SmartThings recent failures in stability and support

General Discussion
21

Thanks for your story, Mr B; and my best wishes for the ongoing health of your child.

It’s true that SmartThings’s Terms of Use contains warnings against using the product for medical purposes … the “Medicine Reminder” SmartApp should not exist in the Marketplace for this reason, but I doubt ST will do it (@slagle?).

Where possible, SmartThings has worked to ensure message delivery and control reliability, but many factors can impact this, including electromagnetic interference, solar flares, wireless and cellular connectivity, and the natural complexity of software instructions that might be in direct conflict caused by SmartApps or by end users. These and other issues can cause commands to not be delivered, to be delivered repeatedly, or to be delivered in rapid succession. Therefore, do not use SmartThings to control any device that may have an impact on health, safety, security, property, or financial interests, or where the device is sensitive and could be damaged by power cycling or power surges.

So we can agree that SmartThings doesn’t have “medical equipment” level of reliability and never will.

But what about “consumer electronics” or “consumer appliance” level of reliability?

How would consumers react if their Tivo/DVR missed recording Desperate Housewives once every 10 episodes? If their Samsung microwave oven changed a 1 minute cooking time into 10 minutes randomly every 30 uses? If their Samsung fridge forgot it’s set temperatures and the owner needed to set them again, sometime randomly every 2 months? If their Samsung washing machine or dishwasher failed mid-cycle?

Samsung SmartThings absolutely has the goal of near-appliance level of reliability. Whether or not this is possible by this vendor and this product is unknown. Subject to the slow pace of improvement, it may be quite a long time…

It is a complex problem, but not rocket science :rocket:. Will some competitor reach the Moon … or Mars, before SmartThings. Competitors have the opportunity to learn from ST’s missteps. ST has a big head start over many companies. Too bad that Customers really aren’t interested in the race … just the finish-line.

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22

The discrepancy between the terms of use and marketing is comical.

A Smarter, More Affordable Way to Secure Your Home

I’m sure in this age of litigation, regardless of how reliable the platform is, they’d have to include such verbiage. Whoever can produce that “appliance” level of reliability has got a good chance of succeeding in this space. At the moment, I think the novelty of home automation is likely permitting reliability problems to largely go unpunished, but I think that time is going to come to an end soon, and reliability is going to be foundational, as it is with appliances.

I am sure this new direction of local processing in hub v2 is born out of improving reliability since a good proportion of customer side issues are probably non-local in nature. There are so many failure points between SmartThings code on the hub to SmartThings code in the “cloud”. Local execution probably eliminates a massive proportion of them. I am still hopeful that this yields improvements eventually.

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23

I’m not laughing, but I agree. :disappointed:

Samsung / SmartThings’s marketing department has a mandate that they are not permitted to adjust based on reality. It’s a strategy that has some risks, but I’m not surprised either. Many (maybe, most?) companies survive “over-hyping” and “over-promising”. I don’t like those companies, but that’s just business.

24

This is an interesting comparison in that, for me, Smartthings has been more reliable than my Comcast/Xfinity DVR. It does skip recording episodes now and then.

For me, it is also somewhat a factor of expectations. I don’t expect an open platform based on a $99 hub to be perfect, open, and integrate flawlessy with so many products. There are many areas I’d like to see improved, but the hub (and corresponding cloud service) is a small piece of where my HA money has gone yet it has the highest demands put upon it. I’m curious about this model and how long it can last before other ways to monetize it come into play to help support the platform.

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25

True, but not when in comes to medical devices. FDA has strict regulations for device manufacturers who claim that their device can be used for medical applications, even as simple as a “medication reminder”, see Product Classification

Although a medication reminder device is exempt from FDA filing, it’s still subject to requirements concerning records (820.180) and complaint files (820.198).

Specifically,

(a) Each manufacturer shall maintain complaint files. Each manufacturer shall establish and maintain procedures for receiving, reviewing, and evaluating complaints by a formally designated unit. Such procedures shall ensure that:
(1) All complaints are processed in a uniform and timely manner;
(2) Oral complaints are documented upon receipt; and
(3) Complaints are evaluated to determine whether the complaint represents an event which is required to be reported to FDA under part 803 of this chapter, Medical Device Reporting.

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26

Interesting information… Well… perhaps someone will file the appropriate complaints and help improve the accuracy of materials regarding SmartThings’s capabilities.

I don’t have a stake in this area because I don’t use SmartThings for that purpose.

