i’m just wondering if there is a way to Backup Smartthings HUB
This seems to be brought up a lot lately (maybe because of failures…)
Currently no there is not. Contact support and ask for the feature. Allegedly they are “Looking Into It™” and if you ask about it you will be put on a list “To be notified once there is progress®”
3 Likes
You can also consider leaving negative feedback in a review on the Apple App Store or google play store. Some of the ST staff that post in this forum have suggested that customer support pays attention to those kinds of reviews.
2 Likes
ok thank you ill do
I’m hearing you can send your hub in for repair sometimes with no lost data on return. Not sure if it’s true for all situations, but believe I saw it in a thread. Ask support, they can be helpful.
2 Likes
It so bad if anything happens to the HUB after so much time and work you spend, and no recovery option, put your self in this situation when the time comes in. The only thing is hoping not things happen to the HUB.
Yeah I think most people would agree it’s kinda ridiculous not to have this.
They were supposedly working on it for years. They never really explained in detail when they announced earlier this year that, in fact, they would not be providing this functionality. Basically it seemed like the reason was, it’s hard.
1 Like
Yeah, I would agree. I feel like this is a given and should be a very basic feature.
1 Like
That why I m moving to deferent home automation more liable, even with smartthings you lost your internet connection comes useless you all communication with your devices. bad design
That is untrue. I just did an RMA and the new unit came back squeaky clean.
Isn’t now a good time to come up with a hub and profile backup scheme? Yesterday was a small sample (warning) what losing a hub and all of one’s things and apps might be like, only it would be worse because it wouldn’t just come back up eventually, but you’d have to rebuild everything. It just can not be that hard to backup our profile. I just don’t see how it could be. If I am here at home and my stuff is accessible through an app and basically sit here on my iPad and see the whole works, surely a file could be generated. How about running a parallel hub or cloning a hub? That’s not some crazy suggestion is it?
1 Like
The time was 5 years ago. Even back then with Hub V1, I had a failure in the first couple of months (defective USB power jack). Hub was replaced with overnight shipping and a free gift. But completely lost all my device connections and SmartApp configurations and Groups (Rooms).
Frankly: If someone asked “Is there any one reason to not use SmartThings?” … Lack of backup/restore/migration is it. Absolutely unacceptable. But … all the platform benefits still outweigh this serious drawback.
Yeah you’re right but the premise is false. I like the platform so much I don’t mind if I can’t back it up and have to basically start over? No…they should step up and make a backup feasible. And I don’t mean a cloud BU administered by ST even though I’d take that for a temp measure. It’s not impossible THEIR system could lose our profiles today and when you go to log in you get a sorry never heard of you message. Let me log into my IDE on a co putter, and make a binary restoreable file. If security is the issue, make it an encrypted file decoded while restoration occurs. Security can’t be the issue as the hub has to be in the loop to operate. Make a password update a requirement after restore. This is not cutting edge thinking here. I may sound angry, but I’m not. I just don’t understand who in cahrge is saying this is too complicated right now.
There is, and always have been, 2 distinct halves to the task:
-
Device Associations with the Hub (ZigBee and Z-Wave). This is almost entirely a hardware / firmware issue. Associations use encryption based on unique keys in the Hub and devices cannot just be automatically joined to a new hub… Well: So we are told. There are protocols for this in Z-Wave, but this area is most out of my grasp. This half is important because “join” (Add Things) is a time consuming process and logistically hard for customers due to devices being out of reach, needing special instructions and so on. But… It is entirely distinct from Task #2 which could be done separately and even first.
-
Things are hard-linked with Rooms, Scenes, Routines, and possibly dozens of SmartApps (including ActionTiles Panels). When a Location / Hub is removed (corrupted, hardware failure, or migration) all of this configuration is just thrown away and cannot be restored because Device IDs are all different on the new Location, even if all added in the exact same way. Clearly an abstraction mapping is required to isolate Things from the logic that uses Things - Or a restore/migration tool could provide a web form to let the Customer remap new Things to old Things manually, and the platform could easily cascade this to the Rooms, Scenes, Routines, and SmartApps.
Neither case above is trivial, and as a product manager I cannot presume that extensive research has not been done including projected ROI.
I estimate that as many as 2% to 5% of Hubs and/or Locations fail or are upgraded per year. But most SmartThings Customers only have 15 Things or fewer. So the number of affected Customers that really need backup/restore/migration is, unfortunately, too small of a number (so far) to justify the development investment.
That’s why escalation to Support & Ratings might slowly increase the incentive to get this done… I guess.
2 Likes
I’m talking about the user profile being hub-centric as far as security. I can’t load my profile into a friend’s hub…I need my hub and such would be the case with a restored backup. IoT security is not what I’m talking about. ROI wouldn’t be an issue either as I want ME to be ble to backup. I was just speculating they ST would start thinking about them handling it. Seriously, there is no good argument for not allowing backups. If they want to charge for it, fine, do so. Opt in or don’t. As far as failure rates, I attended a conference where doctors were discussing incidence of heart failure in certain people and the number was pretty low. The doctor maintaining that it was still important to consider said, paraphrasing” if it’s your heart that fails, the the occurrence is 100% in your case.” No, I’m not a doctor. I was on a Tv crew.
I don’t know what you mean by “user profile” (or “hub-centric” either actually…).
We’re probably just using different terminology.
Just keep in mind that the top reasons for “restore” feature are:
-
Replaced Hub due to unexpected hardware failure.
-
Replaced Hub due to upgrade (V1 to V2, or to ADT-panel).
-
Accidentally or corruption inspired Deleted “SmartThings Location”.
Well, since we don’t have a system for backing up, I’m making up my own names. My Profile to me is, my location, all my things, my routines, and my apps. Essentially a total snapshot of my ST app. Hub centric means, without my hub, nothing here runs as ST so they are dependent on the hub, ergo hub-centric operation as opposed to app-centric, cloud centric, or anything else being central. Many devices can control ST, but they need the hub. I would like to be able to put me, my profile, my ST environment in total, onto a new hub if needed. If something gets corrupted, I want to be able to restore to a previous known happy state of operation.
1 Like
Not sure what you mean by “me” in the list of objects you describe by, yes, we’re basically on the same page.
But to reiterate:
-
Only your “device ZigBee and Z-Wave connections” are stored “on” the Hub and are tightly associated at the firmware level. This is half #1 of the problem that need to be solved. A replacement Hub or reset Hub cannot connect to your ZigBee and Z-Wave devices without sophisticated procedures that update all those Devices using protocols that override the encryption, etc., that makes this a “tight” secure connection. The best example of this is the special procedure many of us have to use from time to time called “Z-Wave Exclude” to re-join a problem device to the Hub. There is no way to restore “onto a new Hub” because the devices need to agree to talk to that new Hub.
-
Everything else in your “profile” is “stored” in the SmartThings Cloud (not the Hub!), and, indeed is essentially trivial to “backup & restore” - except that nearly everything in your “profile” is associated with a Device by its Device ID. Device IDs change whenever you remove and re-Add the device (even to the same Hub). Without this being solved it’s like restoring all your bank account transactions without being linked to the payees and payers: i.e., all the money would be shown flowing in and out of your account but you’d have no idea where from or to, and no way to even manually fix it.
Thanks for your patience and the explanation. I have. a better understanding now. It’s much appreciated.
1 Like
No problem… The more people that understand this, the more accurately that the can understand why SmartThings should or should not devote resources to it and can request it accordingly.
Way way back, SmartThings used to participating in these discussions with details. Unfortunately, customers would jump to conclusions based on the staff-engineer level discussions: Well… The CTO and CEO chimed in sometimes too.