Should I persevere?

Was coming to the ST Forums to post a rant, then found this thread and thought I would add to the list of complaints rather than start a separate thread. I am finding the ST hub to be completely unreliable for anything “serious”. As I am writing this the status of my phone shown under “Things” is “Away”. Same for my wife’s phone. Despite this the “Goodbye” routine has not executed for 5 hrs despite it having a trigger to execute when “Everyone leaves” and the definition of “everyone” is my and my wife’s phones. On some days it executes, on others it does not. Nothing is changing in the setup and the connectivity of the ST hub, it just seems to have a mind of its own. Door sensor status sometimes is updated correctly and sometimes not. I bought a panic button to mount on my wife’s night stand so she has some way of triggering a siren at night when I am away in the unlikely event of an intrusion. When I test the button sometimes it triggers an even and sometimes it does not. And that is with the button less than 10 ft from the hub and the router that the hub is connected to. In other words the system is completely unsuitable to manage a DYI security setup in your home. I cannot trust it to automatically trigger a siren because I can’t trust it to trigger when it has to, and equally importantly I cannot trust it to NOT trigger when it should not. The ONLY thing the system is good for at this time is “for fun” applications, should as sending out an “alarm” when my wife’s phone returns within the geofencing range, or turn lights on/off when we are away, or control the garden fountain. For anything else look elsewhere. So far I have about $200 invested in the setup and am still debating whether to write it off as a total loss or hope for the best over time. Based on my experience so far I sure am not buying any more z-wave devices. These things are still fairly pricey, and if they don’t work properly what is the point?

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I’m sorry for your frustration; many of us have gone through the same thing.

That said, I bought SmartThings in the first place because it used two independent third-party standards, Z wave and Zigbee, both of which I knew to be very reliable. Which they are, with the right controller and local (not cloud) processing.

All of which is to say while SmartThings is a standout in terms of flexibility and versatility at a very low price point, the same cannot be said for reliability. But the problem isn’t Zwave. You could take exactly the same Zwave devices and run them with indigo and they’d be rock-solid. But you wouldn’t have the same additional features that you get with SmartThings, like Geopresence or IFTTT or The ability to combine both Zigbee and Zwave devices in one routine.

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Geolocation is not good with my system as well. I opted to use Life360 and it gives me better results, but still not 100%. Are you using iOS, Android or Windows?

[quote=“GroovyGeek, post:21, topic:38941”]
Door sensor status sometimes is updated correctly and sometimes not. I bought a panic button
[/quote] Which ones are these? Z-Wave, Zigbee, WiFi? How far away is your hub from your WiFi router? Are you using a WiFi booster?[quote=“GroovyGeek, post:21, topic:38941”]
less than 10 ft from the hub and the router that the hub is connected to
[/quote] This right here might be the culprit of some of your issues. Zigbee and WiFi don’t play nice together. The hub is recommended to be at least 10ft away from your router, and I would go as far as to 15ft or more.

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While that’s a common recommendation, I can’t help but comment that my SmartThings Hub is literally 1½ feet from my WiFi router (and 2 feet from my Hue Bridge) and have no ZigBee problems at all.

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And some people smoke cigarettes and live to be 105. It doesn’t change the statistical likelihood of what will happen for other people. :sunglasses:

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@RODOLFO, thank you for the detailed response.

All my devices so far are Iris, Lowes had a good sale. I have installed the custom IDE code from this site to make them work. All of them are z-wave, with the exception of the power outlet which is zigbee.

If the hub must be >10ft away from the router this must count as one of the most boneheaded design decisions of all times. What am I supposed to do, run a 10ft cat5 cable down the middle of my living room? Or spend $100 on a pair of powerline adapters so I can accomodate this on a $100 hub? Sheesh, this ain’t the early 90s you know, when we had to worry about parity and all sorts of technical trivia just to make things work.

I have tried connecting the hub in two ways: directly to the main modem/router and to a secondary router connected over AV1200 powerline adapaters and configured as a slave (not repeater). The hub misbehaves equally in both scenarios. In fact just this evening I closed a door to my back yard that has a contact sensor on it, got in my car and drove away. 30 minutes later I get a notification message “Alarm armed but door is open”. First, the “goodbye” script is configured to run with a 10 minute delay. Second, the door was not open.

ST customer support has already responded to my unflattering Amazon review with an offer to help. Frankly, I don’t have the time or inclination to deal with them. So many people are reporting this type of issue that it feels like they are trying to cover up poor technical performance with good public relations. Instead of spending the money on CSRs hire exrta engineers and fix the product. Brownie points for trying to play nice, but that simply does not cut it.

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As far as I know, all of the Iris-branded sensors are ZigBee, not zwave. The GoControl “works with Iris” sensors are zwave.

By chance did you check the IDE to see if they are indeed zwave?

It may not be relevant to your problem, but strength of the mesh is one of the main reasons why a sensor reports as open instead of closed or closed instead of open, so it’s worth knowing which of your devices can actually talk to each other.

The following thread is the standard troubleshooting checklist for any sensor, ZigBee or zwave, in case it’s of interest:

I realize at this point you may not want to bother with checking, but just in case…

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As far as the hub placement issue, it’s fine to have the hub pretty close to the Ethernet router. It’s the WiFi router that’s the problem. I know a lot of people have a combined unit, in which case, yes, you have to run cable and it’s annoying. But if you do have a separate wifi router, that’s the device the SmartThings hub should be moved away from.

