You can’t just throw unlimited money at it but have they thrown enough? Something changed. Did they fully test the changes before releasing them into production? If they dont use a preprod testing approach or even load and performance, then more money to set up those environments is needed.
My thought is to make ST fully self contained and operational on the local network. Internet should only be needed for software updates and remote functions. Relying on internet for basic functionality is crazy.
Yeah. I had thought about getting ST for my mom since she lives alone in another state. She wouldn’t have had a clue on what to do if this happened to her. Anyone with other platform suggestions that are not reliant on the internet for functionality?
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Yes, but not being able to get email or buy a widget during an outage is different than not being able to turn off a siren blaring in your home, or in other cases close a garage door.
Personally , I am a belt and suspenders technology person … (why I use lutrons I want a physical control path) but not everyone is so anal-retentive, and ST suggests you dont need to be.
In 30+ years of IT and InfoSec I get it … Stuff hits the fan… but there seems to be a problem in general with the platform and its stability of late that is (my perception) worse than before…
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I’m slowly migrating over to Hubitat
Unless I find a better option … but this seems to tic my major boxes (local control AND processing, most device supported that I need, etc)
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My SmartLighting app just worked to turn off the lights. It didn’t turn
them on earlier. If it works, I can live with it until the fix it but as
you say we can get to settings. Thx.
Yea, I got it as well from the wife this morning. Her words, “I can do without Smartthings…” I now need to look at alternatives, which is upsetting considering how much I have invested in Smartthings components.
From what I understand Hubitat is all about LOCAL processing and control. Which is great. But no good way to access or control remotely. That’s the killer for me.
I’ll check that out. Thank you!
Actually not entirely … they are talking about releasing an app, as well as ports of OpenDash/HousePannel for the control
Yes, the jury is still out, but not yet Hung 
Mine is down too!
When the app comes out I will look at it again. The OpenDash/HousePanel is just too difficult and messy to configure for me. And I could never get it to work on my phone in ST. And it’s on my phone that I need it.
If Hubitat comes out with a good app and maybe Actiontiles gets ported over, then I can reconsider it. I am more into control than automation and I need that remote control in an easy to use format for my wife.
This is why I would never put anything important or that I needed to count upon into SmartThings. I’ve been using the ST Hub for a couple of years and the average I can say about it is that it is quirky and unreliable. Until these Smart Hub manufacturers build reliable devices and networks, they are pretty much home toys that we use at our own risk.
I also feel this way about Samsung products in general and why I don’t invest in their other lines of products. Someone at Samsung needs to “wake up and smell the coffee” about these kinds of problems leaving very poor impressions upon the consumer.
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I am new to ST and home automation but I can honestly say THIS IS CRAP.
I am an industrial automation engineer by trade and if ANY of my control systems took outages like thus it would be my ass!
I am so disappointed with ST
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What do you pay for your industrial SCADA systems? What type of reoccurring OPEX do you have?
I know everyone likes to complain, but there is no subscription fees for ST. The initial cost doesn’t come close to covering the expenses of running the backend, and I’m honestly highly shocked there isn’t a monthly subscription already.
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Wow! Good luck with that! Yes, IMHO you have definitely gone too far. Love SmartThings but that’s way too much risk for me.
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It seems a lot of you don’t think about outages or potential for outages when you design your systems. A home is a somewhat permanent install prospect and we are tying it in with a third party or several third parties to run this.
Personally, I would LOVE for everything to run locally but I don’t think there is a system that can accomplish this, yet. I hope some day that will happen but it would be a very tough task to make it possible with the wide variety of products out there.
At a very minimum, you have to think about your Internet going down. Sure, you can have cellular backup, but that only works if the cell towers are up. I have seen regional Internet outages.
A few months after I got my hub, I was having my siding replaced. I had come home from the hospital only a couple weeks before that and I was really unable to walk and I had a PICC line installed in my arm and was not allowed to leave my house unless it was medically necessary. So, I relied a lot on Internet and cable TV. Well, the people installing my siding screwed up my cable line that connected me to television and the Internet. I called my carrier (Charter) and they said they could have someone out…two days from then. That is a lot of BluRay/DVD playing. A friend of mine who worked in the office even came out to see if he could help. He could not. He did, however, talk to the service manager and got me bumped to next day. But, it got me thinking about how I plan expansion.
Sure, automation is great when it works but what happens when it stops. We have cell phones with our entire address book safely stored in them but do any of us take the trouble to memorize important phone numbers, anymore? I know about 1 or 2. What happens if you are in trouble and your phone is not working? Who do you call?
It is very easier to just replace a bulb with a smart bulb than to replace the light switch with a smart switch. But, there are no on/off buttons on smart bulbs. If you cannot use automation, then unless you have a dumb switch to override it, that bulb stays on until something tells it to turn off. That is why my house is mostly smart switches and dimmers. I could move, today, and just have to change 3 smart bulbs (hall and two sconces–all with dumb switches as a last resort) and the new person living at my house could turn on and off everything with the switches on the wall. My mother has had to come over when I have been out of town and she is not computer literate. Most of you call it the “Wife Factor”. Last night, when I went to bed at my normal time, I just ran around the house and used the switches to turn off things that did not automatically turn off. No big deal.
There may come a day that Samsung or Amazon or Google decides to quit the automation business and shut their data centers down (it could happen–would not put money on it, but it could). You have all this equipment in your house. Are you going to grab a screw driver and start swapping back to dumb bulbs and switches? You put equipment in that you can manually override should the need ever arise. Luckily, this equipment is somewhat standards-based (Zigbee/Z-Wave) so if you replace it, chances are you can find something that will support it.
