Maybe soaking your hub in a mild solution of methamphetamine. (c;
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Not comparing to a public utility - just providing a reference. As to free service I disagree. Last time I checked I paid for the hub and other devices, the service is included in that. This is a business model not a free community.
And even if it was free, there is a point that makes it unusable. 95% is unusable, 99% barely but possible acceptable. Right now its definitely below 99% for me in the few months I had it. That makes it nothing but a toy. I cannot rely on it for anything. Not for presence, not to turn my 3 HVACs into away mode, not to turn the lights reliably on or off, not to shut down Sonos when we all leave, ā¦ you get the pricture.
I have not given up on it and if things improve I will be the first to praise improvements. Right now I am just as frustrated as many others.
There is a lot of competition getting released right now and over the next months. Will be interesting if that changes the service levels.
All I have to say is that overall, I donāt have any issues. Though that being all said, there are two things that are essential for SmartThings to make a statement on to the communityā¦
- Efforts to make service more reliable.
- Efforts in making the system more responsive.
Whether its āsecurity system capableā or not, this is still a young technology, and with growth comes growing pains. Lucky for me this is just āfunā though I am increasingly hoping to start using it as a security system, knowing that it will have its āquirksā. This is where I am hoping that Samsung will start providing more resources to SmartThings, in infrastructure. They have the purchasing power, money, status, etc to hopefully help with all of that.
Truth be said, Iād bay 2.99-3.99/mo for higher quality serviceā¦ with a level of SLAā¦
ha drug I meant debug
Yes, the cost of the āfreeā service is factored into the price of the āthingsā, but ST does not require you to purchase anything to use their free mobile app and their cloud service. Itās quite a generous offer if you think about it.
I just suggest that people should set their expectations right. Iām also frustrated when things donāt work and I donāt hesitate contacting tech support. We all want it to be more reliable and so does SmartThings staff. But itās not a fault-tolerant, utility-grade system and it will probably never be. SmartThings does not make any claims as to reliability of their service. Read the Terms of Use.
Risk of Loss; Insurance. YOU ACKNOWLEDGE AND AGREE THAT YOUR USE OF THE SERVICES (INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, USING THE SERVICES TO SECURE OR OTHERWISE CONTROL ACCESS TO ANY REAL OR PERSONAL PROPERTY) IS SOLELY AT YOUR OWN RISK, AND THAT YOU ACCEPT RESPONSIBILITY FOR ALL LOSSES, DAMAGES AND EXPENSES ARISING OUT OF SUCH USE.
Iāve had ongoing problems with my GE/Jasco outlets and switches. They just stop responding to commands, both from SmartApps and when manually toggled from the ST app. Downloaded the ātestā firmware thatās supposed to fix this issue and itās still happening.
How did you download the test firmware for these devices. That is new to me (SMILE)
Yeah, Iām finding it completely unreliable. It worked well when I first bought it but then it stopped controlling my WeMo devices (2 appliance modules and a wall switch) even though the native WeMo app worked perfectly.
I contacted support and they pushed an updated firmware to my hub which seemed to fix the issue, but now itās backā¦ the SmartThings app constantly reports incorrect state for my HUE lights and my WeMo devices. The automated timers often result in one HUE light going on while the other stays off and in the app it thinks both are turned on. The HUE native app (as well as other apps designed for HUE) correctly report the state of the lights.
Iāve reported this latest issue to SmartThings and itās been 8 days now without another word from them.
Between the flakiness, the fact that they were bought by Samsung and the fact that they donāt seem to have a clue why their platform is so flakey, Iām done with this. What I have in place now I am controlling without the SmartThings app, simply using native apps.
SmartThings basically has until something better comes along (Appleās HomeKit, perhaps?) to get this thing working or Iāll be bailing from the platform. Certainly, Iām not spending one penny more on their products until they can demonstrate they can remain continuously stable for a minimum of 6 months.
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Unfortunately I have to agree with the majority here and say that overall reliability of the platform has taken a hit over the last several weeks. My wife is extremely patient with my hobby knowing that itās a true passion of mine and it keeps me out of trouble. Doesnāt hurt that I donāt pay for any of the equipment since my company distributes a lot of the various products I use.
Iām a bit concerned that the pain of this thread is not seeing any response from the ST team. Are they speechless or perhaps theyāre going to roll out an update that will kick us in the teeth and shut us all up! I hope the latter!
Not sure where or what Samsung has planned for this platform but I know for a fact there is a ton of competition coming this year so letās hope ST can keep pace and keep their loyal fans satisfied. I for one am sticking it out for now because I believe in the people that brought ST to us, even if Iām a little deflated by the reliability of it.
Maybe Iām the only one that doesnāt know how to troubleshoot this, but yesterday on the goodbye action it failed to turn off one of the lights thatās clearly in the list. Can we get a notification or something that it at least tried?
