When I first bought ST, I was in love. I thought it’s really a cool and useful thing to have. But now that I’ve had some time to see how it really works, it’s unreliable. Utterly unreliable. Again and again, triggers don’t work. Lights turn on but not off after working for weeks. Or plenty of false alarms for security. Or in other cases, the trigger for security features does not work at all. Or some other random outage that causes the whole thing to function in crazy ways. Don’t ask me to troubleshoot or give you more information. I’ve set it up correctly to a tee as instructed. Just effing fix the issues without inconveniencing everyone! Over and over, so many problems. Not to mention the usability issues with the app. What a horrible experience! After all this time, and barely any progress on any of these fronts. In the world of tech where things move so fast, how can you possibly work this way?
I loved you Smartthings. But this relationship has gone sour now that I’ve seen your true colors. SHAPE UP. PLEASE! You hurt me so much. Stop causing anxiety to your faithful and loyal community!
LOL… I don’t even use the mobile app anymore as it takes an average of 45 seconds to launch into a state where it is usable for anything. This on a brand new quad-core phone with a 50Mbps wifi connection.
And the IDE and SIM have gotten to be so slow I’ve pretty much stopped using it as well.
I have simply run out a patience using a system where the majority of the time spent using it is waiting.
I hadn’t been in the IDE for a while until a few nights ago and it has slowed A LOT since I used it several months ago. I also noticed that the app has slowed down in recent days on any device I use at any location…so it does not appear to be me.
Hopefully the influx of cash (did that happen?) from parent Samsung will get these things fixed soon.
In my experience, the iPhone app takes 20 seconds or more just to sync up, before you can press any buttons. This and the fact that you need multiple taps to switch between the groups, makes it pretty much useless for remote control. I ended up using GE and Internatic remotes for real-time control and only use SmartThings for scheduling and event-driven operations, although that is also proved to be problematic due to the fact that in most cases ST is not aware that a switch was turned on or off manually or using remote control.
It actually wasn’t the startup of the app or delays in statuses being displayed. It was stepping through a multi-page smartapp. It was REALLY slow doing that yesterday and the day before, but today it seems much better.
@geko My friend. I am just curious how many devices you have? And how many hrs you spend coding? For some reason yesterday and day before, it was slow for me and kept crashing but much better today!
I am getting to this point as well. What works one week, fails the next week. And it seems to go in waves; first I notice a light doesn’t go on when the door opens as it should, then a light won’t go off for the night time mode change. then another light won’t turn on or off at mode change, then I can’t turn on lights and then I need to waste hours deleting the switches or lights from apps, re-pair them and add them all back to the apps. I must spend 4-5 hours every two weeks going thru this scenario. I have been experiencing an issue in the dashboard for Lights & Switches…it always indicates “Some lights are on” even though all lights and switches show off in the app and are actually off (visual check). First I was told that I needed to delete all my lights and switches and re-pair them (I have at least 15!) and then another person in support told me it was a known issue and would be fixed with the next release. I just don’t trust it and now I need to put a nanny cam in the garage to ensure that the relay doesn’t inadvertently open my garage door while I am at work. I feel worse now that I bought a kit for my brother and he is about to start investing money in this system. I am losing patience and faith very quickly.
Ditto. ST works well for a few days or a week or so, then I come home and my security lights that are supposed to quit cycling when I arrive, are still on. And the app won’t turn them off! Then a couple of days later, system works fine. Then I find a light on at 8 am in the morning, a light that was supposed to not be on at all when I’m home and even if I’m away, should have turned off by midnight. This type of unreliability, if it is not fixed, will doom ST. As I see it, the only good fix is to give up on central control and store your schedule in the hub.
I am at this point as well. I have been using ST since September '14 and have yet to have a solid 7-day week of flaw-free automation. I had previously used Nexia for 10 months and it was flawless (except for my own errors) during that time. Lights turned on and off exactly at the times they were supposed to. As far as I know Nexia is 100% cloud controlled, but they got their system to work. If it wasn’t for the monthly fee I’d still be with them.
It seems I left Nexia to save $10/mo and take advantage of geo-fencing. In exchange I got a drastically dumbed down Schlage lock control and unreliable automation.
I just really don’t understand how ST can release a product/service with so many flaws and an inferior infrastructure. If Nexia can make it work why can’t ST? Quite honestly if Nexia added geo-fencing I might go back to them and pay the $10/mo for reliability.
I’ve not jumped into this thread as I have nothing to complain about from a functional perspective.
50 odd hardware devices, 60 devices total, hue,harmony, multiple custom devices, multiple community and self induced smart apps.
Modes change the way they’re supposed to, lights go on and off the way they’re supposed to, heating states change the way they’re supposed to.
I don’t get why you guys are having all these issues.
The other night we were getting no notifications for the front door opening and closing. That’s PRETTY IMPORTANT I’d say. Some times I’d get notifications while my girlfriend wouldn’t, sometimes neither of us would get notified. And we both have the same high end smartphones - it’s ST that’s flat out unreliable.
