Smartthings App Device Data Lost: Best Path Forward?

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I am a long-time Smartthings user with a system that includes:

  • a Smartthings V2 hub
  • about 30 Z-wave switches
  • various apps and devices including Alexa, Ring door bell, August smartlock, Ecobee smart thermostatat etc.

About a month ago, all my devices disappeared from my Smartthings app. After several unsuccessful attempts to recover the devices, I contacted Smartthings Support and was told that there is no device data associated with my account and there is nothing they can do to recover it - Very Disappointing!.

I am now wondering how to best restore my system and would like to determine:

  • Considering my Z-wave devices, is Smartthings still a good system for me or are there better platforms?
  • If I stick with Smartthings, what hub and other equipment would work best?
  • Are there better options I should consider?
  • With all the changes in the last few years, what equipment / apps are you now using?

Any comments / suggestions would be greatly appreciated, Thank you…

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I’m so sorry that happened! I know multiple people reported something similar in the fall, but most of them were able to recover at least partially. Your situation sounds really bad. :disappointed_relieved:

Personally, I don’t recommend smartthings if your primary protocol is zwave for two reasons.

First, the obvious: Samsung themselves have said that their priority going forward is Zigbee and Matter over thread and WiFi. Their newest standalone hub, the smartthings station, doesn’t even have a Z wave radio. And the built-in hubs in other Samsung devices from soundbars to refrigerators Don’t have Zwave radios either.

Second, more subtle: smartthings implements its own proprietary architecture layer over the top of the independent third-party zwave standard, and they have chosen to do so in a way that actually gives you fewer zwave features then you get on other platforms. For one thing, no network map. No replace utility. No official way to set z wave direct associations. But there are other gaps as well. I have documented the ones I know about in the following thread:

Gaps in SmartThings’ Zwave Implementation (2022)

As far as what else to choose, there are a number of options, including the Zooz Zbox, Hubitat, Homeseer, etc.

The Zbox is “zwave centric” and tries to be more consumerfriendly, although it’s still pretty techie.

Hubitat is also keeping up with new Z wave standards, and is the most like the old smartthings, so might be the easiest transition in that sense. But it’s definitely for power users. It supports pretty much the same set of protocols that smartthings does plus a couple of extras, including a Homekit integration. So, if you do happen to have any Zigbee devices, you could definitely use those over there as well. However, there matter implementation has lagged behind SmartThings, as @h0ckeysk8er Notes below.

There are other options too, of course. Different ones will work for different people.

Hubitat has a very active user community and actually quite a few people use both smartthings and hubitat, so that’s yet another option. There are a couple of community built integrations, which let you combine the two if that’s of any interest.

https://hubitat.com/

Zbox is based on fibaro architecture, but with UI improvements from the experience of Zooz. Slicker marketing, maybe. Solid engineering underneath. This one is really intended only for zwave.

https://zboxhub.com/

So you certainly have options to consider.

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And assuming the OP is interested in Matter devices going forward, it’s worth noting that the v2 hub is not a Thread Border Router so you need another device to provide that function.

WRT to Matter on Hubitat, they recently announced support for Matter on their C-8 hub only, however, they don’t support commissioning with their implementation. You must commission in a different ecosystem.

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Thank you JDRoberts and h0ckeysk8er. Your comments are very relevant and helpful to me. To take this a little bit further, many of my Z-wave switches and dimmers are getting quite old so I wouldn’t mind phasing out of Z-wave, if there are better options available. I don’t know much about Matter but I sense it’s the up and coming thing. Assuming I want to use Matter going forward, what switches and dimmers would be most compatible with Matter, Does Matter come with its own hub or is a separate hub needed for lighting control? If so, what hub would be most compatible with Matter? Basically, if I was starting my home automation from scratch and want it to include Matter, what hardware e.g. switches and dimmers, hub(s), other devices would work best? Thanks again for your valuable input…

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Matter is a communication protocol built on top of TCP/IP networking designed to provide interoperability between different home automation ecosystems. Matter can run over a Thread wireless mesh network (typically for low powered devices) or over Wi-Fi (typically for mains powered devices). In both cases, Matter runs on top of IPv6 network addressing.

