My guess: someone did an optimization to make things faster, only they forget to save state variables sometimes…ooops…
I think most here would say you have gone WAY above and beyond. And we all very much appreciate it. Those that may not, probably don’t understand the full picture, or what we have of it at least.
I would certainly not fault you in any way for pulling RM. In fact, it may cause a wholesale exodus of us more advanced users. THAT just might make Samsung take notice.
The thing I don’t get, or we haven’t been told, why aren’t other Samsung resources being pulled into this? They have been building various cloud solutions for some time, they aren’t exactly virgins at it like ST. Not dumping on the ST engineers, this is simply a fact of life when scales grow so quickly.
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That’s not really what I meant, the groovy code is what it is, I just mean the GUI has become almost cumbersome because of how many options there are now. It might even make sense to have multiple types of “rules” that all do more specific things, then have a more centralized app that triggers any number of said rules…which is something you can already do now, but the GUI is still all one big giant thing. I understand that was probably your reason for breaking it up the way it is now in the first place, but i’m sure there’s still room for improvement. Mind you - this is all here nor there, i think you’ve got me convinced it’s not directly related to the problem anymore.
If all else fails, the new vera also supports zigbee+z-wave, so ST isn’t the only hub that can do that anymore Apparently they’ve even got lutron caseta integration now…those bastards!
OK, I was gonna make a suggestion about not defining defaults for so many settings, but given it’s settings that aren’t getting corrupted, that’s also a red herring. Likewise, this has been my experience as well, my dimmer settings tend to remain there (though the “description” on the parent page is gone, which of course, is stored in the app state)
I don’t want you to feel like you’re getting the blame for an ST issue - I was just hoping you’d be a little more receptive to attempting work-arounds. I work in IT, and i’ve worked with my fair share of people who’ve told me “no it can’t be done” or “that won’t work” and then have pulled off miracles despite that, so I’m not one to accept “no” for an answer when it comes to technical problems.
And those folks were getting paid to pull the rabbit from the hat…
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Truth be told, I’m sure the ST developers do care about getting this stuff fixed, but corporate probably has them working on “new features” instead. This is like every IT company, lol.
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I’ve moved at least 20 rules from rule machine into smart lighting, but ONLY because of the local processing. The other 63 rules that I have can not be moved.
My automations are very intertwined as my wife wants things one way and I want them another. So things depend on who is doing what.
The only other app that could handle them would be a clone of RM.
I will admit, I could probably stream line my automations down to maybe 40-45.
But that would mean larger more complex rules. I have decided not to do it that simply because I have found small and simple is much more reliable.
Even now, and through the worst of the melt down, my system was extremely stable.
I have 107 physical devices, 63 RM rules, 19 smart lighting rules, 9 Alexa helper scenarios, and 4 button controller app instances, and some other stuff…
I honestly don’t know if it’s the way I’ve set up my system physically, or if it’s the way I write my rules and scenarios, but for some reason I Ann experiencing a very limited amount of problems.
I can tell you this much, it seems like the vast high majority of users reporting problems are also using SHM and/or ST routines in their system.
I do not use either of these. I was using SHM for presence and just recently migrated away from that. I do not use the alarm at all and ALL routines are done in RM.
Maybe I’m just lucky. Maybe my engineering training allows me to see the entire system differently. Maybe my avionics troubleshooting helps me fix things and foresee future problems.
I honestly don’t know.
Yes, I still have a few problems, but they are spread over the system as a whole. Who knows.
Also, if anyone wants me to help you troubleshoot and possibly find a work around, pm me. I’m happy to help.
My point to this post, these kinds of issues are occurring to us, the people who use this system to its potential. We are the ones that understand what we are dealing with and how each piece fits together.
Can you imagine the frustration of the common user having to return this to the store, their frustration, and that most will probably never touch HA again. The word of mouth is spreading.
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In all actuality this entire things feels like a worm is loose in the system, and the redundancy system can’t keep up with the damage being done.
From this end it all seems so random, but it’s not. There is a key factor that is common throughout all if this, since the beginning.
SMART HOME MONITOR.
It seems that SHM is so embedded into the system that it touches everything in some way. We know that particular bit of code is total crap… And I think the crap is spreading.
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Relax guys, personal attacks are not acceptable here. Continued personal attacks will not be tolerated.
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It wasn’t me this time! I’ve learned my lesson!
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@Xero - Everyone who has experienced ST issues lately is clearly and rightfully frustrated.
The Fact of the matter is it’s out of his control. He’s created an Awesome app that afaik followed ST’s policies for said app. They’re having issues and not fixing them. He shouldn’t have to ‘work around’ undocumented failures of the platform to provide functionality.
Spending time on workarounds seems like a Waste of time to me. Who’s to say that that workaround wouldn’t have data loss??
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ST Support got back to me. This is from the ticket I opened last weekend. Here was today’s reply.
Hi Brian,
So sorry for the delay.On my end I can see that the last time this rule worked was 5 days ago. Are the devices used in the rule controllable through the mobile app? If they aren’t, let me know and we will go from there.
To be honest, Rule Machine is really difficult to troubleshoot. Often the best thing to do is to remove the rule and remake it. If possible, I personally recommend making the automation with a supported SmartApp like Smart Lighting because it will be a bit more stable.
I forced another update to that rule but if the last one didn’t take, it isn’t likely that this one will. If you still have problems after remaking the rule let me know and I will take another look.
I replied to let him know I didn’t want to re-create this rule until they had sufficient time to look at it. It wasn’t a critical rule and the device is still functional both within SmartTiles and via Alexa so I have plenty of options for controlling it, just not automating it. I also asked what they are doing when they are forcing updates to these rules and apps.
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I read this thread everyday and feel for all of you. I have been waiting for Zombies and corruption but through all of this I have had no issues that are out of the normal ST burps. I only mention this as I DO NOT use SHM and wonder if there may be some link to it’s integration headaches and RM?
Just as an FYI, while smart lighting doesn’t use state vars SHM does…
Coincidence that SMH continues to provide issues to it’s users?
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Ummm… That is the original (and continues to be) intended paradigm of “SmartApps”. SmartThings could have included a rule builder / rules engine right out of the gate or anytime over the past 3 years, but that would have been a change from the core principles.
I’m not implying in the least that Rule Machine is a bad SmartApp or even a bad idea (to the contrary… It is genius, though its utility to average consumers is limited by the SmartThings UI, unlike SmartRules).
However, unless there is a paradigm shift, I believe that SmartThings still prefers and encourages SmartApps to fit the original vision: i.e. Constrained in scope to some easily perceptible range of use cases / category of purpose. Not only does this reduce processing risk, testing, QA, debugging… But it also keeps the UX (preference pages) appropriate for the target consumer.
Not to mention much easier for Support staff to assist with!
Smart Lighting and SHM are really the most complex ST developed SmartApps (not counting web service connectors), and these are likely considered to represent border cases… ie, examples on the outer edge.
I just had the exact same thought as I was checking the IDE for rules that had lost their application state.
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So, pardon my skepticism, but this is BS.
ST’s platform has data consistency issues. That’s a BUG people! Saying ‘oh, you should only use our SmartApps because we know how they’re broken’ is a copout.
If you didn’t want to enable a community of non-ST apps, then you shouldn’t have opened that Pandora’s Box. Just because @bravenel was able to take advantage of that to provide a tool that a great number of us rely on as a critical component of ST doesn’t mean it should be denigrated to 2nd class citizen status because your platform is not stable.
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To be clear, we realize there is an issue, and have asked Bruce for details, which he provided.
We also do not blame rule machine for anyhting, but it keeps coming up because it’s the best example at the moment.
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And this vision, focus, goal, complete stupidity, if maintained is what will keep st from beginning the king of the hill. They will fade away into nothingness because that limited vision is doing nothing but putting an anchor on the most potentially powerful tool on the market.
I sincerely hope this is not the case. When a competitive hub is introduced that has a core rule engine equal to, or even close to, rule machine or smart rules, ST will be no more.
SHM is a great concept, but in this case it is fatally flawed.
I believe ST should scrap the concept for the current time. Just completely disable it, all if it except the presence.
Then, take the entire system back to the drawing board, learn from the flaws and mistakes, and then rule the market with the introduction of hub V3.
Tim,
That response from support above can be taken no other way than an attempt to lay blame.
While I certainly know that person does not speak for the enter company, they DO speak for the company.
Can you imagine the fallout of statements like that on the common user environment?
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