27

You make a very good point here. I am not entirely sure how the smartthings model is going to work out. As you said, we buy a $99 hub from ST once and then expect support from them for eternity there after. This does not seem like something that is going to work out in the long term. This is one of the reasons I generally have not emailed support to deal with my (many) issues. I bought my hub and a few sensors from ST almost 2 years ago, and haven’t bought anything from them since - I don’t think they owe me any support any more. I almost wish this was a subscription service - say $8 a month like Netflix. That way I could at least have righteous indignation when things fail and ST would have a much higher motivation to make things reliable. As it is, once you have bought a hub and some sensors, ST as a corporate entity (obviously not the employees who post here) have little incentive to make things work well.

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28

You’re probably correct … though some folks think that in sufficient quantities (millions of units sold), even a low margin on a $99 hub could sustain the SmartThings division of Samsung.

But join in other speculation discussion…

29

@Ben I wish I could believe you in this area of your note to your loyal and early adopters that have invested heavily in both a V1 and now a V2 hub along with numerous ST branded devices.

I have recently reported two such tickets on your cloud platform outages that I confirmed through extensive problem solving at home before I sent a Help ticket off to Support@SmartThings.com (Ref #164278 on 12/5 and #163418 on 12/2). I have no expectation that these will ever be answered (as in previous email requests), even if @slagle offers to review them after reading this post.

When we do send email, since the CHAT has been OFFLINE for months, all we get back in the robotic response stating:

Hi ,

This email is to notify you that we have created a support ticket for your request. We’re very sorry but we may be a bit slower than usual getting back to you. We have a number of new and old users alike that have contacted us with questions. Between our new Hub, new mobile experience, and the tremendous excitement around what SmartThings is doing, we have a sizable backlog of requests. Our support team will do our best to get back to you as soon as possible but we humbly ask for your patience. If you have anything else you’d like to tell us, you can reply to this email. Otherwise, we’ll be in touch as soon as we’re able.

Warm regards,
The SmartThings Team

I have decided to write the editorial management & staff at PC Magazine and other IT magazines with my objective observations, many of these posts, and ask them to look into the growing issues that are plaguing SmartThings/Samsung. They recently reviewed your hardware favorably but obviously did not look further into platform reliability, integration, support and customer satisfaction. If they do, it will be an interesting read.

The pen is mightier than unkept promises…

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I’m super interested in reading reviews that take a genuine deeper dive into the product and research this forum, and engage some experts who can do stress testing and analysis, etc. …

In other words, if you receive any response, let me know.

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Sure will… If many more of us also [report these troublesome areas](mailto: Dan_Costa@pcmag.com), it might go along way for them to dedicate some resources to this…

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32

It’s more my recent instability issues were magnified in November. With the exception of the last two nights (outages), the platform went back to stability (for me) in December. November was insane.

My V1 experience certainly wasn’t five 9s of up-time, but a lot better than v2, and my problems with v2 peaked in November.

So for me, it was more of a comparison of the volume of issues I’ve had from month to month.

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33

I don’t “do” PC magazine as I’ve always been a Mac guy. Do you know if SmartThings is one of their advertisers?

34

We are also totally a Mac household with backend storage and servers based on favors of Unix. I only mention PC Magazine as one such area to write because they have reviewed SmartThings and have a large readership for potential new HA purchasers. Writing the editor and commenting on the review helps people get real feedback from early adopters of HA and SmartThings. Amazon is another avenue if you have purchased your hub from them.

SmartThings was recently reviewed by PC Magazine on Nov 9th, 2015 and received 4.5 stars and Editors Choice [cough cough]…

  • Pros: Works with multiple wireless protocols. Easy to install. Excellent user tips and advice.
  • Cons: Requires a wired Ethernet connection. Live video is laggy.
  • BOTTOM LINE: With support for many Z-Wave, Zigbee, and Wi-Fi devices, the Samsung SmartThings Hub is one of the most versatile home automation hubs around.

I am confident that the PC Magazine’s product analysts briefly tested turning on/off a Z-Wave light bulb and then put the hub back in the box and wrote this shallow review. For example:

Samsung acquired SmartThings last year, and the new Samsung SmartThings Hub ($99) offers several improvements over the original model, including a more powerful processor with video camera support, a battery backup, and USB and Bluetooth connectivity. It’s a breeze to install and lets you control more devices from your smartphone than any other hub, making it our new Editors’ Choice.

This paragraph statement above shows that PC Magazine did not fully test the hub, for example, what the SmartThings USB ports do (which is nothing) and that the battery backup actually does not allow one to remotely reboot an OffLine hub (like we experiences this week with the firmware corruption). I am not sure where PC Magazine got Bluetooth connectivity and are they kidding about the SmartThings video camera support??

Makes you wonder about the depth and accuracy of PC Magazine’s reviews?

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35

There’s a Bluetooth radio in the V2 hub, but it is not currently enabled.

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36

Having USB ports & bluetooth capabilities and not having any plans to activate them in my lifetime remind me of the saying:

“And if a tree falls in the woods and no one is there, does it make a sound?”