Whether a hub is required depends on a couple of different things. First, since Thread is a wireless protocol that runs over the 2.4Ghz radio spectrum, you need some device that provides that capability. For ST, that’s either a v2/v3/Aeotec hub, the ST Station hub, or a Samsung TV or fridge with the Zigbee/Thread dongle. Other manufacturers may provide Zigbee/Thread radios in their devices, for instance, some Amazon Echo devices support Matter over Thread.

Second, regardless of the transport medium, Thread or Wi-fi, you need a Matter controller, something that can manage a set of Matter devices. For ST, that’s the same set of devices that I mentioned above plus the ST Wi-fi Hubs. WRT to other manufacturers, my experience has been that you still need some hardware device to be the central manager and controller, though that need not be a dedicated “hub” but rather something like an Amazon Echo Show, Dot, etc., an Apple TV 4K, or a newer model Samsung TV. For instance, I have Leviton Matter over Wi-Fi switches and dimmers at one of my houses that were commissioned using the Alexa app with the controller being an Echo Dot 4 (I use ST at the same location but only for cloud->cloud integrated Wi-Fi devices).

So, long story short, no you don’t necessarily need a dedicated hub. But, you do need something to be the controller for Matter devices and that, at this point in time, is some hardware device. To learn more about Matter, here is a topic that discusses it in some detail. I’d look at the more recent discussions since it goes back to the original beginning of Matter. Also, this is a good synopsis of all the Matter capable devices as of 2023.

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Matter is a new industry standard, which is supposed to make it easier to add devices from different brands as long as they are all matter certified. It also allows everything to run locally. But the rollout has been pretty rocky throughout 2023, for example, it was working with SmartThings for a couple of months and then a few weeks ago, it seems to have broken if you are using the iOS app to add new matter devices. Sigh. It’s just been one bump after another. The goals are good, it’s just not clear to me that we’re going to get there.

There’s a good and interesting thread in the forum that discusses matter in much detail.

Matter - smart home connectivity standard (formerly Project CHIP)

Technically, there’s no such thing as a “matter hub“ because matter occurs in the application layer, a level above where hub messaging occurs. That’s why you have matter over Wi-Fi, matter over thread, and matter over bridges (which can bring in Zigbee devices if there’s a compatible matter bridge for them).

So what you need is a “matter controller“ and a “matter commissioner“. Quite a few companies have been adding matter controller capabilities into their existing hubs, including SmartThings. The big three voice assistants have also been adding matter controller capabilities to their smart speakers, at least some models. That includes Amazon echo devices, Google nest devices, and apple HomePod mini.

So far, all the matter commissioners, that I’ve seen have been apps.

The following community FAQ explains all the terms in the context of what you would need to use matter devices with SmartThings, but I think it will be helpful for your overall questions as well:

FAQ: What do I need to add a Matter device to the SmartThings app? Do I need a bridge router device?

Right now, each of the individual home automation platforms has only partially implemented matter, and they’ve all done it with different parts, so it’s just sort of a mess. And confusing. :thinking:

Smartthings was probably the most advanced as far as matter support right up until they broke it in November. So I don’t know what to say about that.

From the beginning, matter has worked best with Apple home As long as you had an iOS phone or tablet to go with it. SmartThings was unusual in working pretty well with both iOS and Android, but it did lag behind Apple in some features, but usually only by a month or so.

Anyway, everyone from IKEA to Tuya is promising some kind of matter support, but no one is 100% there yet, so I can’t really choose a “best for matter“ option at this time. :thinking:

(Yet another example of weird partial implementations: hubitat has added matter support to its platform, but because it doesn’t have a Bluetooth radio and the matter specification requires Bluetooth for adding a device for the first time, even if that device is then going to use Wi-Fi or thread, in order to use matter devices with hubitat you have to first add them to Apple home, or Google Nest, or SmartThings, and then share the startup code from that platform for the device. After that it will work fine with hubitat., So, like I said, a mess.)

