SmartThings Is Over Party

The ‘solution’ needs to be both wholistic AND piecemeal. HA should not require a whole system to be planned, any more than you need to plan out an entire kitchen in order to install and use a refrigerator.

What’s missing is simplicity. That is to say, a simple interface to accomplish complex things. Alexa (and/or other voice interface) is the first piece of that puzzle; it is the game-changer for HA.

The next step is an HA system that can take voice input, and from it generate the automations you want. It should be as simple as saying “On weekdays, after 5pm, when sensor 1 and sensor 2 both have arrived, turn on light A and turn dimmable light B to 25% and turn on the music to Pandora early jazz”. It should not require SmartRules, RuleMachine, CORE pistons, or any of that stuff.

If you want a comparison, think back to the earliest word processors. The user had to do a great many things manually before he/she could type a document, and formatting it was a major PITA. Now it is drag-drop, highlight-change, pre-formatted templates, and all manner of tools that make using the app painless.

It is when HA systems can accomplish this sort of ease of configuration that they might stand a chance of mass-market penetration. Until then, it is the bleeding edge.

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My point is that even this simple scenario is way beyond what any mainstream consumer would even want to do IMHO. It doesn’t matter how simple it is to setup. They’re going to think “it’ll cost me $400 to have a few lights turned on automatically and my music player to come on? I don’t even want to listen to Jazz every day and I walk right past the light switches anyways. I’ll pass.”

I agree that the market won’t suddenly go from no automation to full automation, but I don’t even see the first baby steps getting any traction outside of communities like this one. That, to me, is the basic problem that has not yet been solved, what is the “killer app” for HA that will resonate with the mainstream market and get them to drop several hundred or a thousand bucks. What are the ads you see for HA products right now? Automated Googling? OK Google, what sound does a blue whale make. Just a novelty at this point.

Remember that literally millions more people already have Home automation on monthly service contracts from their local cable and security companies than have bought SmartThings and all of its DIY competition put together.

At CES 2017, the zwave alliance rep said 2/3 of zwave devices are professionally installed, and they’ve been concentrating on adding features that will make it easier for that group of professional installers to use zwave.

The marketing materials for these services highlight basic use cases:

ADT PulseÂź, our all-in-one interactive solution to home automation, allows you to control all parts of your home from your tablet or smartphone. With ADT PulseÂź, you can:
.
Arm and disarm your security system.
Lock and unlock your doors.
Control appliances, lighting, and the temperature of your house.

The use cases that sell these systems are really simple. “Never come home to a dark house.” “Unlock the door for the dog walker.” “A smart thermostat.” Alexa-Type voice control of lights.

XFINITY Home is even simpler:

Make sure your lights are on when you need them and your home is warm or cool when you get there

The point is that right now in the low cost market, simple sells. And often these people aren’t even setting up their own rules. They definitely aren’t pairing their own devices or using custom device type handlers.

XFINITY continues to report growth in this market segment, with good retention.

I think we will continue to see growth in low cost home automation based on the current technology, but I think right now most of that growth is from the same people who are paying monthly contracts for security systems. And most of them aren’t in these forums. :wink:

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Wow! I guess millions of consumers who bought Amazon Alexa and Philips Hue don’t even count as “baby steps”. :slight_smile:

IMO, Hue and Alexa are a perfect couple. They make lighting automation virtually a no-brainer.

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Maybe you’re right, and I don’t want to be the stick in the mud. Alexa has been very successful. I still have yet to talk to anyone who uses it for anything more than turning their TV on, at least in my RL circles. And I hadn’t even heard of Phillips Hue until I joined this forum.

Actually, not quite. It takes many tries before the y pair, and then if you have more than one Hue room you have to remember all the scene names and remember the room name etc.

To “make it simple”, we should be able to say “Alexa, turn on blue light” and unless you specify “in room X”, it does that in the room you are in. A simple thing for the human mind to grasp, awfully difficult to make easy for a voice-activated system to ‘intuit’.

I’ve had both for more than two years and never had any pairing issues. In two years, I only had to powercycle Hue twice. Works like a charm. Even my first-grader kid has no problem using it. But hey, I can only speak for myself. I guess for some folks, any technology is not good enough, unless it can read their minds. :smiley:

I don’t use Alexa to turn on or off my TV.

I do use it to turn on lights and adjust the thermostat when I wakeup, to turn off lights and adjust thermostat when I go to bed, to turn all lights off and adjust thermostat when I leave home, to adjust the lights rather often as I move about the house, to run ST routines, and to adjust the thermostat as needed when I home. Not to mention getting news, jokes, weather, music etc.

There is more to Alexa than just a turning on a TV. Alexa has brought a lot of people into the home automation world, even if it’s just to do small things like turning on a TV.

I know a few people that have Phillips Hue bulbs and/or Nest thermostats and other smart home items but no ST hub. Once they learn about ST they tend to buy it to control their things they have already or plan to buy in the near future.

I do have to wonder how many stability issues are tied to individuals routers. I had quite a few issues when I first got SmartThings because my router couldn’t handle all the new connections (so it seemed). I then upgraded to a router that specifically mentioned iot and haven’t had issues since (beyond ST’s own issues).

For months, ST has been stable for me so I’m surprised so many people are still having issues. Upgrade your router?

