If I have a scene that turns off 20 devices, and that scene is in 2 automations, does that count as 2, 20, 40 or 60 behaviors?
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Taken at one time? Or defined as available to execute?
That is, can I create multiple automations which if added all together would end up being 251 actions as long as I don’t try to execute more than 250 at once?
Or can I not create a new automation if that would put me over the 250 action limit?
Or can I create a new automation that would put me over the 250 action limit but it would just be ignored?
And what about recurring actions? If someone has five light switches and they poll each one every five minutes, That’s probably never more then 10 or 15 concurrent actions. But it’s 60 actions every hour, and 1,440 scheduled actions every day.
Answered by @Brad_ST below: The limit applies to the creation of rules through the “custom automation“ feature in the new V3 app.
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1 scene = 1 behavior
Custom automations are different
every action in a custom rule creates a behavior
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I didn’t mean to cause such a stir and ellicit such strong reactions and moods.
To each his own. Everyone is here because they have smartthings and they’re looking to help or improve or get help. That’s great and I’m sure it’s a great community. Someone (me) potentially seen as attacking the devices or app or system and community; I’d probably get defensive about something I was passionate about as well. Again, to each his own. I got in on wink back around 2013 and dealt with a lot of issues over the years and on at least 3 occassions was ready to throw it out when support wasn’t able to help me fix a problem.
I considered and did some reseach back in the spring and liked what I saw and heard about smartthings. Programming and coding and “hacking” the app or devices or hub were never of much interest to me. I wanted to use my current devices with a new hub so I dove in. What I have isn’t terribly complicated… 3 Osram (I think) color A60 bulbs, 3 GE A60 bulbs, 14 GE BR30 bulbs, 4 GE PAR30 bulbs, 5 gocontrol door sensors, 3 gocontrol motion sensors, 2 toggle leviton switches, 1 leviton dimmer, 5 leviton outlets, and 1 smartthings motion sensor. With Wink I was able to link it to two Chamberlain door openers and a Honeywell thermostat. It didn’t integrate with two Wemo outlets I have from WAY back or Yeelink light strips I have. Smartthings worked with Wemo and Honeywell but not Yeelink or Chamberlain. Pros and cons. What finally pushed me in the direction of smartthings was when my 15yo step daughter invited a boy into the house and into her room while we were sleeping. I needed a siren to go off if doors were opened afterhours and there didn’t appear to be anything that worked with Wink so I went out and got a smartthings hub and took the leap.
As HA_fanatic pointed out, I posted here (Network or server error when doing custom automations) to no avail. I reached out to support via e-mail as well as phone calls and there was a lengthy ongoing conversation. I have 22 e-mails saved, there may have been more I didn’t save. There was no real resolution. I found workarounds either using Alexa or just dealing with not being able to do what I wanted. Nothing complicated, stuff like having lights around the house go on at sunset, a light upstairs near the bedrooms go on when it saw motion overnight, turning on lights in a garage or front porch after dark when a door is opened, etc. I’ll get to my total numbers in a few minutes…
@HA_fanatic in terms of not being right making @HalD nervous, this forum shouldn’t just be looked at with rose colored glasses. Take the good and the bad and, if there are bad experiences, I’m sure he and others would want to hear the issues. As a consumer, if I’m researching a product, I always read the 1-star reviews and take them with a grain of salt. Again, to each his own but both good and bad stories should be shared.
@jody.albritton - in terms of limits being increased since the ticket in July, I had tried to add automations as late as last week so any updates had not helped my situation. Going by the 250 behaviors and your explanation of what a behavior is, here’s my count (correct me if I’m wrong in my count here) as of this week
Custom Automation #1 - Catwalk nightlight
- If every day between sunset and sunrise
- Catwalk motion detects motion
- Turn on center catwalk, 1% (I’m assuming the action of turning the light on and setting it to 1% are one behavior? Or is this two; 1. turning it on and 2. setting the brightness?)
Custom Automation #2 - Garage Door/Lights
4. If every day between sunset and sunrise
5. Garage door opens
6. Turn on garage1, 1%
7. Turn on garage2, 1%
8. Turn on driveway1, 1%
9. Turn on driveway2, 1%
Custom Automation #3 - Wakeup1
10. Weekdays at 3AM
11. Turn on garage1, 1%
12. Turn on garage 2, 1%
13. Turn on driveway1, 1%
14. Turn on driveway2, 1%
15. Turn on catwalk over master, 1%
16. Turn on kitchen over corner, 1%
17. Turn on garage outlet
Custom Automation #4 - Wakeup4
18. Weekdays at 3:40AM
19. Turn off kitchen over garbage
20. Turn off garage1
21. Turn off garage2
22. Turn off driveway1
23. Turn off driveway2
24. Turn off catwalk over master
25. Turn off kitchen over corner
26. Turn off kitchen over sink
27. Turn off kitchen over fridge
28. Turn off garage outlet
Custom Automation #5 - Back Deck ON
29. If every day between sunset and sunrise
30. Rear slider opens
31. Turn on back deck, 100%
Custom Automation #6 - Front Door Ring
32. If every day between sunset and sunrise
33. Pennsylvania ring is pushed
34. Turn on catwalk over girls, 100%
35. Turn on porch over slider, 100%
36. Turn on catwalk over master, 1%
37. Turn on garage outlet
38. Turn on driveway1, 100%
39. Turn on driveway2, 100%
40. Turn on garage entry, 1%
41. Turn on porch over entry, 100%
42. Turn on center catwalk, 100%
43. Turn on porch over corner, 100%
44. Turn on porch over desk, 100%
45. Turn on laundry, 1%
Custom Automation #7 - Doors Overnight
46. If every day between 11PM - 7AM
47. Front entry opens OR
48. Dining slider opens OR
49. Rear slider opens OR
50. Garage door opens
51. Notify members
So, accordingly, I would say I had 51 behaviors, maybe 50 is the limit? Even if we said that there was another behavior for changing the brightness and we doubled my number, I’d be at 102. If we again added more behaviors because I have some set to go off after 5 or 10 minutes (but not all), I’d be at 153. Still far under that limit of 250.
