Over the past few weeks I have been using the Smart Lighting app on a timed event to turn a socket ON and OFF. This works most of the time but I have noticed that periodically one of the events (ON or OFF) fails to trigger. I end up with either a light not coming on when it’s supposed to, or not turning off when it’s supposed to sad face.
I’ve tried all manner of things like:
Using the Smart Lighting’s ON and OFF event in one Smart Lighting app. (Turn on At, Turn off At).
Separating the ON and OFF events into two separate Smart Lighting apps. (“Turn on at” for one event and “Turn off At” for a separate event app).
Making backup events for turning the sockets ON and OFF (this helps a bit but still not ideal and not fool proof).
Staggering the event time so that it doesn’t fall exactly on an hour (ie, Turn on at 11:58am, turn OFF at 6:59 pm). I don’t know why… just thought maybe the hub was super busy with other hidden scheduled tasks on the hour. shrug
In the end, I still get events sometimes not triggering. Is this fairly common or am I doing something wrong? Is there anything I can do to increase the reliability of the Smart Lighting app/ timed event? Use a different app? Upgrade to the new v2 hub ??
This has been a problem for over two years. SmartThings swore multiple times they’d fix it, but ultimately failed. The root cause of the problem is inability of the cloud to handle peak loads or so called event storms.
Event storms are the manifestation of an important class of abnormal behaviors in communication systems. They occur when a large number of nodes throughout the system generate a set of events within a small period of time.
Ohh, oops! I did skim the first posts of that thread and thought that they were just talking about the sunset feature as it relates to timed events, which sounded a bit different from my problem. I guess I should have read all 921 posts though as it seems it’s the exact same systemic problem I’m having. That’s a shame really. Timed events are very important to me (as I’m sure they are to a lost of other people) so if they don’t work then I will have to abandon SmartThings and look elsewhere.
My timed events have been working correctly for a couple of months now, but just in the last couple of days I’ve been seeing random failures in several time-based automations. I opened a ticket with support when the first failures occurred, but haven’t gotten any response other than the automated “we opened a ticket”.
And, of course, there is no mention of any issues on the “Platform Status” page, even though there seem to be issues.
Update:
I came home to a dark house. Sunset with offset automation didn’t fire. Another strictly sunset (no offset) did. This is starting to get old. No response from support.
Update 2:
9:00 pm automation failed to fire. Still no response from support. Platform status is still not reporting any issues, which isn’t surprising.
Sunset and Sunrise lighting events stopped working for me yesterday and have not worked today as well. I have opened a ticket. I have had no changes nor app or hub updates.
Ugh! Mine fired fine last night for the lights to come on at sunset -20. Today, nothing! Another light I have should turn off after a 5 minute power allowance, that is also not working. I have tried to setup the rule again. I also logged a ticket with support. It appears to be a timed base issue, as my other routines for presence are still firing appropriately.
Hey All! This is my first post here but I’ve been a smartthings user for over a year now. Still on hub v1. I’m having the same issue. My presence routines fire correctly, but time based routines and lights haven’t been working for several days now (actually an ongoing issue for several months). I’ve gone through the standard fix: go into the routine, change something, hit done, change it back. Doesn’t ever permanently fix anything. Hopefully this can be fixed once and for all soon…
After weeks trying a number of things, I started looking at the metadata for the Smart App through the API UI for the SmartApp. I noticed a couple of things that looked like a potential for a software defect problem.
The first is that not all fields are intrinsically populated if not specifically called out. In my case, I had not called out “days” assuming that the default would be all. So, I deliberately specified the days as every day of the week.
Second, I changed the Sunrise/Sunset offsets to be off my a few minutes each, assuming that the masses default to normal Sunrise/Sunset. I have to assume that the algorithm is not sophisticated enough for specific regionalization thus causing a cloud flood of activity that the system cannot accommodate.
Between these two, I have had two cycles of success for now getting the timed event to work. I hope the ST team is smart enough to take this user feedback and fix the root cause defects that are so annoying. (Yes, ST, I will take any offer to evaluate the latest hub).
Here is a dump of the data after I changed the event. Note that the “modes” field is still devoid of data, but that does not seem to matter.
Settings
Name Type Value
action enum on days enum Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday
lights capability.switch Front Uplights
modes mode []
overrideLabel bool true
sunriseFollowup bool true sunriseOffset number -5 sunsetOffset number 5
trigger enum At Sunset
tgauchat
(ActionTiles.com co-founder Terry @ActionTiles; GitHub: @cosmicpuppy)
10
Why are you trying to debug a black box closed source SmartApp when there’s an open source and well functioning alternative available (Rule Machine)?
Heck, I apologize. I’m doing the same sort of black-box debugging discussion with @jody.albritton in another thread by claiming that data migration from one Location/Hub to another sure seems like it ought to be trivial. The only difference is we don’t have any alternative in that case.
And, yup, Rule Machine won’t run locally… Somehow I think it’s worth focusing effort on encouraging:
Smart Lighting and other SmartThings codes should be open source as much as possible, because we have a very clever Community who can debug these.
Rule Machine and similar high-profile alternatives needs to be expedited to local execution if they genuinely provide a more reliable Customer experience.
