Time based events failing?

Yup… that’s the irony that is pointed out by various folks many times these days. SmartThings is getting the “benefits” of Samsung marketing – exposure and implied quality, various drawbacks (i.e., a push into international markets while the USA is still unstable, distractions with low value integrations pushed by Samsung such as SAMI, etc.), and yet not “all” of the resources needed to address the first two points.

The official excuse explanation is that it is there is a logistical limit to how fast new staff can be hired and integrated into SmartThings. Again … I’m no expert; I can only say that it is easier to scale some departments / functions of an organization than others. What good, though, is it to have lots of tech support engineers if the problems are not fixable by first-line support or if the product is too complicted for first-line support to ramp up to in any practical timeframe? Or if you don’t use them to provide live 24x7 telephone and/or even, Skype video support?

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Samsung has now featured SmartThings in two separate big tech conference keynote presentations. Samsung executive personnel on stage in front of 20 foot high SmartThings pictures. They can’t have it both ways. They own it now, on all levels, including shared reputation.

To kick things off, we’re pleased to announce that SmartThings co-founder and CEO Alex Hawkinson will join Samsung Electronics’ President & CEO, BK Yoon, on stage to deliver the opening keynote address at this year’s International Consumer Electronics Show.
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http://www.smartphonemobile.info/samsung-introduces-“iot-you”-ifa-2015-press-conference​.html

Your life is your philosophy.

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Grrr, after reading this thread this morning I thought all of the time based stuff was sorted out. I came home to a dark house :scream:. I guess I will go into those time based Things and adjust it a little bit hoping it will restart the timer.

We created a brand new sunset-triggered automation this morning. It didn’t run. :disappointed_relieved:

Well that’s a bummer. I’m on V1 by the way if it makes a difference.

No response to support email or chat, and nothing in this thread from ST other than an acknowledgement 2 days ago by @slagle that there actually is a problem…by their silence, SmartThings is digging their own grave.

My family has totally lost confidence, and if it were up to them, this stuff would all be up for sale on eBay. As it is, my kids are mocking SmartThings publicly on Facebook, and I have zero incentive to invest in this platform further. Although I still hold out hope that things will get turned around, I would gladly trade everything at this point for a less capable system that could be depended on to work.

Let us know before you post anything on eBay… I bet you could have it all sold in minutes on here…

Just sayin… I’d buy stuff… :expressionless:

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To be fair. Sunset did trigger on the dot for me this evening (east coast). So, not a bad experience for everybody today I guess.

I have a mix of problems happening. Sunset/Sunrise events are working, but motion based events waiting for “x” minutes have a mind of their own. Including 2 bathroom switches with a mind of their own…

Yeah! It’s all very random.

I didn’t change any of my routines or Smart Lightning apps, but my sunset/sunrise worked fine, with one expection. No levels were set on any of my lights. I replaced the Smart Lightning app that controlled my non functional dimmers with cloud based app and they work again. I guess things saved locally may have be out of sync, in my case? Time will tell…Rebooting the hub did nothing for me.

I realized things were going to get worse before they got better when Ben indicated staffing goals last year. It takes resources to hire and train new staff. This pushes schedules out, not shorten them. Engineers should have [Mythical Man Month][1] as required reading in school even if it is a little dated.

Working on local processing in Hub V2 before nailing down the cloud stuff was also a mistake. Let’s face it, we wouldn’t be clammering for local control if the cloud was timely and reliable. Now where are we?
[1]: The Mythical Man-Month - Wikipedia

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Zwave is reliable. Zigbee is reliable. There are controllers for both that can run locally. It’s not the things you could sell on eBay that are causing events to randomly run or not run–it’s the scheduler service that comes with the SmartThings hub (either version).

SmartThings supports virtual switches, which many controllers do not, but you can’t sell those anyway.

So there are alternatives if you choose to look into them which will let you keep most of your devices. It’s one of the advantages of ST using open standards. Time invested is a different matter, of course, as is rebuilding family trust.

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Random lights turn on and off for me. Doors don’t lock with mode changes (Goodnight and Goodbye). Device status doesn’t update correctly in the app. It’s been going on for two days. I submitted a ticket. It’s a pain in the ass. The end…

It may be too early to tell, but I took my hub (v2) down for 30 minutes and brought it back online. So far some of the rogue Smart Lighting issues I was having have seemed to have gone away. Still testing at 1am EST…

Ok… Came back home and the local closet door lights for misses is not turning off… Now another 10 minutes of lecture at 1::17 AM. Darn!

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Yeah, I’m still up too… It does look like taking down the hub and bringing it back online has helped me. Although, when I did that - any light I had automatically turned on via an automation based on sunset got turned off.

I’m using “Light Turn On Schedule” to fire up an espresso machine that takes an hour to warm up every day at 5am. There are no modes or exceptions, just turn on a power switch every day at 5. This has been working without problem for months. In the last week it has failed to fire 4 times, meaning people in the house leave for work without coffee which is turning me into the jerk that put all this stuff in place.

I’ve opened yet another ticket for this issue. That will make 3 that I currently have open with no response in sight.

I had hoped that v2 would fix some issues for me, instead it’s causing way more issues and support has just flat out stopped responding to incoming tickets.

This is the inevitable result of a cloud-hosted automation system it seems. I am fully dependent upon ST for this system to work and I have zero control over the result. Maybe handing control of my home over to a 3rd party who is unable to handle the load and without whom my system is 100% useless wasn’t the best idea I’ve ever had.

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Buy a clapper switch, much more reliable and you can wake the entire house with your clapping. Have fun be happy!

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Not to make light of the situation but honestly wth. At the core of this system is timed events, if they can’t make this work then what good is this system. I have an electric hot water heater controlled by ST, try taking cold showers 3 days in the past week, who needs coffee?

Come on ST, this needs to be corrected and soon!

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