lock. Regularly over the last month, my living room light either doesn’t turn on or turn off (depending on what is supposed to do) with the change of a ‘hello home’ scene. Also, in the last couple of weeks the morning weather report has stopped working (it was sporadic before that.) And, in the last week, my living room Sonos has decided to randomly turn on in the middle of the night. Nothing was pressed in the mobile app, no scene changes had happened. It got bad enough last night that I unplugged my hub to stop it from happening.
If this doesn’t stop soon, then I’m going to look into Vera.
Two comments.
Sonos bugs are due to lack of API support from sonos. Last i heard STs and Sonos were working together to get the Sonos API more well rounded.
This has been an issue. SHould be fixed now. There is a sticky topic about all the issues with STs over the last month but these issues seem to have been resolved.
The issues aren’t fixed. My lights are still not turning on when they are supposed to on a daily basis. In fact, I went home for lunch and both lights did not respond to the “I’m Home”.
And the Sonos turning on in the middle of the night only started recently, so if it’s an API issue, then there must have been a change recently because it only started in the last couple of weeks.
Have you contacted support?
You’re right, Sonos changed things.
I was going to ask the same thing about contacting support. I contacted support about an issue and got a quick response with a solution.
I’ve had ST since the August timeframe as well and it has worked very well. There have been a few minor hiccups for us over the past few weeks while they have been updating and one issue with DST. However, it has worked well. We have a bunch of switches, several motion sensors, 2 Kwikset locks, a bunch of door sensors and more.
I can understand why non-technical users can get frustrated with StartThings pretty quick. Were I not able to write my own apps and device handlers, I’d be probably better off with Vera too. One area were Vera is hopelessly lacking though is mobile app and remote access.
To be honest, there have been a number of major hiccups since June, and I see minor ones almost weekly (then again I suppose those definitions are subjective).
I still like SmartThings. It has forced me to polish up my Java skills, get HAM Bridge ready for prime time, and one member of this community unlocked the secret to the unpublished MyQ API. But with that said, I could replace a couple of SmartSense devices with Z-Wave, change my truck’s presence sensor to a more reliable wifi profile, pop a Z-Wave stick in my Mini, and I wouldn’t notice my SmartThings hub was gone.
However, it is not time for that just yet. I am patiently waiting for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow that has been suggested (or maybe even promised - I can’t recall).
Yeppers.
I’ve written many a smart app for other people, as have you @geko, and i think many people other than you and I have too. Vera is not like that. Their community is very self serving. This is where STs wins every time.
I have not seen evidence of that at all. It may not be as mush fun as ST, but it is very active and produced a lot of quality plug-ins. Dunno, I was not actively participating though. I did dabble in Lua programming, but it never grew on me. 
This was not my experience when I had Vera. Everyone on the forums was most often curt and harsh.
I would attribute that to their choice of programming language. Groovy definitely sounds more funky than Lua.
Is Sonos going off an hour earlier because of the Sonos API, or because of something w/ ST not having the timezone offsets? That just started for me as well.
I’ve had tons of issues with Sonos since I’ve had them, they are super cool as a voice for your house but very unreliable with the ST integration. Is it just me or other people experiencing these things as well with Sonos?
Completely due to lack of proper APIs from Sonos. Everyone is having the same problems. Me included.
Good point! While I use a number of other systems to work around what I feel are SmartThings’ shortcomings (which I have been quite vocal about), it is only fair to point out what I would have to work around if I were to abandon it.
I have no reason to suspect that local control on my network isn’t more secure through SmartThings than opening ports on my router. At least I have a much better feeling about it (don’t let me down guys). And the seamless notifications are also a big plus; yeah, I know I can work around that with a bunch of third party stuff (and yet more overhead on my phone), but it works well when it works (which is most of the time), and I use notifications from SmartThings to manage an awful lot of stuff on my mobile devices.
I jumped the Vera-ship as well for the same reasons as other have mentioned, and I’ve found the ST community to be a whole lot better; same goes for the hub. Sure it can get to be a pain, but only real recent. I’ve been using it since January, and now have 102 devices working very, very well. Heck, I just swung through Lowes and picked up 4 more switches!
I’ve seen noticeable improvements, and support is outstanding. The massive change for them will continue to make things (no pun intended) better. I’m also not a developer (long ago, yes), but I have created my own device types - but not for “new stuff”. All my device types are copies of the originals and only tweaked to allow me to use my own pictures instead of the limited ones ST provides.
I don’t have any Hue bulbs, or Sonos, or cameras (yet), so I’m pretty much “regular” HA devices - pretty much all zwave stuff, including a couple MIMOLites, a dozen smoke/co2’s, etc. Maybe that’s the difference for me, who knows. I did just add a GE Link Bulb (support updated my hub in less than an hour!), and that went extremely well. I’m really liking that bulb too.
I also have a handful of apps, including sunrise and sunset triggered events. Works every time, except the the recent massive change, but now I’m back to normal.
I really don’t mess with modes too much either, yet; but soon. As for mobile presence devices, I stopped relying on them a long, long time ago - like February. ST’s presence tags seem to be better, but I’m not using them to trigger things like garage doors or security. There’s a lot more growing pains ST and DIY HA folks need to go through before I rely on something more critical than just turning on lights.
Even the time zone difference?? Isn’t ST triggering the event? Sonos is just playing the sound. That can’t have anything to do w/ the Sonos API on that. It is either storing the wrong formatted data in the SmartApp for Sonos, or ST is not aware of the daylight savings time.
The other issues, I can understand are API but not the alerts playing a exactly an hour early since daylight savings time.
STs knew about this issue and in a recent thread posted it to be resolved at sunrise CST
Oh, where was that thread?
I agree. I’m ready to leave. It is fundamentally too unreliable for the core functions. I am not, nor never intend to be one of the programming adopters that see this company as an opportunity to play with programming skills.
ST has repeatedly failed at being reliable enough to predictably perform its own marketing hype. I have no interest in automating cat feeders, colored lights, or even garage doors. I only want it to know when I am here or not. Arm or disarm my contact/motion detectors. These functions need to be bullet proof. An unbroken chain of reliability.
The ST team is too distracted with the non-fundamentals and too inculcated with an A Minus quality control standard.
The system needs to be pass/fail. The team repeatedly falls short of that standard. I am indifferent to how nice they are, how much potential exists, or how hard they are trying. Pass/Fail. Everything else is excuse-making.
My needs are linear yet the constant tinkering with the hub to accommodate superficial feature requests sends the hub into a hot-flash where I cannot rely on it. The Lowes IRIS system succumbed to the same mission creep.
Very disappointing.