But it’s not though, is it @geko ? It’s another opportunity to bash ST tirelessly and I still cannot work out for the life of me to what end?
You lot keep wondering when I’m going to tire of ST, the only aspect of ST that’s getting tiring is this community and it’s continual negativity which is a shame because you along with several other members here are some of the greatest minds and contributors that BOTH ST and this community are lucky to have around.
I wish wish wish I could make ST perfect for everyone, I really do, seeing great people throw in the towel is definitely saddening.
Seeing this post makes me sad in a lot of ways. First, sorry. Second, we do not intentionally hide this fact. We do have a platform status page as well as a FAQ that points to that. Along with that in our “Hub” FAQ one of the first items is the FAQ that Geko points to.
For transparency’s sake. We do have some local execution right now, and we are growing that every day, but at the moment the best use of the hub requires internet.
We do not “erase” threads unless they have other current relevant threads. Since this thread is unique it will stay open, similar other threads that are unique.
I truly appreciate your recognition (not joking). Believe me, I’m not anti-ST, otherwise I would’t be here and wouldn’t waste my time updating my apps. And I’m not alone who feels that ST tries too hard to paint its system as plug-and-play, mass consumer-ready product, which it’s clearly not (yet).
It’s unfortunate that the FAQ is broken up into several sections. The main support page points to a FAQ that is separate from the hub-related FAQ section. This makes it confusing, particularly for a new-comer, imho. For comparison, Wink’s FAQ lists all questions in one place: Wink | FAQ There’s no ambiguity where to find information.
I appreciate the response. I had seen the FAQ before but didn’t make the connection to the fact that it’s as dependent on a server behind the scenes as it is.
Some of the processing that has previously existed in the cloud, like
for SmartApps and device types, now automatically occurs locally in the
Hub. Certain automations driven by ZigBee or Z-Wave devices will no
longer have to make that round trip from the device, to the Hub, up to
the cloud, and back.
It’s true that you clearly talk about the cloud in one of the FAQs. I missed that. That’s why I included due diligence in the title. I have that responsibility as a consumer. And it’s your prerogative on how you want to inform your potential customers about how it works.
That said, I don’t hate the product. The reason I’m watching this thread is that I’m up rebuilding the rules I lost when SmartRules upgraded ( I know that’s not an ST issue). I want the product to work reliably. Because I only have two choices, believe that It will get better if I wait long enough, or to lose faith and pitch it.
Of course! And we would never stop you from having a voice. In fact, we encourage it. [quote=“MCE_LLC, post:25, topic:36440”]
Because I only have two choices, believe that It will get better if I wait long enough, or to lose faith and pitch it.
[/quote]
Simple terms for a consumer and totally valid. I can tell you we are working very hard to make it more reliable. We appreciate and patience you can offer to us.
2 Likes
tgauchat
(ActionTiles.com co-founder Terry @ActionTiles; GitHub: @cosmicpuppy)
27
Perhaps I’m taking the above quote out of context, but I believe it is in the spirit of this Topic from @MCE_LLC to point out that the Status Page is, objectively, rarely an accurate reflection of the state of the platform for various reasons that there is apparently disagreement on (i.e., what defines a “partial” outage and what does not).
Live Logging was down (and still not 100% functional, I believe), and there was no update to the Status page.
In other cases, Status updates do not post until several long hours after a significant problem is quite evident from Forum posts.
In this sense, the Status Page (particularly its “History” of outages) does not reflect the real level of instability of the Platform, and this can be misleading to potential Customers… no?
###TL;DR;
The “Platform Status” is certain far from “stable” at the moment and for the past few days … yet…
Agreed, no excuses, I am however trying to rectify this.
5 Likes
tgauchat
(ActionTiles.com co-founder Terry @ActionTiles; GitHub: @cosmicpuppy)
29
Progress in this area would be tremendously appreciated, Tim.
The Status Page is one of the gems of SmartThings as a company and platform, in that it implies a commitment to transparency. It is also extremely convenient – it has an self-subscribe function and RSS Feed… great stuff!
When something isn’t working, I cannot emphasize enough the value of having a single quick place to check if it is already a known and acknowledged issue, so that I don’t have to debug and/or visit the Forum to find a lot of redundant and unacknowledged posts. The email and RSS feeds also put me on alert that certain of my automations or connections may not be working (or SmartTiles may not be working for our users!) and I can adjust my behavior or responses to users accordingly.
