Often does not work even when everything is healthy.
Just something a 1st line support person read in a FAQ. Not factual.
Often does not work even when everything is healthy.
Just something a 1st line support person read in a FAQ. Not factual.
I am also an IT consultant. I work for a very large virtualization company and I specialize in cloud management. My customers are almost exlcusively Fortune 100. This product is NOT catering to enterprise customers. Iād argue that its not even catering to SMBs.
Smartthings has no SLAs. They have no CIO calling with threats of not paying for a unreliable product. There is very little accountability in the support and extensibility of the product, since it targets naive consumers who never gets past installing an app on their mobile device. No single customer will ever impact their bottom line, except for a large reseller that makes a demand.
I had a ST support issue and the person on the other side didnāt have the slightest idea of basic networking knowledge. The problem came when they refused to escalate the issue to someone more knowledgable (tier 2). This would be an utter joke in the SMB or enterprise sectors.
All ST needs to do is be a tad better than their competitors to be successful. And they do this, IMO. Their home automation competitors at this price point are a joke. The only reason to invest in R&D is if an opportunity ($) of a sale or competative edge is at the end of the rainbowā¦ and a few folks is the ST community arenāt going to make this happen unless they touch a nerve internally at ST.
And soā¦ yes we have good feedback. We have the experience to back out recommendations. Butā¦ sadly weāre just along for the ride here. They are entertained and intrigued by our community commentary, but they have no reason to change their ways unless there is a ācarrotā or internal champion that takes notice.
And I stay with ST because at this price point theyāre THE game in town. If that changes, so will Iā¦
My two cents as a consultant in cloud mgmt for an elephant in the cloud.
So far, youāre correct.
One of the ways that SmartThings will generate new revenue streams, however, is via large, and not so large, partnershipsā¦ Monitoring, home insurance, energy / utilities management, etc.
Indeed, these partnerships may be a particularly effective catalyst for improvement of the platform, since there will be specific financial agreements on the line.
Thinking like a software providerā¦ if enterprises were their target customer, theyād have different product lines for them. And these ideas weāre sharing hereā¦ would be added to the enterprise line and likely not the consumer line. And the enterprise line would be significantly more expensive, likely including a licensing/SNS contract to keep a steady flow of revenue on their books. Give it timeā¦ that SNS model is already starting in January and I expect it is just the beginning for any āadditionalā capabilities above what it does now Itās just smart business.
I think that if we all ship our wifeās to ST HQ and they have to listen to the āfeedbackā that we have to hear when things go wrong they would find a solution faster.
Just my 2 cents!
This assumes your hub is online. It wonāt help if it is offline thanks to some magical upgrade.
When the last upgrade that brought down my hub happened I was on the other side of the world. 13 hours difference and 26 hrs flight. To say that I was upset is a great understatement. Fortunately nothing happened before I returned. But monitoring my house when I am away is the reason that I got into this to start with.
Hi,
I just want to add that I too have been affected and I, too, am using the SmartThings in a remote location (whch is actually on another continent). Needless to say I was quite unhappy when I received the mail asking to āpress the buttonāā¦ how do I do that ? I take a plane ?
The funny thing is that I installed the SmartThings hub specifically to reduce the attention required when Iām away. I didnāt expect the hub to require that kind of service only days after installation.
I am a hardware design engineer working for a company that create unattended devices - the kind of devices that stay powered for years and for which no local human intervention can be relied upon. After lots of thought, and years of experience, we just settled on an automatic 24hrs reboot. It saved our lives many, many, many times. I believe SmartThings should do exactly that - maybe not every 24hrs, but maybe once a week. So at least, if there is a problem, they can tell people āpress the reset button OR wait for the next reboot, which will happen in at most 7 days from nowā.
My 2 cents
uski
A simple watchdog with the Cloud would reboot in the event of a loss of communication. I had to go to a customer and reboot the Hub. V1 Hubs were not affected.
Ummmmā¦ nope?!?
One of the primary benefits of Hub V2 is that it keeps running if the Internet or Smart Cloud is down!
So if it is still functioning (and not crashed or hung during a boot or has some key dead processes that it can recognize), then simply ānot reaching the Cloudā is the worst possible time to initiate a self-reboot.
except only local devices and stock device types which the majority I have are notā¦ and I think the same for a lot of other peopleā¦ the only things that work are devices on stock switch device types for meā¦
Yupā¦ Agreed that I should have admitted currently the hub might as well try to reboot upon loss of Cloud connectionā¦ But thatās not an appropriate option in the long-term.
Real Time Systems should always have a watchdog. Since cloud communication is mandatory for routine execution, I donāt see a down side to rebooting no matter the cause.
I would worry about continual rebooting when net is down. Maybe limit it to once every half hour or so.
Not ironic at all. In my 2.5 years at Samsung, I saw some of the most colossal management screw ups/face-saving/etc. of any company Iāve worked for in a 20+ year career. Needless to say, Iām glad Iām out of there. I miss my immediate team colleagues, but the management culture at Samsung is such that they succeed in spite of themselves.
I fear they are slowly killing ST with this same management culture. But, oh well, at least the ST founders are set to get out with their cash, right?
While that may be the plan, thatās quite a large leap to make (i.e. - āpaying servicesā) when they canāt even get the BASICS to work reliably now! Who in their right mind who has used ST for anything more than āremotely turn some lights on/offā (no motion sensors, nothing else but lights) would be willing to pay for any services currently built on this platform?
If someone is willing to do that, Iād like to talk to them - I have some lovely oceanfront property in Arizona they might be interested inā¦
Just wanted to report that my remote (in a cabin 3 hours away) SmartThings Hub just came back online by itself.
Sometimes random power outages in a rural area are a blessing
In my case, my remote hub also had a remote Dad available to power cycle the device. He tried, and reported that the lights on the front were on, but not on the ethernet portā¦ After I finally got out here, I rebooted and again, the ethernet port came up brickedā¦ Then I physically replugged the ethernet cable, and that reset the portā¦
So all this talk of rebooting the device doesnāt really seem to cover the problem domain.
nice so now not only do we have the issue of requiring a rebootā¦ which can possibly be handled by remote wifi switches., we now lhave the nic going offline in which case you really are sol.
Not sure on the problem you encounteredā¦ but with the cloud problem can you reboot your hub this way?