SmartThings Outage - Mar 12 2018

That’s the same screen I’ve been seeing this morning after waking up and seeing that my lights didn’t turn on automatically. I emailed support. There was an outage yesterday, but supposedly fixed already. It doesn’t seem that it has been.

Wink is a closed and dying system. Their only hope is being acquired by Amazon IMO, and THEN they might be worth investigating. There are better, open options available out there than Wink. I bought Hubitat a few weeks ago and will likely set it up soon and migrate things like lighting over to it soon.

It has been rough the last few months on ST but believe it or not, spring of 2016 was probably worse. ST eventually got things together and it was very solid up until last fall, and I think they’ll eventually get there again. We all knew that the deadline for the new app and rolling all of Samsung’s stuff into it was unrealistic to begin with and I think we’re likely seeing the results of that decision now. I mean, they’re talking about adding additional infrastructure to resolve the issue - you don’t typically install additional infrastructure as a break fix. This particular issue has likely been brewing for awhile and I have a feeling the warning signs were ignored.

2 Likes

We all wish we understood why major outages occur.

But you can’t just throw money at the problem. The Samsung / SmartThings Cloud is it’s own unique architecture with many components. Each component can fail for completely different reasons, and some are more resilient or easier to repair than others. The failure today seems to be due to unexpected load in an “authentication” component. Maybe it’s the first time this specific problem has happened. Maybe the cause will be well enough understood so that this particular problem will never occur again. And thus there is incremental improvement until every possible problem has happened.

This iterative break-fix-improve cycle really isn’t abnormal in Systems Operations, as much as everyone would like to think or say otherwise.

Look at the history of other major platforms during their growing pains: eBay … even Amazon and Gmail, and many more before and after that era.

I’m confident that everyone is “doing the best they can” - but that doesn’t mean the results are great.

If anyone thinks they can do better… SmartThings is hiring in all areas of engineering and operations.

6 Likes

Correct, the outage has not been fixed yet. My hub is still offline as well.

I’m able to login to the app and load my device list as of 6:00am EDT

Th outage length is unacceptable; however, I am going to repeat what JD has said a few times already because it needs to be repeated again:

People, NEVER use ST (or any consumer-level HA device) for functions critical to life and limb! I can’t tell you how many times this has been emphasized over the years and yet, people still do it. I use ST for security, but I am also extremely aware of the limitations and accept those limitations. You guys using it for things like fire sprinklers (I am still dumbfounded by that one) are putting your lives at risk and also risking thousands of dollars in property damage should a false alarm occur.

2 Likes

Getting a error message stating not authorized to perform this action… Anyone else?

Editing smart lighting and routines is still broken

2 Likes

I spent about a minute with my hand leaning against the wall yelling at Alexa to turn on the Fan. Sad thing is. The physical switch was in arms reach!

I have to remember that HA is a convenience and that I still have control over my home during outages.

Would be nice to have less outages…:weary:

3 Likes

You got me there.

4 Likes

Try Safari or explorer, or open an incagnito window or clear cache in Chrome

This morning I was able to log into the apps and all appears to be functioning like nothing has happened. During the night the 2 routines I had worked fine from the Hub for locking doors and setting the alarm in case of a door opening and they fired off this morning fine before I logged back into the apps. on the devices.

My wife’s App on her phone never acted up at all, on my two devices I had to log back in, got some error I was already logged in. Closed it down and reopened the app and in I was like it was before the outage

I turned my own lights off last night and checked that the doors were locked.
Dreadful.

4 Likes

Get Splunk. Find root causes.

As much as I enjoy the customization available in ST, it is not the center of my HA. Alexa is. Now, to the degree possible, I am happy to have indirect linkages to ST so that I can make use of all the fun things that ST allows me to do with webCoRE and custom DH/apps. Last night merely proved that it is prudent to keep my legacy IRIS hub with a small handful of lights in key locations.

As for the most critical component of HA, the “happy wife” module, the way to keep that running at an optimum level is summed up in 2 words, “expectation management”. Me: “Honey, SmartThings is on the fritz, but we still have light control next to the sofa and the Master bedroom due to 2 bulbs I moved back to IRIS. The Alexa commands for Downstairs and Bedroom will work as normal with this setup. All the ceiling lights will work normally as they use that BOND hub I bought. And we have to use the Alexa Skill to activate Alarm.com until SmartThings wakes up.” Her: “Ok, thank you.”

2 Likes

My routines are working but “Smart Lighting” settings are not working and when I try to access the detail screen, I get “Something’s Wrong” message.

Cross post here: "Smart Lighting" not working

Interesting. TBH, that’s a lot of things ST should not be used for. Is there another reliable platform for security, etc?

All night and it’s still down. I bet smartthings doesn’t consider reliability a valuble feature. They probably were not even working on fixing it through the night.

Mine is working this morning. I don’t see why it requires internet. Seems a poor design since internet fails enough as it is or can be cut by an intruder. Have it run in local network as a primary. Internet connectivity should only be needed for updates and remote functions.

We had a really bad time coming home last night. Couldn’t disarm the system. So when we opened the door, the alarm goes off. I couldn’t stop it. Had to pull the batteries in the siren. Turn off all lights manually with switches so we could go to bed. Needless to say, the other half was not a happy camper. There’s no way she could do what I did if I had been gone.

Now this morning, I can’t seem to edit any routines. Keep getting error message. So don’t know if they work or not.