IMHO, it is much more comforting to see SmartThings is “ahead of the issue” … rather than appearing to be oblivious of a problem in progress, or worse, trying to hide the problem by implying it is isolated at not a genuine “outage”.
Well … I know you get the point. Thanks!
##Update:
Looks like some actual Status Updates today (Jan 20, 2016) … now, that’s great responsiveness! @slagle rocks!
I agree with this, it says operational, but I am unable to do anything at the moment with lighting. I honestly cant believe that a monitored security service is being sold with this. on any given day, I have at least 1 contact sensor that doesn’t read correctly. imagine if I paid for this, and it went off constantly. where I live, you get one free false alarm from the county police, after that, its like 100 dollars a pop after that.
as an early adopter to most of this technology, I give it all some latitude in terms of operational stability. but I also feel as time goes on, this all should mature, and have less issues. but the opposite has been happening. as things are added, and the user base scales up, there are problems more often.
I am probably a more than average user, and have invested several thousand dollars on all of this stuff, and when it doesn’t work, I have to hear the wife jabber on about how much it all costs and doesn’t work. its pretty much a requirement to be very technical to even integrate all of this together. joe schmoo isn’t going to walk into best buy and buy a ST system, some hue bulbs, and an echo and be able to plug it all in and make it work without some serious frustration. its pretty much like this should still be marketed to the hobbyist (like the maker forums).
Is it that hard to understand that when consumers of a product have issues with the functionality of that product, they may express that displeasure so that the company rectifies the situation?
What is it that you want? Everyone that has problems to be quiet about it? What would that solve?
[quote=“MCE_LLC, post:1, topic:36440”]
all you need
[/quote]you don’t need servers, and you don’t pay for a service. All you need is a hub and the app.
They need the servers to deliver the experience to you.
@MCE_LLC
I can understand where you are coming from. I had Vera for about 8 years, and when ST came out, it looked pretty promising to bridge the gap with the capability to work with more than just one protocol (i.e. z-wave only with Vera). I can’t exactly remember my scenario, but I too was looking for ST to work off-line, and I do remember having to dig a little to find out if it was dependent on the cloud.
At the time V2 had come out, and it looked promising to work off-line, although ST did state that with limited capability. I was hoping for a little bit more transparency, but oh well.
I do have to say that being a Vera member for so long, that the ST platform has huge potential. I don’t know if it is because it is a “new” product or what, but the community response is amazing. Vera has a good community also, but the ST community is a lot more active. For the price you pay for the hub, I think it’s a great value. I have zigbee,z-wave, and wireless devices (over 50) in my home, and for the most part they work. Not too shabby for $99, especially since on the Vera side, in 8 years I went through 2 hub versions of their own at over $300 a piece.
I want to thank ST and the community for launching a multi-protocol HA device. I know everything isn’t perfect, but it isn’t easy making all this technology work together. As time goes on, I hope ST continues to improve the product.
My husband and I are both software engineers. We did our due diligence before buying into this system, but apparently not enough because we were under the impression that much more was done locally than is actually the case. If we, as technical people ourselves, had such a tough time figuring that out until we were knee deep in it already, I can only imagine how hard it would be for the average consumer.
Between this and the recent instability issues, I am having a hard time convincing him that we should stick with this solution at all, let alone add any more devices to it.
I knew this device would be connecting to Smartthing servers for updates, smartphone integration, etc. Had I known that my lights, alarms, thermostats, etc will only work over the Internet ANNNND if Smartthings servers were in a good mood I never would have purchased product and stuck with olde timey timers and a programmable thermostat. I don’t want my money back, I just want this device/service to be what a lot of us thought it would be. Why there cannot be some emergency LOCAL protocols that run your schedule/thermostat in the event that Smartthings crashes or your Internet drops is beyond me.
I feel bad for the people who purchased this product for use as a home alarm system, fire/safety, etc. You’re fucked.
So ST counts their compatible devices as they count developers. I’ve heard many saying ST is compatible with “more than 200 devices”. Well the officially supported number of devices is 178. Add the 18 beta devices and that to me, makes it 196. “More than 200” might include community based devices that are not officially supported. Ooops, no mention of that! So I guess 20,000 developers are just as real as over 200 devices!
