SmartThings Hub DELAYS and UNRELIABILITY for SCENES and AUTOMATIONS

I am using SmartThings Hub primarily for a new installation of 100+ Fibaro light switches (dimmers and non-dimmers) in my house. I did some initial testing of a few Fibaro switches, which seemed to work fine.

My next milestone was to install an entire room (Guest House) with about a dozen Fibaro switches.
They all work fine individually, and can be invoked from the physical switch or remotely via the SmartThings App (using Classis App), Alexa, etc.
They do, however, exhibit intermittent delays in reporting their status to the app. Sometimes it is immediate, while other times it takes anywhere from 10 seconds to a minute.

My next step was to test some Scenes and Automations. For example, I would create a Scene that turned on (or off) multiple Fibaro switches. I would then create an Automation that invoked such a Scene when the physical Fibaro switch was turned on or off (eg, press one light switch, which causes 2 or 3 circuits to turn on).

This is where I experienced an unusual amount of delay (and often partial failure - eg, only 2 of 4 switches would turn on).

I was surprised that the Scenes in the SmartThings app (which invoke multiple devices) seem to work significantly more slowly than the individual switches themselves. For example, I can tell Alexa to turn on a Fibaro switch, or invoke the Fibaro swtich remotely from the SmartThings app, with little delay, And I can turn on the physical switch and see it reported in the SmartThings app with relatively little delay.

But when I invoke a Scene from the SmartThings app (or an Automation triggered by the operation of a physical swtich) which invokes multiple switches, then I get significantly more delay, and often a partial failure. If I wait 15 seconds and reinvoke the Scene, it might invoke some of the switches it missed the first time, though even this is not terribly reliable.

Does the SmartThings app have a general problem with Scenes that invoke multiple devices (eg, 3-10 at a time)? Is this likely a SmartThings problem, or perhaps a Fibaro problem?

I still need to do more troubleshooting to narrow this down (and hopefully find a solution), but appreciate any thoughts ā€“ especially from someone who has used Fibaro light switches with the SmartThings Hub.

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Likely a ST problem not a device problem and not just because of the number of devices in your scene or automation.

My scenes have been hosed for over a month and itā€™s only getting worse.

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Do you also find that the ā€œreportingā€ (eg, whether a device state is On or Off) is rather inconsistent?

Sometimes it is slow to update (eg, range from 1 second to 30+ seconds), while other times it never updates unless you force a state change (remotely from the app or directly from the device).

Have you done more detailed troubleshooting or found someone technical at Samsung to talk to about this?

Tagging @anon36505037 , Who has done two entire Houses with Fibaro kit

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Yes.

Starting the day that the Scene feature was released, I have been flabbergasted at its slow performance - and my biggest scene only has 3 switches. :confounded:

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I will give this a try and share my experience.
Thanks again for the detailed explanation (and the samples).

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Can you clarify what your issues are? Since I migrated to v3, I am unable to create any scenes as the classic app tells me something is wrong (what a superuseful error!) when trying to load devices. ST tells me it is due to the number of devices I have causing a timeout and that is the last I heard of it. I canā€™t use the new app to create scenes as it does yet support all my devices. Does this match your issue?

My scenes (authored in Classic) fail to run about 40% of the time and throw an error in my activity log ā€œSome scenes failed to activateā€ I use a complex set of WebCoRE pistons to trigger routines which trigger scenes. (WebCoRE for the advanced logic, Scenes so my wife has an easy to use edit interface and Routines to stitch them together because WebCoRE cannot trigger a scene directly)
I can still see my scenes, but I cannot edit scenes in classic
I CAN author scenes in Connect - but like you I still do not have control over all of my relevant devices in Connect yet. Itā€™s MARKEDLY Better in the last couple weeks, but Iā€™m still missing some key devices.
Been back and forth with T2 support and have identified that it is related to ā€œA timeout issue that ST engineering is trackingā€

No motion on the case in over 4 wks. and the scenes have not gotten better. I have no indication if they intend to fix the underlying issues causing the timeout but the way troubleshooting has gone so far, they originally intended to push me to the Connect scene editor until they realized it wont control the devices in question. That leads me to believe the ā€˜fixā€™ is more than a few lines of code.

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Although we appear to be experiencing different symptoms, it is the same cause I was told, then I never got any further update. Still waiting patientlyā€¦ Grumbleā€¦ Grumbleā€¦

I too am waiting for my promised callback from Tier 2 on these issues.
I have a v2 hub (now very hesitant to upgrade, and see no reason to).

I am in early stages of troubleshooting delays with Scenes and Automations, but will soon try WebCore for comparison.

Though I am new to troubleshooting the Logs, I wish there was a way to troubleshoot Z-Wave as well (eg, something akin to ā€œtracerouteā€ for IP so that I could see the route of each command instead of just the status if/when it reaches the hub). Does anyone know if such a ā€œZ-wave tracerouteā€ tool exists?

