Sudden "TooManyRequestError" on Node-RED integration (Personal Access Token)

SmartApps & Automations
1

Hi everyone,

I have been using the SmartThings integration in Node-RED via Personal Access Tokens since 2024. I have several advanced automation flows that rely on status updates called via inject nodes: most of the flows need just a couple of refreshes per minute, but in some cases I need to poll every 1s to have a functional automation

Everything has been working flawlessly for years, but a couple of days ago my automations stopped working. After some debugging via direct API HTTP requests, I found out I am now constantly hitting the TooManyRequestError (“attempt 14 limit 10”).

I have a few questions for the community:

  1. Is this a recent enforcement? Did SmartThings drastically tighten the rate limits or the sliding window duration in the last few days? It’s strange because my traffic patterns haven’t changed at all.

  2. Is there a paid tier or an official way to increase these limits? I wouldn’t mind paying for a developer account or higher thresholds if that option exists.

  3. If not, is migrating to a local solution like Home Assistant the only definitive way out for sub-minute or near real-time automation needs?

Thanks in advance for any insights!

2

There was talk of tighter rate limits when they switched to 24 hour PATS at the beginning of last year. It was rather vague as to whether this was happening immediately and if it applied to existing long life PATs.

It certainly could be a recent enforcement, but equally it could be unintentional. We do seem to have some quirky cloud behaviour reported of late.

Not that I am aware of, and certainly not with PATs which aren’t really intended for long term use.

Unless you are creating events in response to manual actions (e.g. repeatedly pressing a button), SmartThings devices aren’t really meant to generate more than one event per minute. There certainly shouldn’t be any need for frequent polling when you can subscribe to device events in apps. Whether that works well in your Node Red environment is another matter. SASM allowed for WebHook SmartApps but otherwise was a bit of a mess.