I wanted this to work. I’m happy with all other things Samsung-related. Thrilled even. TV’s, phones, DVD, blueray, fridges, etc, etc… but I have to say this smart things hub is a big old POS. I’m sure tons of people here will come to smart things defense and to each his own. I’m going back to wink. It gave me some problems but not like this.
First I ran into countless problems with automations. On the phone and via e-mail with smart things engineers for hours over the course of a few weeks until they finally told me “sorry, you have too many automations” (42 were too many… then 30 were too many… and most recently 15 seems to be my limit) Then they changed their story to “sorry, you have too many devices” (I probably have 40) Then they changed the story to “you have too many automations with the same devices occuring in them”
Now for the past week my hub disconnects from the internet daily. None of the other 40 wifi connected devices in my house have issues. Yet daily I reboot my wireless router to cater to smart things. And sometimes it takes 10 minutes and sometimes it takes 7 hours for the hub to find the wifi. Now today I’ve wasted 3 hours trying to reconnect my hub. I’ve deleted it from my account and re-added it. I’ve reset it. Nothing. In the 3 hours I’ve wasted trying to get this hub to work, I could have been resetting all of my devices and moving them over to Wink. Wink may no longer be supported but smart things support has proven to be of no use.
Sorry you’re having issues. Just thought I’d add that the too many devices and automation feedback is BS. I’m around 120 devices and many automations and hardly have issues.
What I figured… especially since each time I deleted and reset my hub and started from scratch the “limit” was a different number. I meticulously documented everything and the engineers couldn’t help me. Each time they told me there was a limit whether it was devices or automations or devices within automations, I’d try deleting one variable out and adding it back but it wouldn’t let me. Something wonky with the hub maybe but I’m not purchasing another to test and see.
It also didn’t interface with my chamberlain garage door openers so I had to go purchase a motion sensor to overcome that. It said it interfaced with arlo cameras but I was never able to get it to work properly.
They also didn’t have any possibility for e-mail alerts, only push notifications. That was something that I used frequently with wink and am looking forward to having that capacity back. Especially with a sneaky 15yo daughter!
Maybe in a few years when Wink goes completely by the wayside I’ll give it another shot. But not for now
These are DIY platforms. You get minimal support but the bulk of the effort to troubleshoot is on you. You could have postponed buying a new gadget and get yourself a new ST hub. If you experienced the SAME kind of problems, then something in your home is killing your hub (interference?). If the new hub didn’t exhibit the same problem, then you’d know the hub was bad. Either way. The same problem can happen to any hubs. Is not that Wink is no longer supported, because it is, but rather they are not developing as fast as SmartThings. In the end, you are the one who is missing out. BTW, I have hundreds of devices and equally number of automations and the sky is still the limit of what SmartThings hub is capable.
I’m far from a newbie with this stuff but far from someone who’s going to screw around with programming. The stuff I was looking to do was pretty simple and almost each and every time I came up against a wall, ST would recommend a work-around. The straw that broke the camel’s back was when I tried to re-add my ST hub to my account and I was caught in limbo. I could access the hub and I could SEE all of my devices but my hub couldn’t control anything. If I’m going to waste the time re-adding all of my devices, why do it with ST again for a 3rd or 4th or 5th time (I forget) in 4 months when I can do add them all back to Wink and I know it works how I want without some work-arounds. I was using the Alexa app for automations since ST wouldn’t allow me to!
I have sent a note to the engineer on the ticket. I looked at your Excel spreadsheet and the total number automations shouldn’t be a problem. I think there might have been a limit to how many times you can use the same device in different automations, but I don’t see any activity on these tickets since July. For your future reference and anyone else who might stumble across this thread, please do not wipe/delete your hub unless support asks you to do it. You can end up in a bad state as far your devices go. If you deleted your hub from your account, you will need to factory reset all of the devices and re-pair them once again to get them back.
There was no activity because they basically told me we’re working on it… since May
Factory reset was basically where I was at. Hub wasn’t connecting wirelessly. I plugged it into ethernet and it worked briefly but then crapped out. I let it sit for 30 minutes and it was still disconnected while everything else in the house was fine. I tried simply re-adding it to my account and the account recognized a “new” hub even though it was there all along. At that point I got caught in limbo. I could connect to the hub with my phone and get it into inclusion/exclusion but that was it. The devices showed on my account but were probably linked to the “other” hub that no longer existed even though it was the same one. I tried and spent hours adding and re-adding and doing what support told me to no avail. Unfortunately
Looks like you are pretty much newbie at ST at least. I see that you’ve decided to return to Wink back in May, so you must be someone who “is going to screw around” with stuff on his own, and gets very frustrated then calls for help. If you have asked for help here, and not fight it on your own, I am sure your experience would have been different but just to remind you…
@HA_fanatic So how is this response helping the user experiencing issues and/or anyone else in the future? We all have different levels of knowledge and experience and it is responses like this that deter people from asking for help and eventually giving up.
If you can and want to help, then by all means, your help will always be appreciated. If you don’t, then let this guy rant and move on. Becoming defensive and calling out people is not the right response and i hope you recognize that.
@kieranlavin Sorry to hear about the issues you are having. I hope you can at least get to the bottom of the issues with a little more help from the community and/or Smarthings staff here. Cheers.
This is a community, not a place to file complaints. People come here to find solutions. If the OP wants to rant, he can contact support directly. But making statements like Wink is better and that he is not a newbie who screws things up, only make people like @HalD think like this
@HA_fanatic read his post again. He did contact support and he tried to get help; support gave him a ridiculous excuse of a solution.
But i see what you did you did there. Instead of acknowledging the fact that you should be of better support to someone in need that is rightfully frustrated, you quoted 4 words out of my whole post.
But, you are right. People do come here to find solutions. So how about you help this guy if you know how?
I did, read my first post. Unfortunately, he didn’t ask for help, nor did he explain the situation he put himself in by screwing with programming, which he said he didn’t.
I quoted a few words so you can get the notification that I replied to your post, and also to point out that I was responding to your idea to let the man rant.
Well, it’s not like this is the only person abandoning SmartThings. Lots of threads about hub updates causing issues (so far, I’ve had no issues other than a power allowance timer automation getting stopped). And a group of folks who went off to Hubitat for various reasons.
I’m not planning to go “all in” with automations. For one thing, my wife would hate it. And I’m keeping as much as I possibly can “local” so no annoying cloud delays.
My Nest outdoor cameras, Chamberlain garage doors and Honeywell thermostats have incomplete integrations to SmartThings, if they have any. So I’m living with what I get using those via their own apps rather than add cloud-dependent third party DTHes and Smart Apps.
I don’t know if the limit was increased since your ticket in July but the current limit is 250 behaviors per account. So for every action in a given rule a behavior will be created. The total number of actions taken not exceed 250 right now. I think the confusion came in because you had some number of “rules” that each had multiple actions, sometimes 10-12 actions per rule. So the limit is definitely not 30 rules. I don’t know what the current state of your account is, but if you do want to trouble shoot this , support is willing to help.
There is also a hard limit of 300 devices, at least on my account. When you go over 300 devices, a second page of devices gets created, 301, 302, etc…that rules (actions maybe?) are ignored. Took me a while to figure out why some “Things” worked perfectly one day then didn’t the next.
This is the 1st time I am hearing about a 250 Action limit. I’m pretty darn sure I am way past that!
Unfortunately, he didn’t ask for help, nor did he explain the situation he put himself in by screwing with programming, which he said he didn’t.