A lot of people are able to put the devices close together and don’t have an issue, a lot of that has to do with what ZigBee channel the SmartThings hub is on. The SmartThings hub is a very inexpensive device and doesn’t have “agile” channel routing, meaning it can’t change its channel on the fly to avoid interference. In fact, it can’t change its channel at all. The channel is assigned randomly at the factory and cannot be changed afterward.

That’s not the most sophisticated design, but it’s not surprising at this price point. Still annoying, though.

You are right, Iris seems to be mostly zigbee, I was throw off by the fact that their smart outlet is z-wave. This may explain some of my issues. Nevertheless the main feature that does not work for me is geolocation. Even when the phones are correctly reported as “away” the “Goodbye” routine either does not trigger or triggers with a very significant delay, much more than the 10 minutes I have programmed it. And the WiFi interference issue is such a basic design issue that it is disappointing we are even talking about it. How many people exactly have the WiFi router substantially separated from the modem? I can’t remember ever having such a situation in my house, even when I was running separate modem and router. Why would anyone bother with a 10ft cable if they can run a 1ft cable. Very disappointing. Crippling essential functionality to hit some price point suggested by marketing is the hallmark of poor engineering. Cheap crap is still crap.

I never could get the SmartThings geolocation to work well. It works great for some people, but that didn’t help at my house. I ended up going to an IBeacon system instead, but I use iOS devices, so it was a good fit.

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I completely understand your frustration. For me it is easy to have my hub away from my router because I have Ethernet wired in the walls, with ports in most of the rooms. I realize that is not the case for everyone and, unless you have a carpet or some baseboard design that allows you to hide a cable, it is not an ideal situation. When you open the Wink hub, one of the first instructions it has is to place the hub away from the WiFi router, but that hub runs on WiFi, not Ethernet.
Even though Terry has no issues running his hub next to the router, it is recommended to do otherwise. Maybe you can try changing your WiFi channel and it might help. I am never able to remember the posts where I see things, but @JDRoberts is incredibly good at it. There was one thread where a new user couldn’t get his/her ST sensor to pair with the hub, and after moving the hub away it worked.

[quote=“GroovyGeek, post:26, topic:38941”]
ST customer support has already responded to my unflattering Amazon review with an offer to help
[/quote] I agree this is not the way you should get support to work on your case. It worked for me as well when I downgraded my Amazon review. I then got Jessica from support, and she fixed everything promptly. True, they spend lots of money on advertising and PR. You can’t go to any of the “tech review” websites without finding that ST is the system to go with and never hearing about scheduler issues, poltergeists, false alarms, etc. But that’s the business model they are running and that has been widely discussed elsewhere.

[quote=“GroovyGeek, post:29, topic:38941”]
Nevertheless the main feature that does not work for me is geolocation.
[/quote] And I would say, get away from it. It is not very accurate and you will only have headaches if you are prone to them after having something break. If you use iOS, you may want to try JDs response with an iBeacon. He relies on it, and he always says good things about it (unless you prove me wrong JD).

[quote=“JDRoberts, post:27, topic:38941”]
strength of the mesh is one of the main reasons why a sensor reports as open instead of closed or closed instead of open
[/quote] This is all about the mesh. More specifically, your Zigbee or Z-wave mesh network and your home size, hence sensor placements. I have a smart bulb that is about 10ft in a straight line from the hub. The problem is, there’s a wall, refrigerator and a door between the two. Two days I spent trying to get it to work, until I installed a Zigbee switch closer and magic, my smart bulb paired.
If you have a big home, then you will need a strong mesh network for either Zigbee or Z-wave or both. It’s just like WiFi. If you have your TV slowing or pausing during Netflix, get a better router or repeater and it goes away.

If you really want to give this a try, your best bet will be to make a weekend test. This is just a suggestion and I’m in no way saying that everyone should be doing this, and that it is the best practice. Go to Lowe’s, Home Depot, Best Buy or order online from Amazon, z-waveproducts, ST. Get a long Ethernet cable, one or two things that will work as a Zigbee repeater (ST outlet, Quirky Outlink, Iris Smart plug, OSRAM lightify bulbsetc) and play with it. Move the hub away from the WiFi source, install the Zigbee repeaters and give it a go. I am almost positive that this should improve your experience. If it doesn’t, you can always return everything.

[quote=“GroovyGeek, post:26, topic:38941”]
Frankly, I don’t have the time
[/quote] Now this is my most important advice regarding this subject. Maybe I should have started with this. If you don’t have time or don’t want to put it into this platform, return everything and continue to live with your life. Light switches have been proven to work for over a hundred years and there are other alarm systems that work as they advertise.
It is not that you will have to make daily changes, no. Most of the time I don’t even open the app and just use the automated routines, or the widgets on my Android. Everything else I leave it to motion and open/close sensors.
But there comes that time, every two or three weeks, or so, when ST cloud has a hiccup, and your things won’t run as they should. They are working on it and I’ve seen improvements, but it will eventually happen because this thing runs on the cloud.

Anyways, sorry for the long post but I hope it helps.

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It’s not fair to tell people to return it if they don’t have the time. Samsung / SmartThings advertises this as a fully functioning product. People spend money on it thinking they shouldn’t have to spend time tinkering to get it to work right and thinking it will work as advertised, reliably. It should probably just work right and be reliable after the amount of time it’s been on the market (counting v1 hub as well).

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It goes on, and on, and on… :smiley:

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