Smart things February Report Card A Big Improvement!

General Discussion
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I have to say that after a rough January, (I still think related to all the people that got new hubs and were using them a lot and ST needed to add capacity to handle them) February was a pretty good month for me. (I installed hub v.2 right at the end of January, so maybe that is part of it?)

I did not have a single missed sunrise/sunset event. Every time I walked into a room with a motion sensor, the appropriate “things” happened. All of my alerts seem to have been delivered.

The iOS app is still a little slower than I’d like it to be, but I only recall one time where I force-quit it out of frustration, and it didn’t forget who I was and make me log back in once the entire month!

I had one GE Link bulb that forgot it was already connected and then had to be re-configured when it joined again, which is always a pain…

I added several devices this month and they all paired up and worked like a champ on the first try. (I had issues with my new Echo, but that was late January and was resolved before February started, I believe…)

The community has delivered some impressive functionality, Rule Machine in particular is doing AWESOME. That cancel if the rule changes thing is da BOMB. Thank you! @bravenel

Arduino support delivered by @ogiewon’s code continues to be bullet proof!

(As a side note, ST support, you guys gotta get both of these guys’ stuff integrated into the “official” stuff ASAP!!!)

Overall, I would give ST an A- for February. A marked improvement over January and December.

(I know, I’m speaking too soon since they’ve tempted the Gods by scheduling a hub update on leap day, but I’m going to go out on a limb and predict that it will go off without a hitch.)

Thank you to the entire ST team and the ST community for building a great environment for all of us to geek out in and do some really cool things with our houses.

-Todd

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My hub, and many others from what I’ve read, has been down for about three days now. That’s not what bothers me. The fact that the SmartThings status page says all things are "ok " is what bothers me.

Why say that something is fixed when it’s not. That’s a lie.
http://status.smartthings.com
Is wrong.

F for SmartThings.

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Just because there is a small subset of users having issues doesn’t mean they need to report a system wide outage. There are tens of thousands of hubs, I’m sure they only report issues after they affect x% of the active hubs.

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The status page should represent that there are still some issues. It makes no difference if it’s 1% of users or 50%.

Especially if people use smarthings as a home security system.

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That’s what support tickets are for. If a large platform like SmartThings had to report every issue that any user is having regardless of how many people it affects then their status page would never say that anything is operational. It’s not realistic to expect them to broadcast anything but the most widespread issues.

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I feel we’re getting a little off-topic.

Anyone else want to weigh in on the quality of their experience this month?

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Windows Phone app has been broken the whole month of February, so it has been a bad month for the whole Windows Phone community.

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Just because there is a small subset of users not having issues doesn’t mean they need to report the system is working.

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I’ll chime in. I’d say I think I missed one timed event in about the past month. I’ve got sunrise/sunset and many weekday timed based events for getting ready for work/school, and all are spot on.

I’ve assumed I was the minority, glad to see others are seeing good results. If I had any complaint, it would be that (of all things) the smart lighting app with all locally controlled devices and applications, are sometimes slow. Example - Turn on ge smart switch also will turn on a link bulb. The bulb will turn on after maybe 4-5 seconds. It happens more than I would like, but I can deal with it when it happens.

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@Rick_Guthier,

This is not really an ST issue. It is caused by the fact that most switches do not support instant hub update, so the hub takes time to notice that the switch has turned on. You can check this by looking at your “things” when you turn the GE switch on. You will notice (at least I do) that it takes several seconds for the hub to see the switch is on, and then once that happens, the other light will come on immediately.

More expensive switches update the hub immediately and do not have this delay.

-Todd

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Compare to January. February is definitely much better. I would rate it a B-. Schedule was pretty bad the first 2 weeks of Feb. Will see tonight after the hub upgrade. They sure know how to pick the right date to do the update. :confused:

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I had enough missed events to give up and move onto another system.

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13

For the month of February I would give it an A-.

Fewer scheduler issues, but still a few weird ones with SHM.

Overall, very stable for me and a lot fewer red banners in the app.

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I have to say I was surprised to see motion sensors/lights working on Sunrise/Sunset Smart Lights routines fairly robustly this month, as they hadn’t before and required regular hardware resets. None that I can think of this month. There is more work to do that I can think of, but for now, Well done ST.

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When a system claimed to be “Security, monitoring and automation.” I expect it work All The Time when as a consumer I spent thousands of dollars on.
Just like I expect my car alarm, breaks system, air bags and rest of the components work all the time for my car. Not most of the time or missed few times.

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I do not have a large install but here has been my experience over the last month, I won’t get into anything before:

  • Beginning of the month everything was working fine (after deleting and adding everything back in)
  • Then my garage door decided to start opening on it’s own (has happened multiple times in the past). I unplugged the Linear FS20-Z relay as I feel that cannot be trusted anymore. The Everspring tilt sensor is still working so at least I know when the garage is open.
  • I have Schlage locks on my garage entry door and my front door and a routine to lock them at 10PM every night. Going to work the one morning I noticed that the garage entry door was unlocked. I purposely left it unlocked that night and checked the next morning and it did not lock.
  • Then the front door stopped locking on schedule.

The only thing that is still working is a Iris door sensor and the tilt sensor on the garage. I have had my hub since September and this scenario has happened 3-4 times and I had to delete everything and set all back up again. I have reached the point where I am just going to wait until they get this sorted out and not waste anymore time or money as I have enough of both invested in something that does not reliably work.

I recently wanted to add motion activated lights to my garage and because of my experience so far I opted to stay away from anything integrated with ST and just went with a Lutron Maestro presence sensor and it works all the time, every time.

And to stay with the car analogy, if you buy a brand new car and every 1 of 10 times it won’t start and the solution is to disconnect the battery temporarily you would not be dealing with it for months on end. You would be back at the dealer demanding a replacement if it wasn’t fixed.

I bought this system under the impression that is was a working, stable solution to my home automation needs but it has proven to be everything but. It would be one thing if I was always in the IDE tinkering around and making changes then I could understand that I might be causing issues but I set it and forget it.

I give ST a F for this month.

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17

Thanks @Todd_Whitehead for starting this thread!

Like this thread. Lots of good constructive feedback.

I am really glad to see the things we have been doing in the background have helped a lot of people. We’re not out of the woods completely yet, but we have a path forward. Our primary customer goal for all of 2016 is reliability.

I see a lot of stuff in this thread about scheduling issues. We are hard at work to replace the current scheduler with a new one. Recently we did some changes that we thing fix a lot of the current scheduler issues and while it helped a lot, it is not the end solution, more of a band-aid until we can get the new scheduler out. I don’t like to give dates, because engineering times can slide, but I will say, it’s right around the corner. Production load testing is about to begin internally.

In response to this, there is a reason we stopped supporting this device as a garage door relay when V2 came out. We can’t trust it either. I can only recommend getting a purpose built garage door controller that is UL certified for doing its specific job.

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Would you @slagle please respond to this too? Thanks.