This stuff is a little different in that respect that normal technology. 3-5 years is the life expectancy of hardware and congrats if you are running anything longer. Because of this, operating systems can change. Updates get run. Applications get updated. They simply tell you the old stuff won’t run on the new hardware and you have no choice to upgrade. You cannot exactly tell a person that every 5 years they have to run around their house and change every switch, outlet, thermostat, and lock.
I hope above all that Samsung is starting to realize the importance of reliability. Microsoft use to get a lot of grief over updates that would break applications and computers. They came back with more rigorous testing. Microsoft is not the only OS. Apple has had a few blunders and so has Linux.
And then you have to worry about the bad things that can happen over the Internet. AT&T, a few years ago, suffered a huge DDOS (Distributed Denial of Service) against their DNS servers, which rendered a lot of web sites inaccessible. Google and NetFlix have also had this happen. There is a severe shortage of computer security experts out there and unemployment is actually negative in that sector of technology. So, something comes out that has never been seen before, and we learn from it. Look at Target’s credit card issues. Equifax. Home Depot. Ashley Madison. It is the radar detector/cop problem but in the 21st century.
I call this growing pains and SmartThings has been kind of quiet for a while as far as innovation and then we started hearing about newer things coming out this year, like a new app, a new hub with ADT, etc. I have a sneaking suspicion that these major outages have a lot to do with preparing these new technologies and the code writers are making mistakes. On average, for every 20,000 lines of code, there is a mistake, although, I suspect that these code writers are making over their quotas on that. A lot of times, code writing is outsourced and there are better code writers than the average.
I understand the frustration. I got my first Logitech Harmony Hub and could not really play with it last night because of this. I was upset. I opened up a support case (once it came up) and wrote them a scathing E-Mail. I highly doubt that complaining to each other on this forum is going to make the impact support cases would because they can be escalated and forwarded to management. Typically, a company will be more inclined to pull in support case data over forum entries when upper management is concerned. I did touch on the fact that if my data centers experienced monthly or even biweekly outages, like SmartThings, I would be out of a job. I was calm. I was respectful. I used to be an in-store tech for Best Buy before I got into my field. If you yelled and screamed at me, I turned you off in my head and was apt to do less for you. However, if you calmly pleaded your case, I would do everything I could to help you out. Now that a day has passed and after you can try and calm down, I would suggest you all send your grievances to support@smartthings.com and calmly convey that these outages are unacceptable. I am sure they will get forwarded to those in charge and pressure will come down from management to be more proactive in preventing these.
Sorry for the book but it took me a while to read this thread and it was very similar to the other threads I have seen from other outages, which I maintain are way too many.
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I don’t (justify it). Nothing security-wise or security related is on SmartThings. I have a separate, monitored, rock-solid security Sytems for those functions. For what is on SmartThings, there are somewhat inconvenient, manual ways to deal with these outages.
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As far as security goes, there are lots of purpose-built low-end systems which should be more reliable, but they all have many fewer features and device choices than smartthings. But I think many of the people in this Forum, including myself, do use a different security system than the original SmartThings. The new ADT/SmartThings security panel does offer some significant security improvements over the SmartThings standard hub, so it’s also worth considering just as a low cost security option.
As far as home automation, you will find a number of existing discussion threads on alternatives or add on systems.
There are a lot of choices out there, and different things work for different people. There’s no one best answer. The trick is to be honest with yourself about what your own highest priorities are (reliability, low price, support for complex rule sets, wide choice of devices, no monthly fee, whatever).
You can find a system that will match your top priority, but you can’t find a system that matches everything, so you need to know for yourself what matters most to your household. And what you are willing to give up to get that highest priority. People who want to write their own code will be looking for a very different system than someone who wants something they can “set and forget.” 
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Even with the unreliability, SmartThings is the platform of choice for many people because of the power and versatility it provides at one of the lowest costs on the market. That’s a valid reason to choose it if that kind of versatility is your top priority. You can make SmartThings do almost anything. It’s just that at present you can’t count on it to to do it every day. Whether that works for you or not, and what specific use cases it works for, is something only you can say.
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First issue Ive had in about a year (other than the odd 1-10 minute outage) - hope smartthings staff finds a fix soon.
Even with todays outage, the last year has been much more stable for me than the year before.
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I assume all these problems are being caused as part of their migration to combine Samsung connect / ARTIK and smartthings etc ? lot of behind the scenes server changes ?
i now realise i have way too much of my house running on a system which is not stable enough for me to feel comfortable leaving my family alone with it for more than a day or two or they all have to walk around in the dark and i will have garden lights on all day …
im sure you all know the feeling when you walk into a room and you look to see if the automatic lights will or wont turn on this time… and 3 hours later when they are still on when you set it for 5 minutes after motion stops…once in a while is ok, but these days its almost every day somethings down or not responding from the cloud.
i have a KNX system which i have managed to link to smartthings and thank god i kept it going as its the only part of the house system that works reliably.
I like the idea of Hubitat but i dont know if i can be bothered to start again and also dont know much about it
I don’t see why a V3 smartthings hub couldn’t move a lot more to run locally, and finally we do need a way to backup and restore should our hub die. it hasn’t happened to me yet but if i lost all my configs or the hub died then that would be the end of smartthings for me for sure.
the potential of this system is huge … but they need to take a whole new look at how you build in reliability and redundancy if they want to attract more than just the home hobbyist
This was written in the dark as i refuse to get up and turn on the light switch which is supposed to be on with motion… thanks smartthings…
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