I agree with you that ST reliability is very questionable. I plan to move to another platform that provides for local processing along with cloud connectivity.
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I have nothing but kudos for the support staff, but Iāve had so many problems that I just gave up getting in touch with them.
Things DO seem to be worse in the past few weeks.
- in the last month or so my hub has started reseting the mode to the wrong one, so that naturally puts everything else out of kilter. I canāt tell if itās random or a very brief power outage or surge (the hub isnāt on a ups, but is on a power surge bar; however nothing else in the house reflects a power outage)
2a) 60% of the time the sensors are right on, 40% of the time the latency makes them unusableālike when Iām already on the way back from the bathroom in the middle of the night;
2b) some sensors just donāt register events about 50% of the time
2c) sometimes (20% of the time) lights associated with those sensors donāt go off after the programmed time (This usually happens early in the morning when the mode might be changing, and Iāve wondered sometimes whether thatās whatās causing it.)
Other things that bother me:
I believe the api for the Nest thermostat has been available for about year. Why no official app? Bless the programmers whoāve built theirs, but Iāve never gotten them to properly work.
It seems to me weāve had promises of a Danalock app for nearly a yearā¦
And the August Smartlock; it seems there was a blog post eight months ago that said that the team was working with August. I know itās only started shipping, but that shouldnāt be when the clock startsā¦
And, since Iām an Android user, I still donāt get why there isnāt a proper tablet UI
And finally, the on-line connection should be more like an app, with the ability to turn things on and off. This was part of the original selling text of Smartthings, and though itās somewhat better now, itās not at all intuitive, much more like something for a developer.
There, Iāve gotten 9 months of irritation off my chest.
I agree, unless it becomes more reliable (especially presence sensing using android mobiles) I will stop using it soon. Only reason Iām still on board is that the Samsung acquisition has brought me hope. Iāve had this for almost a year, and no Nest support, no Foscam support (both were āin betaā when I bought the product but I canāt even get them to work with supports help), and the app has gotten worse while competitors have gotten even better. Whatās going on, guys - focusing on funding and sales, not the product and software development? Or is the development just all behind the scenes and no new support or features? Either way, bring in more official device support and improve reliability soon or nobody will care if Samsung bought you or not when they see how far behind your software has gotten.
And itās not just the app and device integrations. It seems no one is paying attention to public app submissions (thought it was just me, but others have complained). I donāt know what theyāre working, but based on what is seemingly being ignored, my expectations are high.
I would point you to this and other threads about Android presence:
In short, it isnāt the SmartThings app in all (most) cases. I think there are things the devices are doing.
To the other points here, we are just now recovering from the hiring āfreezeā and general focused attention on the due diligence etc that goes along with large deals like the Samsung acquisition. We are growing. We have added nearly 10 people in the past month. 5 new people (4 engineers) have started this week and we have offers to several more. We could double our engineering team and not even break stride with the number of features and fixes we have ahead of us.
We are working on a lot of things. Many of them are not on peopleās radar but that doesnāt mean we are ignoring the improvements we need to make to core functionality and Labs integrations. Those are underway too.
On the SmartApp and device type submissions, we are approving as many as 10 in the next 5 days with a steady stream from there on. In short, we appreciate your patience.
Iām not sure I agree with your conclusion. There is an acknowledged SmartThings bug with āGeofence Delayā not working. Plus, people are reporting geofence issues with SmartThings but NOT with Life360. Yet not everyone wants or can use Life360 as a workaround.
Regardless of the cause, this is a critical need for home automation, so it should be in SmartThings best interest to get ahead of it.
This has become increasingly annoying to me as well.
Once every couple of months, SmartThings doesnāt sense that all iPhones have left and doesnāt perform āGoodbye.ā
There have been a couple of recent issues where time-based events failed to happen.
SmartThings intermittently doesnāt reflect the status of my garage door. I contacted support thinking that my multi-sensor was failing; they told me this was a known issue.
I have an app that monitors a door lock to turn off a security camera if we go outside. This works ~85% of the time for some reason.
I really hope that things improve. I bought a couple of GE Zigbee bulbs for my hallway and want to automate them using a motion sensor but Iām concerned it wonāt work or that the lag will make it unusable.
I have to agree. Iām around the 25 device mark and reliability is really starting to be bothersome.
Not so much for me, because I understand it takes time, but my wife is getting more and more annoyed. When we get to the house and presence sensors are not recognized until 3 minutes after - so we still have to enter key code to unlock the door. Then the door sensor doesnt recognize as being open until we are already in the house for several minutes. She always looks at me and says āWeād all be dead by now if that was an intruderā. Itās a joke, but her concerns are grounded.
Iād be lying if I said I havent been looking at Vera, but my god their mobile apps are hideous. The Revolve hub looks nice - with a good mobile app from the looks of it.
I love SmartThings for several reasons, but I can only make excuses for performance for so long.