Sorry, I know that’s not really an answer, but it’s the best I can do right now.

I think it’s fine if you decide that you’re not going to worry about zwave, or you’re going to wait until there’s a Z wave to matter bridge to worry about zwave.

In that case, these would be the platforms I would put on a candidate list without knowing more details about your requirements:

  1. if you have iOS devices, Apple home is now a very solid home automation platform, and matter is already giving Apple home users a wider selection of inexpensive candidate devices, which was the biggest knock against it previously. Everything runs locally, the app is nice, you can get advanced rules by adding the third-party “home +” App, and excellent matter support. But I think it’s just too expensive if you aren’t already using iOS devices. Oh, and it’s also very suitable for non-technical users. Personally, I really like the combination of an inexpensive Aqara hub and Apple home, and that’s what runs most of my mission critical use cases at my own house. But I was already using iOS devices.

  2. for programmers, home assistant has matured a lot in the last two years, and is a definite candidate. Open source, tons of features, obviously very inexpensive, But it does require a lot of technical skills. Most programmers will say about a month after they started that they wish they had done it sooner. Many non-programmers give up in that same first two or three weeks because everything just feels too overwhelming. So this is very much a YMMV candidate.

  3. as previously mentioned, hubitat is for power users, And most of those like everything about it, except the lack of polished app. You may be able to compensate for that by either using it in combination with SmartThings, or with the third-party app sharptools. But you’re probably still going to have to get into quite a few technical questions and conversations. Also, as mentioned above the matter support is weird.

  4. Amazon Alexa is a decent home automation platform for many people now that routines are much more capable, although still super basic compared to the other platforms. But long-term it should have good matter support, you get a huge selection of devices to consider and it’s pretty stable. if you use matter devices with it those should run locally, so that’s a big plus over just using it as a cloud platform. I think it would be a step backwards for you if you’re used to smartthings, particularly in the rules engine, but it’s certainly grown into a platform that works for a lot of people.

  5. homey pro. I feel like I have to mention this one because it’s the up-and-coming thing right now, but I like the product a lot more in Europe than I do in North America because in Europe it includes 433 MHz support and it doesn’t in the US. They use a lot of fairly goofy workarounds from an engineering standpoint, so there’s some HomeKit support, but they can’t call it that (their documentation has a lot of “we like apples. Wink, wink“ type comments). And they seem to be doing something similar with matter. I don’t really know what to say about them, to be honest, but there are some community members here who have that so maybe they’ll comment further.

It is more user-friendly than home assistant for sure, And certainly no worse than hubitat in that regard. The rules engine seems to be pretty good. I just always feel like when I’m reading about it that there’s a million *’s I have to chase down in order to figure out what features it actually provides in any given situation. It’s also expensive compared to most of the others. (Oh, and they’ve changed their naming several times, so what “Homey pro” was in 2021 is not the same as what it is now. So again, you have to read everything very carefully.)

  1. ikea Dirigera. I feel like I also have to mention this because they keep promising that someday they’re going to deliver what everybody wants: a full featured matter controller and bridge with a user-friendly app and full support. But right now it is none of those things and there’s no specific timeline for when it will be. So right now, it’s a Zigbee hub for devices of its own brand and that’s about it. But if you read blog articles about matter, you’ll probably see it mentioned a lot even though nothing‘s been delivered yet.

———
I know: not very helpful. But that’s the state of matter right now. :man_shrugging:t2:

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As someone with all ZWave devices, this bothers me a lot when thinking about the future. If SmartThings’ focus does not include ZWave, it will only be a matter of time (pun intended) before I will be forced to move on. Matter looks extremely interesting, but it seems like a long way off to be a complete solution–look how long it has taken to get even where we are now! I appreciate the discussion about Matter and have been quietly reading from the wings.

The ZBox Hub sure looks interesting! Good support of the latest ZWave standards (800LR, for example), from what I can see. I confess I have not read/watched all of their marketing material to date and I am not sure they have a community forum such as this, which is a definite plus! User feedback–not slick marketing–could be the tipping factor.

