Saying farewell to (not so) Smarrthings

General Discussion
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I wanted to say thank you to the community of users that have made my experience with the Smartthings platform a little more tolerable. The support always bested the platform which seems a bit ironic.

I have been a long time supporter of this platform and accepted the outages and device drop outs as ‘normal’ When the V2 platform came out I thought things would get better. Instead, I see more of the same. No upgrade path, reviews for the V2 platform seems to be lower than the original platform and there are still outages on a regular basis.

I moved to a new platform and even with my current environment of roughly 32 devices was able to unload and reload all devices onto the new platform in about 2.5 hours. So far, not a missed signal, performance to response is about the same but when I ask for office lights off…my office lights turn off.

I wish the community, and the Smartthings folks the best of luck. I hope things improve. But I got tired of waiting.

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What’s the new platform?

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Hmm in 19 months you’ve only had 3 posts and they have all been how you are sick of ST and leaving.
As far as how much you looked forward to the platform upgrade, it happened in 2015, 9 months before you joined, so not sure how you can say how much better or worse it is than V1.
I am sure the community will really miss somebody that logs in once a month to scan the posts, then makes a post every few months about how bad ST is and they’re leaving.

Happy travels " my friend" .

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Yeah, what platform?

I’m just waiting for something better to come out and it seems so easy for someone to make a better platform.
No idea why nothing else is out there yet.

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Easy? You don’t really think that do you?

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I agree with you in every respect.
Having said this, ST is the best all-round “cheap” & open system there is currently, so I stay.
Make no mistake, the first system that also give me local processing & control for everything – I’m outta here too.

So I stay and suffer, try to account for system issues with Pistons and backups and redundancy checks. But alas, we are all bound to fail with vagaries of internet connection dependence and a ST cloud environment we have zero control over. Truly, IMO, a sad reflection of the [current] Samsung ST environment.

J

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Bye. Funny on forums of all kinds when people make exit speeches as if they’re leaving elected office ir something.

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I assumed it was sarcasm.

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Opinion: Views of Smartthings From a Newcomer

I only became an anointed member a few months ago when I simply wanted to add a few leak detectors here and there. Needless to say, I now own 2 Caseta devices, 5 motion sensors, and 3 Cree bulbs. Not to mention 2 hubs.

I can see where one can be enticed by the control over your domain. In your fingers, you can code up something quickly that your home never had to add that special touch. Smartthings can become a hobby very quickly.

Is it stable, no. It is built upon the internet; a platform never meant to handle such traffic and security issues. Everything we place upon or ask the internet to do is a patch, a hack, a tweak that burdens a system already overloaded.

For stability, I believe I will only use my Smartthings hub to monitor the leak sensors and run one ‘ambiance’ lighting effect. For the bulk of the heavy light lifting, I will rely solely on Lutron Caseta and their bridge and scheduling.

It’s a wonderful community to be a part of, but I thought I was buying a toaster. You simply plug in, set the darkness knob, and push go. IoT and Smartthings is far from this. It’s fun, don’t get me wrong. I have fun trying to ‘beat the system’ by writing code. But it is a hobby. I’m thankful to have this community as a way of answering questions nobody else would have the answers to. That is a tall order on a connected planet.

In my opinion, don’t think first of yourself when wanting to install a ‘system’. Look at it from the point of view as if you are a guest in your home. Does it add value and beauty to both the eye and the visual palette? Will I as a guest have to figure something out? If so, you have already failed. You’re guest just wants to turn on a light switch and have it work. Not have to deal with latency periods or outages. Think stability first, fancy later.

It is fun to play with, but just how much toast do I need? I’ll continue to play as a hobbyist, but once my ‘system’ settles into place, it’s set in stone and I move on. I then have to play the battery monitoring game…

I’d like to amend this by saying many people in the ST community rely on this technology to help them with very basic human needs. It is wonderful we have this new technology to assist those who need it and we should encourage and contribute assistance when possible to making ST more stable for all users.

Peace

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I would have to respectfully disagree with this, both from the point of view of history and current offerings.

In terms of history, the Internet grew out of the ARPANET. And the ARPANET was intended to improve stability and reliability of messaging systems in the event of a nuclear war. Just because something is based on the Internet doesn’t mean it is inherently unstable.

Secondly as far as current options, shopping at Amazon, watching movies on Netflix, playing Call of Duty, and using any of the primary voice assistants including Alexa, Google Home, and Siri means using the cloud. None of that runs locally. But it all meets mass-market consumer requirements for stability and reliability.

Using the Internet isn’t the problem. Even having a cloud-based architecture is not the problem.

And price alone is not the problem. There are plenty of very low cost consumer Devices including $15 smoke alarms that have very high reliability.

And there are many security systems for under $1500 which are highly reliable.

The MFOP (maintenance free operating period) for any one device is a matter of design. Companies decide how they’re going to prioritize stability. And how they’re going to advertise their products once they are designed.

SmartThings isn’t the only company that has challenges with reliability. But it has to do with what they as a company have prioritized in their design, delivery, and marketing. It is not because of the market segment that they’re in, or the technologies that they’re using.

Both Asus and Nest are preparing to move into the low-end security markets with self monitoring systems. I expect both will prioritize reliability, but we’ll see.

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Thanks for saying what I was about to write; and better composed too.

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:rolling_eyes: :laughing: :confounded:

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What’s the new platform you switched to?

I went thru the same thing with wink and switched to Smartthings. I have over 20 devices and have had zero issues.

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JDRoberts is always well composed. and actually one of the best sources of help and information in this forum.

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Where can you get a $15 smoke alarm?

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I’m a recent newcomer, shifting over from OpenHAB to ST. Gosh, did I make a mistake? I came over for some better cloud stability, ZigBee support, and just general overall better device coverage. So far it does seem to have better uptime and responsiveness, and the platform I now realize is very much more open than I thought it would ever be. So far I am a fan.

OpenHAB was the best of the three or four open source projects I’ve tried, it was very well put together and also had a strong and vibrant community. One of the main differences I thought was that there were only a collective few would take on writing device handlers (bindings), as it seemed significantly more involved than writing a ST DH. Often some functionality for certain devices just wasn’t ready for prime-time. It does have the advantage of having everything run locally with no cloud component, if you’re into that sort of thing.

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Most drugstores. Or Walmart. They aren’t networked smoke alarms, if that was the confusion. The point is just that price point doesn’t define reliability. No one says, “I only paid $12 for my smoke alarm, so I didn’t expect it to be that reliable.” :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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The post I had been responding to had suggested that since people only paid $99 for a SmartThings hub, they should’ve known they couldn’t expect it to be a stable monitoring system. My counterexample was the $15 smoke alarm. The expectations are set in part by the device class and the marketing that goes with it.

If SmartThings were marketed as a $99 hacker platform with references to instructables and a picture of wire and safety glasses and a soldering iron, consumer expectations of reliability might be different.

But when marketed as a home monitoring System, I don’t feel there’s an implicit indication of unreliability just because of the price point.

JMO

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That’s what confused me, I thought I missed some big sale or something…

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nobody gonna wish him happy anniversary today?

I truly hope the grass is very green, and happy anniversary.

and +1 what is this new platform?

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