jody.albritton thanks for the offer to help and thanks for the feedback. Thanks all for the constructive criticism. I still have the smartthings hub I’m not ready to smash it. Maybe I’ll be back in a year or two, I don’t know.
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Jody,
What about Smart Lighting automations? Is each rule considered a behavior? or does each action in each one count as a behavior?
My system is probably pushing this limit already.
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Sounds like we need some type of account dashboard to let us know how close we are to each of these system limitations so we can plan accordingly.
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The limit is 250 which your location last hit a couple weeks ago. So if you were having trouble in the past couple weeks when adding automations, it would have been something else.
Smart Lighting is different and doesn’t count towards the limit. Only scenes and custom automations do.
Here is an example as I understand it -
Say you have a scene and a custom automation:
Scene #1 Turn on lights A, B at sunset
Custom automation #1 Turn on lights A,B and set level to 100%
The total number of “behaviors” would be 4 as each device counts as 1.
- Scene #1 counts as two (1 for each light turning on)
- Custom automation #1 counts as two (1 for each light even though there are two actions for each of the two lights - on and set level)
Correction - A Custom automation that turns on and sets the dimming % of a single device counts as 1 behavior, not two.
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well, as I understand it you guys are basically killing ST for the power user. I’ve currently got about 190 devices connected to ST. I have a WebCore automation that performs different actions depending on which mode just recently changed. My good night mode change part of that piston has over 50 “behaviors”, and that’s just for one mode.
I guess I’ll start exploring my options elsewhere.
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I agree that these arbitrary limits are very concerning.
Is it a cost issue? Then sell premium subscriptions.
Is the limit per Location? Then make multi-/cross-Location management easier.
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This could be the opening volley to such a thing.
When ‘custom automations’ is mentioned in the context of a limit on behaviours, are we talking specifically about the ‘Custom Automations’ created in the SmartThings app? Only just about any SmartApp that isn’t an official SmartThings product could be considered as a ‘custom automation’ in a broader sense.
I’m rather assuming the one app as I can’t get my head around where you’d get a number from otherwise, but if any heavy webCoRE users are thinking otherwise they might be having kittens.
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Are there debug errors in live logging informing users when a limit was reached?
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See, if you didn’t cause such strong reactions, we would have never found out about your mis-“behaviors”. Your post would have gone unnoticed, like many others who said “goodbye” without putting up a fight.
Let the “limits and guardrails” discussion continue on its own topic.
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I wonder if anything done by WebCore is counted towards the limit.
The scenes and custom automations are all stored with your SmartThings account. WebCore actions would not be.
Stated as someone who doesn’t use WebCore…
Correct. This is specifically “Custom automation” as found in the new app when tapping the + symbol and then “Add automation”.
No, as specified above, this applies to “Custom automations” added in the new app which don’t surface in live logging in the IDE.
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Doesn’t sound like it. Only scenes and the custom automation creator in the new app.
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No. They are not.
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[quote]The limit is 250 which your location last hit a couple weeks ago…
[/quote]
I might have initially HIT this limit SOMEHOW a couple of weeks ago (I say somehow because there were maybe another 7 or 8 automations that I might have had a couple of weeks ago that I decided to delete in the past couple of weeks) as I was building things back up HOWEVER, what I posted was where I was at when the hub crashed over the weekend. As late as last week in the state that I posted with the number of behaviors I posted (~50) I tried to add an automation and got an error. I tried to modify an existing automation and got an error. I would find it very hard to believe that even with the maximum number of automations that I was ever able to hit before getting errors, it wasn’t anywhere close to 250 behaviors. But… that’s a moot point anyway
How old is your hub? Could it be simply a matter of degraded electronics - like what happens to all electronics over time?
Don’t get me wrong, there are issues with the software and hardware at times, but sometimes it can just be that with the cheap manufacturing processes all electronic companies use, the things have a fairly high rate of failure at all ages. I cannot count the number of cables and pieces of memory I’ve swapped out over the years…
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