Hubitat doesn’t appeal to me, frankly. My son switched to it from SmartThings and I’ve played with it a bit. We will be visiting him again in the spring and I intend to take a deeper dive. He lived through their earlier growing pains and still hasn’t achieved the level of user satisfaction we experienced here at our homes. (I’m not sure he is completely sold either, having been on SmartThings prior to Hubitat.)

At the moment–with two hubs in two locations with specific jobs for each being handled well enough (but not super reliably) by SmartThings, I feel like I have time to wait and investigate…

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I sense that bigger and better things are coming in the area of home automation, but at the moment, it’s not entirely clear what technologies, systems, platforms, devices etc will emerge as leaders or even survive. Having said that, I still want to get a working home automation system as soon as I can with consideration given to how things may evolve.

In my case I have:

  • a Smartthings V2 hub;
  • Z-wave devices for lighting control;
  • Apps and devices including Alexa, Ring doorbell, August door lock, Ecobee Thermostat

Other considerations:

  • I don’t mind phasing out of Z-wave devices if there are better options;
  • I am an Android phone user using Samsung Galaxy S system phone and will likely continue that because of my familiarity with it.
  • I generally like Samsung products such as TVs, cell phones, possibly appliances etc.
  • The concept of Matter is interesting to me…

Considering all that, these are some immediate questions I have to get my home automation system working again:

  • Should I keep my Smartthings V2 hub or a later version of it (eventhough it has already caused me a lot of frustration?
  • If not Smartthings, is there a better option?
  • Is there anything I should do now that would be consistent with Matter?
  • Is Matter available now, and if so, would this be a good time to get into it?

Basically, I’m trying to determine if I should make any hardware changes now before I get my system going again. Thank you both for your valuable input and I look forward to any additional comments/suggestions you may have. (BTW, I am a 76-year oldie but I like technology a lot even though it gets pretty “deep” sometimes.)
Regards,
Robert

.

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As discussed above, 2023 was the first year that matter devices became available, and the rollout has been slow and bumpy. So some matter devices are available now, but it’s very early and while it’s been quite stable and useful with the small number of devices available when used with Apple home, the same, cannot be said to be true with SmartThings.

So my personal opinion is that if you are looking at any any platform other than Apple home, it’s probably too early to get into matter other than just as something to play around with. But if it does succeed in its promise, I think it definitely will be the future, so unless you want to go all Z wave, then a matter-capable system is a good idea.

In your situation, I would probably consider a combination of smartthings and hubitat. Move your Z wave devices to hubitat. Use SmartThings to commission matter devices, which you can then simultaneously make available to hubitat. Use the hubitat backup capabilities for peace of mind. Use either sharptools or one of the community built integrations to tie the two together.

You’ll be able to keep using all the devices you have now, you’ll have utilities and backup functionality that smartthings doesn’t provide. You’ll have a better app than hubitat offers natively. You should be ahead of the curve for matter because SmartThings still has the best android implementation at this time. And you should have the shortest learning curve for using the new system. They also have a very good community forum and lots of people there who are familiar with smartthings.

But that’s just one thought. It would require buying a hubitat hub, but then you wouldn’t have to replace all your Z wave switches, so that’s a savings.

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In my humble opinion, I would keep the V2 or maybe a get a V3 to replace it and also add a Station to your setup. Advantages of this are.

  1. You add the ability of being able to add Matter to your setup.
  2. You don’t have to learn a new eco system. You are already familiar with ST.
  3. No patched together integration with another Eco system. Etc.

In this setup you would use the Station for Zigbee, Matter and anything else besides Zwave. On your V2 or V3 if you decide to replace your V2 with a V3, you would run your Zwave devices.

Would be my choice and not others but choice is good!

Even though ST seems to be moving away from Zwave, it is not going away anytime soon or is the support for the V2 and V3 hubs!

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I would probably have made a similar suggestion to yours a few months ago, but I have multiple concerns about SmartThings right now from a customer support standpoint.

In particular, just since 1 January, they seem to have changed the way you get support, and much of the new process is broken at the time of this writing! :rage:

I personally just can’t justify investing more money with a technology company that can’t even set up a decent helpline system.

For a look at some of the details about how hard it is to get customer support right now, see the following thread:

Hub suddenly offline (v2) overnight but network seems fine (Jan 2024)

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I feel your frustration and I think it is a transitional issue with their support process that will be fixed soon. Have you voiced this with ST directly? They seem to value your opinion more than anyone else on this forum and rightfully so! You have the Grandmaster of the forum badge, at least last time I looked!

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Thanks, but I am just one of many people here. There’s a weird thing with the forum software that whenever I edit my posts, it counts as a new post towards total written, and because I rely on text to speech software and dictate my posts, I make a lot of voice errors, which means I have to correct most of my posts several times. So I get way over counted in terms of participation.

Anyway, there are several forum members who do have occasional conversations with smartthings staff behind the scenes. Some are bloggers, some are developers, but I’m sure all of their opinions get counted much more heavily than mine.

But even more importantly: the fact that the helpline process is broken is something that affects many Samsung customers of exactly the kind who don’t typically contribute to this forum. Samsung knew they were making customerfacing changes. Somebody at Samsung should have already noticed that the new process doesn’t work. I just can’t give them a pass on this one. :man_shrugging:t2:

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Thank you JDRoberts and michelp for your valuable comments/suggestions regarding a path forward in my specific situation. It all makes sense to me. I do have a few clarifying questions to ask. The two options suggested are as follows: (Sorry I don’t know how to use quotes)

> Option 1 : (suggested by JDRoberts)
In your situation, I would probably consider a combination of smartthings and hubitat. Move your Z wave devices to hubitat. Use SmartThings to commission matter devices, which you can then simultaneously make available to hubitat. Use the hubitat backup capabilities for peace of mind. Use either sharptools or one of the community built integrations to tie the two together.

> Option 2 (Suggested by mlchelp)
In my humble opinion, I would keep the V2 or maybe a get a V3 to replace it and also add a Station to your setup. Advantages of this are.

  1. You add the ability of being able to add Matter to your setup.
  2. You don’t have to learn a new eco system. You are already familiar with ST.
  3. No patched together integration with another Eco system. Etc.

Clarifying questions / observations / understanding I have:

  • Both options seem similar with the difference being that Option 1 uses Hubitat for my Z-wave devices whereas Option 2 uses Smartthings V2 or V3 hub. Option 2 mentions that I would have “the ability of being able to add Matter to your setup”. I thought this applied to Option 1 as well. What are the differences with respect to Matter? For Option 2, do you have a link to the Smartthings hub you would use?

  • In option 1, I would transfer the Z-wave devices to Hubitat. If I purchase other devices, e.g. Zigbee, would they also go to Hubitat?

  • What Smartthings device would be used in Option 1? Is that the same device that is referred to as “Station” in Option 2?

  • Would you still suggest Hubitat in Option 1 if I didn’t have Z-wave devices?

  • Any other comments/suggestions you may have that would be relevant to the comparison would be appreciated.

Sorry for all the questions. This is a real learning experience for me and hopefully others in similar situations may benefit as well. The level of knowledge, experience and understanding displayed in this posting is outstanding. Tx again.

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Nice, I may try that. Lol.

In my forties, I had Vera. While good at the time, it had major flaws and was super developer-based. I encountered significant issues with Zigbee, prompting me to explore other options. After thorough research, all roads led me to SmartThings. It was backed by a major manufacturer I had worked for in the past, available at Best Buy for immediate purchase, and had a strong community of knowledgeable and helpful members on this forum. Additionally, it supported a wide range of devices compared to other smart home systems available at the time.

Thus began my SmartThings venture. It’s had its rough patches, but it’s definitely improving, and this forum stands out as light years ahead of forums for other ecosystems.

