Sigh. All THOSE are going to put more load on the system, which (apparently) is already struggling under load.
It would be so much better if it just worked - most importantly if it never just silently dropped scheduled callbacks - better late than never would be a great start.
(my lighting on/off based on motion + lux works about 60% of the time - when it fails a refresh of the weather tile (which should have refreshed based on both sunset AND periodic internal schedules) magically fixes it - because the weather tile is providing my lux, and the scheduler has died. itās really like every 2nd or 3rd day now. Not great.)
Yeah, I added a subscribe(app) to each of mine so that I could reset them with a tap, but then weāre back to the whole ānot exactly automatedā argument. Can IFTTT check a URL for a keyword every so often and hit another URL if itās not found? If so, thatās probably the best balance of reliability/simplicity.
I put together my solution in a way that it would provide a very high degree of reliability and only impact the scheduler when absolutely necessary. I want it to work, but I donāt want to add any additional load to the system.
My understanding is that when we schedule events that the actual schedule lives up in the Smartthings cloud and it sends commands down to our hub. I have a porch light set up with a schedule and it hasnāt worked right since last Wednesday.
Starting on June 18th the Sunrise/Sunset app was still sending on commands, but the Schedule Switches Off decided to go on vacation and has not sent a command since (according to the device event log). And then tonite the Sunrise/Sunset app decided it too needed a break so the light didnāt turn on, either.
Whatās the deal with this? The hub can see the device because the status shows up correctly in the app, and if I click on the switch I can turn the light on or off. Why arenāt the commands being sent?
If you open the Sunrise/Sunset app and click ādoneā you will cause the app the reschedule itself and it should work till the next time it stops. Smartthings is looking into the issue but it never hurts to send in an email to support@smartthings.com to let them know you are effected as well.
@schettj Youāre right, it all will increase the load. Another use for a virtual switch tied to whatever seems to be more reliable than the scheduler (IFTTT, a manual switch, mode change, presence change, whatever works).
Mine have started failing every night for the past week. Some donāt even make it a day.
Interestingly, since everyone is trying to code around this chronic and pervasive problem, this in and of itself has to put a huge load on the system. Once all of those redundant/backup methods/systems are in place, the load will increase yet again. This problem needs to be a top priority (or things will get progressively worse).
For the last week my ST/Hue Bridge connection reliably becomes unreliable every 24 hours or so. (Hue Bridge continues to work just fine with several other systems, only ST has the problem.)
That is, I do something to get SmartThings to recognize it, everything works fine for about a day, then ST stops checking Hue state so anything that changes a Hue other than ST (including IFTTT, Beecon+, and Echo) causes ST to fall out of synch. In particular, The Big Switch never gets triggered.
Iāve resorted to having Good Morning turn on one Hue just to keep the connection going and so I can see that it is. That should be minimal additional load, but still.
The main point of this post is that things have definitely been much worse this week than they were a month ago, without me having changed or added anything.
I have broken my lights on at sunset in small batches few minutes apart. Even then they fail to turn on/off reliably and I donāt see any polling happening at all in the IDE. No bulbs can be added. States are not reflected correctly. Motion sensors fails to turn on/off even 2 bulbsā¦ Its like a nightmare. Freddy doesnāt quit!
Iām using IFTTT sunrise/sunset feature with Hues and it works remarkably well (no ST required). Generally speaking, my goal now is to bypass ST as much as possible for all my automations.
This is the way Iām leaning now as well. Using the hub to just receive events and pass them on to another system to handle the logic/scheduling, then send the reactions back through the hub to the devices.
On the plus side, āa developerā is now looking at my code to see why it doesnāt run reliably under the scheduler.
Iām in the process of migrating my Z-Wave network to Staples Connect. Luckily, I donāt own any Zigbee stuff, so it should be a pretty simple move. It does not have flexibility of SmartThings, but all basic features are rock solid and thereās no dependency on the Internet connection. Everythingās local and extremely fast. Bottom line, reliability has higher priority for me than flexibility.
I do have a Hue started kit and I connected it to Staple Connect without an issue. All Hues appear as color lightbulbs with three slider controls - Hue, Saturation and Luminosity. Simple yet practical. Bulbs can be assigned to rooms and included in rules. So far Iāve had no connectivity issues.
