I’ve had a Pi.Hole running for years now, and love it. There are some things that don’t work perfectly, but I’ve worked them out through the years.
I just got started with my SmartThings hub and I’m loving it already.
However, I encountered an issue when I tried to create some automations (turn on Christmas lights at sunset, in this case). When I’d tap on the “Add>Smart Lights” I’d get stuck at a screen that shows, “Processing” and some times a popup would appear mentioning network trouble.
After some experimenting with whitelisting some things that Pi-Hole was blocking, I found that this part of the app requires “Usage.trackjs.com” to be whitelisted, which is part of the blacklist by default.
I for one do not like being tracked at all, but it appears this is required by SmartThings. The second I whitelist it, I’m then able to proceed as normal.
There was another address the Pi-Hole was blocking during that time, but I haven’t seen what any impact on leaving it blocked: app.adjust.com, as well as one other that I now can’t get to reappear.
Just thought I’d save someone in the future a headache.
I thought it was weird too. Do you blacklist Usage.trackjs.com or app.adjust.com? I’m just curious is maybe I have either an old or new blacklist file and these were updated?
This is very interesting… I wonder what other things that might get blocked by router based firewalls might create ST related issues. I have a Unifi based network cascaded behind ATT’s Gigapower router configured with “IP Passthrough” turned on so I tried to move the hub to ATT’s router but did not see any change (I was troubleshooting a similar issue descried by @joshbgosh10592). Yet there may be something getting blocked… it would be nice to have a list of all networking requirements for ST hubs to work well so that network issues can be ruled out when troubleshooting issues.
I agree with @aruffell, it would be awesome to have all requirements, and why they are required, such as: IDE.Smartthings.com: phone home to IDE SkyNet.Smartthings.com: track and allow complete control over your life
etc.
tgauchat
(ActionTiles.com co-founder Terry @ActionTiles; GitHub: @cosmicpuppy)
7
Doesn’t piHole keep a log of which devices on your LAN are attempting to access which external sites and services? (I’m not familiar with piHole, but “training” seems to be a basic requirement of any firewall, no?).
It would be awesome, but don’t hold your breath. If any of these involve the collection of “Personal Information”, however, then under the EU’s GDPR, SmartThings must disclose them.
I would start with an written request to Support. They have no reason not to respond.