Routines not working or only partly working

Hi, I have now been using a ST system for approx a year and recently within the last few months I have noticed a gradual decline in the functionality of the routines. For example I have the arm when everyone leaves that also turns off the Sonos speakers. The routine arms and sets mode but doesn’t turn the Sonos off. Delete the routine re-create and it worked for a week and fails again.

Now its got worst that it no longer sets the arm or mode… totally useless !!! Set the delay time to 2 mins and it fails all the time !!! What is going on?

Now I have another routine that turns of night alarm at 7am…works great to turn off the night alarm but the extra rule that states if in away mode do not operate … well this chooses the times it wants to work and times when it doesn’t. Which is not helpful if you are away for one night and forget to check.

So in my view its not that the whole routine doesn’t work… its parts of then that are valid as they work sometimes

I think the problem got much worse after the latest IOS app update…but I cant see how an app update can alter the routines unless its corrupted them in some way or removed code functions.

As anyone else had this or know of a way to fix as I am losing faith in the system to the point where I am considering replacing the whole lot and sell my system on ebay

Help …pls ***

Thanks for reading …Andy

Unfortunately, this is a known problem, with many people being randomly affected.

Support says they are aware of it and working on various fixes, but there’s no one thing they can do.

It is mentioned on the official status page:

And in many forum threadS:

I know that doesn’t help your situation, but at least you know you’re not alone.

Yep. I was hit by it this morning when the Good Morning! routine did not run and I opened the door into my garage. It was a stark reminder not to trust routines.

Thank you for the replies… however the status is for North America not the UK. But at least as said I am not the only one.

So basically … Samsung pull your finger out and get this fixed !!! Do you think they read these comments??

They don’t officially read these comments for these kinds of reports. You need to file a report with support to get it counted.

Here’s the U.K. page

https://support.smartthings.com/hc/en-gb

There are Samsung SmartThings employees assigned to ( eventually) read all the forum posts as community managers, but they aren’t the people who actually fix things or make policy decisions. They’re just here to support the community. So they can help get you more information, but they don’t make resource allocation decisions.

One thing that comes to mind is this ST does not seem to be a stable and reliable system.

Does anyone know of different systems that are as I really cant reply on a "may work one day " basis

What happens when the water detector or worst still smoke alarms alerts are stopped by a badly coded hub /system … glad I kept one old fashion battery standalone smoke alarm !!!

Thanks , I thought that might be the case…but hopefully if everyone posts with these issues somebody at Samsung might do something … Otherwise we will all move to alternative systems… In fact I am now looking at building my own using Azure IOT and Raspberry PI…

They won’t. The past has shown their leadership is not capable of leading a team to fix these systemic issues.

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Beginning to see that… Very disappointed with Samsung… hence the search for an alternative system

Unfortunately, right now there isn’t anything better. You can choose from:

1 - Very stable, but not flexible or open
2 - Very flexible & open, but not stable

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  1. it would be helpful if the original poster location was signified on the post. The original poster is apparently in the UK and nothing about his post, indicates that.

  2. I noticed yesterday at 4:20pm EDT (in the USA) that 4 of my ST routines executed unbidden . “Situation Normal…”. I don’t see any way to reliably use SHM .

@whoismoses gave a good succinct summary of the current state of inexpensive home automation: If the system has more features or is more flexible, it is probably less reliable. (If you are willing to spend much more money, around 10% of the cost of the house, you can get both full features and reliability in the professionally-installed high end systems, but that’s not what most people are looking for in this forum.)

There are many different systems on the low cost market in both the US and the UK, and they all have their own pluses and minuses.

I myself am quadriparetic (Use a wheelchair and have limited hand function) so reliability is right at the top of my list. I now use SmartThings only for convenience notifications, like knowing that the guestroom window is open when rain is expected. But I have moved anything that I really need to work to other more reliable systems, including Apple HomeKit. I get many fewer features, but I do get the reliability.

When SmartThings works as intended, it is absolutely my favorite home automation system. I just don’t have the same “Plan B” options as able-bodied people so I had to make system decisions on a case-by-case basis.

The following thread might be of interest: