I’ve been using smart devices for years. Decided to upgrade to the Samsung Smartthings hub. I have to say, I couldn’t possible by less satisfied then I am. I’ve only had it for a week, but nothing is working correctly on it.
I have 4, Kwikset 888 (Z-Wave) locks. It paired with all 4, but will only work with 1 of them, the other 3 consistently say ‘The device hasn’t updated all of it’s status information’.
I’ve excluded them and added them more times then I can count. Waiting a day in between exclusion and adding them.
I rebooted phone, rebooted hub, attempted to ‘Repair Z-Wave network’, but that just hangs and after a day or so, I reboot the phone.
All 4 locks work perfectly fine on my old Z-Wave hub. So the locks are not the issue.
I have 4 GE Enbrighten (ZWave) outlets. None of them will pair
I have 10 GE Enbrighten (ZWave) switches. So far, I can only get 3 of them to pair, the other 7 will not pair.
I have a GoControl ZWave garage door controller, it will not pair.
Again, all of these devices work flawlessly on my old hub.
I’ll be honest, from my point of view, this Smartthings hub appears to be a pile of untested junk.
I did delete all devices from my old hub before I started. So this is not a case where they are still clinging to my old hub.
Out of desperation, I also did a reset on the switches (where you hold the paddle in for 10 seconds and the light starts blinking).
Is it time for me to just return this as a defective unit, or is there something I am missing here?
Try excluding this devices using your SmartThings hub. In mobile app open hub tile > press 3 dots in right > settings > Z-Wave utilities > Z-Wave exclusion.
Then individually put each Z-Wave device into exclusion mode. See manuals for each device for exclusion directions.
As an experiment I would try excluding and pairing the problem devices right next to your hub. Then run Z-wave repair when you move them to there normal locations.
3 weeks ago I paired and older Yale lock that was Z-wave (not Z-Wave Plus) right next to my v2 hub and I had no problems.
When you say ‘right next to it’.
I have the hub plugged into an outlet and sitting on the floor near the door. The distance couldn’t possibly be more than 6’
If it has to be closer than that, is this really a viable product?
Do you really think that’s the problem, that I have to be closer than 6’ to pair? It’s 2024, after all, that’s kind of like a 1960’s technology issue, isn’t it?
I actually own a repeater, but haven’t put it on this network.
Here’s the issue though:
Right now, all of my smart devices are offline. I shut them all down to reduce possibilities of EF noise. I actually went so far as to power down most of my house from my breaker box to shut everything off.
I reformatted the SmartThings hub and set it back to factory.
I then added ONLY 1 of the locks that won’t add. So the device is factory, + 1 lock. And that lock won’t sync.
I put brand new batteries in the lock.
I’ve factory reset the lock more times than I can count. It will connect, but not sync, and I can’t send commands to it.
Since there is no other device on the hub, and I’m within 6’, I think we can rule out ‘busy’
Since I have no other network running in my house, we can rule out interference or ‘noise’.
I then bring my old hub online, the lock connects immediately to that hub, and I can get battery status, open, shut, change codes, etc. No problem.
So the lock is perfectly fine.
This hub HAS to be defective. I just find it hard to believe this is ‘normal’ behavior.
When you say it connects immediately, do you mean you don’t have to add it as a new device? It just shows up right away ready to accept commands to lock or unlock?
If so, it sounds like that particular lock was never fully excluded from the old network and that’s why it won’t add to your SmartThings/aeotec hub.
Sorry, that was a poorly worded message. I do have to do the pairing, but it works correctly with no hassle.
I then excluded it.
And to be sure, I did go into my old hub, and viewed all zwave devices, it’s no longer there. So it was excluded properly.
Just for clarity, regardless of the brand of hub being used, the device not showing up on the list of Z wave devices does mean that the hub successfully deleted it from its device table, but it does not necessarily mean that the end device itself completed the exclusion correctly: it could still have old network information in its firmware. That’s a problem that does occur in zwave from time to time, again, regardless of the brand of hub.
Ok. I worked on this for 10 hours today. Finally got 16 devices online.
Still have 2 locks to go, but I’m calling Kwikset tech support on that. I think there is something odd going on. I can do an inclusion and exclusion on my old hub, but I can only do an exclusion on the SmartThings hub. So I’m going to talk to Kwikset support.
Here’s what I learned after working on this for 10 hours today:
To use the SmartThings hub, you must have more patience then common sense. If you don’t have enough patience, you will abandon the effort. That’s where I was yesterday, I had more common sense then patience and gave up.
#1) It takes between 2 and 5 minutes to recognize a device during pairing. I didn’t realize this. My old hub would pair in about 15 seconds, I was expecting this to be the same. #2) During that 2 to 5 minutes, the hub is basically hung. If I do anything else during that 2 to 5 minutes, I screw up the process. #3) Pairing by QR code really doesn’t work. So don’t do that. #4) When you pair by ‘manual method’, you wait 2 to 5 minutes, then it will tell you it’s not secure. If you try to go to secure, it’s a 50/50 weather or not you can then use the QR code. Sometimes it just hangs, sometimes you can do the QR code. When you can do the QR code, then it’s about 50/50 if it will work or not. If it does, AWESOME!!! If it does not, the device will fault, and you must power off/power on. At this point, your device is there. #5) Not unusual to have to exclude and include the device 2 or 3 times before it works.
All in all, it takes roughly 30 minutes on average to get a device online.
I still think this is a rather shameful product. An ‘average’ person wouldn’t put up with this much nonsense.
I still have another 20 or so devices to go. At the rate this has been taking me, that’s another 2 days of work. This is rather exhausting, but at least I’m making forward progress.
I don’t get why ‘the latest and greatest’ SmartThings hub is so incredibly hard to work with.
I don’t think anyone knows for sure, but my own guess is that the company has never (and that includes before the Samsung acquisition) been driven by an engineering perspective. It’s always been driven by a marketing perspective.
(That was obvious for years when the original founder, who was not an engineer, kept telling the story of what use case had prompted him to begin the whole SmartThings journey, and to this day that particular use case still is not solved by the SmartThings platform. Because it had to do with problems occurring when the power went out at a vacant vacation home and all SmartThings notifications still run through regular Internet rather than a cellular connection, so no power means no remote notification.)
The end result is a system which looks great in a scripted demo. And that’s still true.
But it is rare for edge cases to be documented or even tested. The kind of things that engineers find fascinating just aren’t a part of the development culture.
That doesn’t mean it’s a bad system. All home automation systems have pluses and minuses, and some of the pluses for SmartThings are really cool. Including a very nice app and a willingness to be open to all kinds of third-party devices.
But it does mean that it can lag behind its competitors in both engineering quality and generational features, particularly the features that don’t show up on a 20 foot display behind a keynote speaker.
And at the time of this writing, that’s even more true for Z wave.
It may help to remember that the average person, including the average SmartThings user, has a very different experience.
Again, based on public statements from the company, their typical user has 15 or fewer devices and never uses any custom code.
Most of them have a Samsung smart appliance or television, or galaxy phone, and start from there.
And it appears that Samsung is really hoping that matter will solve almost all of the onboarding issues for the majority of those customers. (And right now, there is no matter over Zwave.)
It doesn’t mean those customers have no complaints: things don’t always work as they expect, either. And it can be hard to judge from the marketing materials exactly how individual features will work in practice.
But in general, they have a pretty easy onboarding experience and they like the app.
Of course, the majority of people posting in this forum are power users with dozens of devices and multiple non-matter protocols. But we are a small minority of a small minority, which is why there’s probably not too much pressure on Samsung to improve the experience.