Right now it thinks people are home that left hours ago with their phones. I have to be _______ this close to some of the motion sensors for them to go off. Lights will be off but show them as on in the app, or be on and show them as off. Sometimes lights will turn on for no reason, I turn it off, it turns it back on, I turn it off and uninstall every “Smart” App for it… and the light still turns on for no damn reason.
Can’t believe how expensive it all is for it to barely function. Hopefully this thing can be updated down the road to work without us all having to buy new hardware. Presently I feel like we’re all just getting ripped off.
Yep. Same here. Things that work fine for weeks, suddenly stop. And yeah, when I launch the iPhone app, I have to sit there and wait for 20s while it refreshes everything before I can turn off/on that light the @#$! thing was supposed to when I got in my car and closed the garage door.
I have landscape lighting that (is supposed to) come on at sunset and turn off at 11pm. 90% of the time it comes on at sunset, about 50% of the time it shuts off at 11p.
My away mode is supposed to shut off all the lights in the house. That one loves to randomly leave one on just to keep things interesting. That’s on top of randomly not entering Away mode because the system failed to detect that either me or my wife has left (via the iPhone app).
My favorite one recently is my First Alert smoke/CO detector started beeping with the low battery alert. I thought to myself “gee, isn’t ST supposed to warn me when any of my devices get a low battery?” After some checking in the logs, it turns out ST stopped talking to my smoke detector months ago.
@ben and others have stopped replying to these threads it seems. I’m not sure this situation is going to improve. I was with you. I was in love. But smart things has been a constant struggle of tweaking and debugging and rebooting deleting/adding. My wife uses air quotes when she says "smart"things.
@stevesell Yep this sounds exactly like mine. I wish we could get some official word on this. Like an acknowledgment that “Yes, things suck horribly right now but we’re working on it.”
There really needs to be a way to click on a person in the app and tell it “No really, they DID leave the house you stupid thing.” It thinks people are here that aren’t here and there’s absolutely NO way to fix that unless I text everyone and ask them to reboot their phones or something.
Oh, we’ll get that for sure. I’ve been hearing that since the Fall of 2013. “Things are going to change…” “Current performance is unacceptable, but here’s what we’re doing…” “we’re moving to a new platform, then it’s on like Donkey Kong” @ben (and I’m sorry for picking on Ben, but he’s the one I have interacted with the most) has made numerous apologies/statements/etc. In the end things sorta stay the same. It ebbs and flows, but it’s just between different levels of unreliable.
Ah at least they know and are working on it I guess. Just sucks how many people shelled out hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of dollars for a system that works 25% of the time. Hears to hoping 2015 will be the year this thing changes drastically.
I’m not actually sure they are actually aware - at least I don’t get the sense of urgency/priority that a company should have when their product is in the state Smartthings currently is. I mean, it’s been over a year since I “bought in” in 2013 and it’s been the same story all along.
I don’t see the realization from ST that folks buying this product are investing hundreds - many cases over $1k - and that for this kind of money, it should. just. work.
Imagine if you had the same reliability with any other thing for your house (TV, refrigerator, Washer/Dryer, etc.). Even cable providers look rock-solid in comparison.
I wish I had a sense that there was some pride/ownership in their product. That would give me hope. Even a small tangible gesture would go a long way for me.
This is how I picture every “we’re ready to release it” meeting ending at SmartThings HQ:
For the most part, it works for me too. Except several times a week I see something that is very late, or completely AWOL. I don’t know whether I just live in the Bermuda Triangle of SmartThings. or you’re just not noticing these glitches, but since the status page has been declaring that they haven’t been able to keep up with the traffic since last November, I don’t think it is just me.
It takes a flagship smartphone 40 seconds on average to open the mobile app to a state that is usable (this on a 50Mbps down; 20Mbps up connection). That is simply obscene. And the IDE has become so slow I don’t have the patience to use it anymore either.
I’ve been having this issue as well, in addition to the occasional light not turning on when a door sensor is tripped. For the longest time, I was fine with no issues like @Mike_Maxwell. But, then a few weeks ago they started…very slow response to a mode change from a motion trigger, the “Some lights on” when they are all off, etc.
I agree with above that I would really like to hear some info from the ST gang. No information or silence is WAY worse than saying things are screwed up and will be for a while (if that were the case).
Yeah, and the more they say it, the more hollow it sounds. I’m still tinkering with SmartThings, but like many other “old-timers” here, I pretty much gave up on it as a core for my smart home setup. For example, I didn’t even bother linking Hue with SmartThing to spare myself frustration.
I can say that I don’t use sunrise/sunset events, and have very few (maybe one) actual scheduled event.
I use luminance, motion and presence to run everything, sunrise/sunset makes no sense to me in the pacific northwest.
Maybe that’s one reason I have as few issues as I do.
The IDE, yea that’s a sore point, works best for me if I stay away from prime time.
For some reason yesterday and day before, it was slow for me and kept crashing but much better today!