That would help me understand the role (if any) ā€œdistanceā€ is playing in these problems. For example, I have a Guest House with about a dozen Fibaro light switches, but there is a single long hop (about 30 feet) between the Guest House and Main House (where the hub lives). If delays were consistent, that would be one thing. But, things generally seem to work with minimal delay. However, I am also experiencing intermittent delays and partial failures (eg, 2 of 4 lights in a scene failing to turn on/off sometimes).

I continue to bug Samsung, and hope to hear back from Tier 2 soon (and will report what I learn, if anything).

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There are real time network monitoring tools for Z wave available, but smart things has not made them available to customers for their particular platform.

There is one you can buy which is intended for professional installers and some community members have. Itā€™s very cool, but list price is something like $249 and it occasionally goes on sale for $189. More than most people want to spend.

Looks like itā€™s still on the holiday sale at $149.

Anyway discussion of what it is and how it works in the deals thread:

If you just want a static snapshot of the routes available to individual devices, there is a less expensive way to do that. But you still need to purchase another device to get access to that deviceā€™s utilities

I am glad to hear I am not the only one frustrated.

I have spent a long time creating many scenes with mostly colored LIFX lights and a few ā€œpocket socketā€ outlets connected to standard lamps. The sockets seem to fire perfectly but the LIFX lights will react slowly, and only a few of the lights will executeā€¦if I trigger the scene again, a few more will reactā€¦ but not always. And they donā€™t fully finish the ā€œscene instructionsā€ā€¦ in other words, if I have three LIFX bulbs and tell them each to turn on, go to 35% brightness and turn greenā€¦

I will get one or two still at original brightness, only one goes to 35%, and two go to greenā€¦ another press they might all get to 35%, but partway between the last color and green.

Between that and the general unreliability of devices or the whole hub dropping out too often lately, I am starting to pull my hair out!

From what I am reading here, doesnā€™t sound like webcore totally fixes the scene problem?

By the way, it isnā€™t the LIFX bulbs - they react to voice commands from Google Home directly with zero issue.

Iā€™ve been having somewhat of the same issue for about a month. Using the Echo to interface ā€œAll lights on/All lights offā€ would result in about a 10-15 second delay. Individual devices work instantly as expected.

Today, I looked at the logging and noticed that I had three plugs offline. These are the three x-mas trees were taken down last month. After removing those plugs from the Echo app, everything works instantly again.

Granted my setup is about as basic as it can be. Maybe this might help someone else having the same delays?

Delayed by about 10 seconds with 3 devices offline.

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Instant with those devices removed from the Echo app.

Oh man am I glad Iā€™m not the only one with this issue!

Among many other Zwave devices I also have around 40 Zwave sockets dotted throughout the house, 7 of which are in the lounge controlling table lamps.

As you mentioned in your original post, controlling them directly or individually seems to work fine, but controlling multiple Zwave devices with a scene or automation is proving to be very fickle. Most of the time there will be delays in each device responding, sometimes this can be up to 5 or 10 minutes! Other times it just simply doesnā€™t work.

I would like to say itā€™s possibly a range issue, but with the amount of Zwave devices acting as a mesh repeater throughout my house I donā€™t think this is the case.

I have also recently installed 6 Ikea Fyrtur Smart Blinds (again in the lounge) which use Zigbee and found the exact same issue happens with them, only worse! Again, controlling 1 or 2 at a time works fine, but getting them all to react via an automation only works 30-50% of the time. Quite often one blind is left either open or shut.

Iā€™m so glad Iā€™m not crazy. Iā€™m having this exact same problem, except with Lutron Caseta lights. I have to press the scene button 2-3 times to get all the lights at the correct brightness.

Same issue here: only two Kasa sockets in the scene, scheduled to turn off at the same time every evening. Iā€™m guessing the success rate is about 50%. AFAIK, those are WiFi devices. Ran to ST after Wink decided to shed all of its customers. Looks like that was a mistake. Maybe Hubitat would have been a better choice.

Hello everyone, need to share my current experience with ST and get some advices.

I have around 15 Eaton smart switches and ST hub. I just have one ā€œGood nightā€ scene, that was supposed to turn off all switches. Well, what a nightmareā€¦ Scene delays seconds to kick in, and every switch is individually turned off, in a cascaded delayā€¦ Seems like a lame ghost is walking through the house turning the switches off. Oh, forgot to mentionā€¦ Sometimes, some switches remain on, meaning the scene is failing often (or the ghost is missing switches on the way to the beyond).

Before you ask, I tried everything. Removed and reinstalled the devices, used the classic app, the new one, restored the z-wave network, turned off the health device report. No luck. I think this ā€œnot so SmartThingā€ is working as designed.

In my first automated home, I had Vera and z-wave devices. Scenes and automation used to run instantaneously. Now that I am using these z-wave+ Eaton devices, I was hoping that my automation would be more reliable and faster.

Does anybody share the same thoughts ? Should I move on and get a new hub ? Any advice ?

Does anybody know if Samsung Washer and Dryer will have a flawless integration with other hubs than ST? Any recommendation?

Thank you,

Andre.

Any updates on this topic? I am trying to simply mirror 2 Fibaro dimmers in Smart Lightingā€¦ and it is so unreliable that I am ready to toss my SmartThings hub out the window and migrate to a different platform. My frustration is huge.

James