Now at 56 years old, even if things were to get challenging, I wouldn’t switch to something else. I’ve invested a significant amount of time and money in SmartThings. The fact that they don’t charge any fees is a big plus. I can find most devices at a reasonable cost on platforms like eBay or Mercari. If I were in my seventies, I certainly wouldn’t switch. The support and knowledge in this forum surpass other ecosystems.

I stick to using only devices directly integrated with SmartThings, except for Sharptools and Ring. Third-party integrations can be risky, as we’ve seen with instances like MyQ and Simple Commands disappearing in 1 or 2 years. I trust in Sharptools’ stability, given their strong presence and support on this forum. I also believe that Amazon and SmartThings will continue to enhance Alexa and Ring integrations over time.

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See @h0ckeysk8er comments up stream.

yes they can also go to Hubitat

No in that case I would tell you to get a Station and stick with ST

https://www.amazon.com/SAMSUNG-SmartThings-Station-Wireless-EP-P9500TBEGUS/dp/B0BRNST1JB/ref=sr_1_3?crid=1QPWXMJXAYVUV&keywords=smartthings%2Bstation&qid=1704568612&sprefix=smartthings%2Bstation%2Caps%2C81&sr=8-3&ufe=app_do%3Aamzn1.fos.18ed3cb5-28d5-4975-8bc7-93deae8f9840&th=1

Station for Matter and Zigbee and anything else.

https://www.amazon.com/Aeotec-SmartThings-Gateway-Compatible-Assistant/dp/B08TWDNQ5Q/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3HOMA3FU16QXL&keywords=aeotec+hub+v3&qid=1704568736&sprefix=Aeotec+v3%2Caps%2C82&sr=8-1&ufe=app_do%3Aamzn1.fos.18ed3cb5-28d5-4975-8bc7-93deae8f9840

V3 for Zwave you can also find them by searching the internet on sites like Ebay and Mercari. Or you can jsut factory reset your V2 and readd your Zwave devices,

You

Just highlight what you want to quote and click the quote button.

Thank you for the very kind comment. Helping others is what this forum is all about.

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Maybe, but I’m mad at SmartThings right now because they just broke the process of requesting customer support, so I may be overreacting at the moment.

I do think that the smartthings’ implementation of zwave is much worse than that of the competition right now. And I’ve thought that for quite a while. Details in the following thread:

Gaps in SmartThings’ Zwave Implementation (2022)

Mostly though, I was reacting to the fact that you lost all your data, support wasn’t able to help you, and I don’t have confidence in the brand new smartthings backup utility yet. So one thing hubitat would definitely give you is a robust backup system.

As far as your zigbee devices, that would be up to you. SmartThings’ implementation of Zigbee is better than that of Z wave, and they have committed to zigbee for the long term. You wouldn’t be protected against things like the one you just went through where your entire account details disappear, but I do think that as a company, smartthings is more committed to zigbee and likely to continue to apply more resources to its development on their platform.

In option one, I am suggesting that you keep your current V2 hub and continue using that, so you would still be able to commission matter devices that way. You would need a Thread Border router, since the V2 doesn’t have one, and the V3 and station do, but that’s a separate discussion.

As far as we know, there’s nothing wrong with your V2 hub, right? The issue was that you lost all the account data?

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Well, he’s currently visiting us so I asked.

His understanding is Hubitat has (temporarily?) shelved putting in support for ZWave 800LR protocol even though the most current hubs they sell have the 800 chip–which is important to him–because they are scrambling to get on the Matter bandwagon. I have not confirmed that statement. He agrees the ZBox is a contender should he decide to jump ecosystems, having only one or two Zigbee devices (which can somehow be supported on ZBox with some kind of addition–again, not verified by me).

It continues to be the Wild West of home automation out there. Doesn’t seem like that has changed much since I jumped in to SmartThings in 2015! Everyone needs to evaluate where they are today, where they want to be tomorrow, how much time they have to tinker, and how much risk is involved–both monetarily and in satisfaction factor of family members that need to live in this experimental playground!

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Definitelytrue. happy wife makes a happy life!

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It doesn’t have a zigbee radio, so they are talking about bridging with something like either a hue bridge or another Zigbee to WiFi bridge with an open API.

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