[quote=“geko, post:108, topic:63648, full:true”]I’ve had both for more than two years and never had any pairing issues. In two years, I only had to powercycle Hue twice. Works like a charm. Even my first-grader kid has no problem using it. But hey, I can only speak for myself. I guess for some folks, any technology is not good enough, unless it can read their minds. :smiley:
[/quote]
Hey, there’s a great marketing plan!! “SmartThings. for smart people. Don’t buy our product if you’re an idiot.” :smiley:

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You do raise a good point as I have had similar thoughts recently. Since the December update I have noticed that my hub disconnects 1-2 times a day, often under load (i.e controlling large groups of devices). The disconnections are usually 30 seconds or less, although sometimes the hub reboots. Everything was before the December update, but I do wonder if you might be on to something. My router is 4 years old, but I do wonder if it might be hitting some limits (i.e. NAT table size) due to the increased traffic and nu,ber of devices.

Before I continue, in no way does the following reflect on ZebraBlinds and is my personal opinion on the matter:

I’ve been a part of the ST community in some form or another for the past 1.5 years and over the same time I’ve had my stint with Vera, Wink (testing Wink 2 right now), and a few self-made systems powered by a Raspberry Pi. Out of all of the ones I have tried, I always stuck with ST simply because it was far more widely compatible, had excellent community apps, a great community and fairly good balance between ease of use with a good set of features.

Now, this is not to say ST doesn’t have faults, it does! But over the long run, it’s been running better for me. Over the past year I have seen significant improvements to reliability and in the last 6 months have had 1 failure. And although I do see some community members being frustrated over a “lack of new features” or problems with reliability (which thankfully I haven’t had to deal with) I think the current direction ST is heading in is good. Yes, communication for some matters are very closed these days (and it’s like that for most companies), but at the same time, we are seeing better outreach with community dev’s especially when platform or firmware changes can affect community-built apps. We are seeing more active beta testing (which can still improve) before a wider platform release and a slow but steady pace of new integrations (most recent that comes to mind is Ring and Google Home).

ST can definitely do better, but I think they are taking a step in the right direction. My biggest complaint with Wink was, when you run into problems support was nonexistent. Also you were fairly limited on what you can do (and you still are on the Wink 2) but reliability wise
 it would fall around the same as ST with the occasional outages (based on the original Wink). Vera’s local processing was pretty sweet I admit, but having a lot of devices did slow things down sometimes and I used to have the same problem that some ST users were having where scenes etc would not run when they should at times. Each offers benefits and each has it’s own problems, I think ST is smack in the middle with a well-balanced act. Will it change one day? Possibly. Will it be better or worse? No idea. Do I recommend ST to others? HELL YEAH!

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I was surprised to find that there don’t seem to be a list of recommended routers for use with ST. A stable internet connection is obviously a very important piece to the puzzle. Would be interesting to see a poll of which routers are used in systems with lots of issues vs those with few issues.

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As the old saying goes “all home automation is local.” Which is to say there are a bunch of different reasons why someone might have unreliability. The type of router is definitely one factor, as is the physical placement of devices, the architecture of the home, local wiring, etc. Any of those might affect one person and not another.

That said, there is also no question that SmartThings has from time to time introduced a number of different platform changes over the last two years which have created unreliability for different customers, but not all customers. None of which have anything to do with a particular router model.

So what percentage of unreliability reports have to do with router selection? My personal guess, as someone who was a network engineer, is maybe 15%. Maybe a little more. Certainly less than 25%.

Obviously there’s no way to know for sure, but there are enough verifiable nonrouter-associated reliability incidents acknowledged by support that we know it’s definitely not the solution for most of the problems. :sunglasses:

http://thingsthataresmart.wiki/index.php?title=Bug:_First_Reports

Routers themselves are generally not the issue
 however, we have found that users who implement atypical network configurations (port blocking/fowarding, DMZs, etc) can run into challenges with Hubs maintaining a reliable connection to the platform.

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Just throwing this out there, this has been one of the longest party, ever :grinning:

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If your router allows setting QoS (Quality of Service) per device, I recommend giving ST hub the highest priority. The ST bandwidth is quite low, so it won’t interfere with other devices, but it definitely helps with latency, particularly if you do a lot of hi-def video streaming or if you upload a lot of data (e.g. use cloud storage for your phone pictures).

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Anyone who is experiencing stability issues, please join the hub 17.x beta. I won’t promise it will fix every issue you have, but I can say from experience on my own hub that things have been greatly improved.

Also, know that there is a group of engineers busting their ***es to make the v2 hub better. I go home and rely on my own hub to manage the devices in my house, so I am personally invested. It is my personal opinion that too many promises were made by people who weren’t responsible for the implementation, but I’ll be damned before I stop fighting to make ST the best it can be.

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Nick, appreciate your effort. However, you clearly understand that promises made by management (current and former) are indicative of the direction (or lack thereof) of the company.

No engineer can solve those fundamental “rudderless” leadership challenges. Where is Alex? Where is the leadership.

It shouldn’t be a lonely Software Engineer carrying the mantle. I personally fear the repercussions on you for speaking out.

I really hope things are going to get better, but until management steps up and owns their issues, folks like you will just “be damned” before real change will occur.

Good luck!

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