UPDATE: Recent SmartThings User Experience & Platform Performance

Do I have to use the hue bridge or can I just buy the bulbs.

You can buy just the bulbs but when you connect a hue bulb to anything other than a hue hub you will be forced to buy another remote to reset the bulbs if ever needed.

I recommend just buying the hub.

Uhmā€¦ouch?!

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Thank you I sent a note to support and also my debug report.

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Wow, thanks James, that is helpful. I like the things you came up with. I can see using a Vantage Switch and Dimmer and maybe a Group. I donā€™t have any sensors tied into the system. Adding devices to the system is less expensive with ST than with Vantage and easier to setup (no call to the installer). BTW: I have an InFusion system and it talks over Ethernet but I think the commands are the same or similar to QLink.

Just now I am finally able to create a SmartApp that commands a button without my WebAPI. It uses TCP and sends BTN 82 which toggles button 82 (my study All On button). I also am able to toggle loads and to set load values (0-100%). For now, I am unable to get return values but hopefully I can figure that out.

Regarding, virtual buttons on the Vantage side - I have things like that although they are just Vantage tasks. A task, a button, a load, they all have a unique VID in Vantage so they can all be commanded through the interface. Most of them are triggered by some other button press on the system or by time of day. I created a virtual switch in ST to turn on/off a Vantage load but I could just as easily trigger a Vantage task. They are easy to create in Vantage so I agree with you that developing Vantage tasks just for ST to command is a good approach.

Did you develop anything that scans your Vantage system from ST so user can browse devices? I donā€™t see a single command for Vantage that returns a complete list of devices but it seems I can ask for information about a particular VID. So it may take multiple calls with an app that simply asks for VIDs 0 - 999 - seems that could take too long.

Any chance you would be willing to share your device handlers with me? Iā€™ve tried looking at others but I struggle with how to apply them to my use case. I suspect yours will be the closest to my use case as possible.

Thanks

Since the last update some of my ST motion sensors seem to have their own mind - they detect motion when there is no motion at all - surely triggering my light :frowning: not impressed at all ā€¦

Hi @r4nd0m, in case you missed it, this has been reported here:

A few of us have reported this as a problem whilst the motion sensors start a firmware upgrade. Throughout the duration of the upgrade the device may act erratically and come up with false detections. Iā€™ve had devices take under an hour to upgrade to worst case scenarios of up to 7 hours, during which they repeatedly report false motions.

Interesting- this would require that I had OTA enabled which in fact I havenā€™tā€¦ ST has had quite a poor track record with updates I didnt want to take any risks and in fact if I could have the option to lock the hub to not receive any updates I would have done so as I think I had the longest time since I had it a fully working system that didnt misbehave at all ā€¦

In that case itā€™s not related then!! :sweat:

Seemd some of the devices had firmware updates available so for testing I did enable it - most got updated but 2 ST motion sensors didnt - one is even falling into ā€˜offlineā€™ state - with no option to force the update this option is quite limited Iā€™d say - you dont want to wait 24hrs to see that the device again didnt update ā€¦

@r4nd0m reseating the device battery close to the hub initiates a firmware update without needing to wait.

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It doesnt seem to do that if he last check was on the same day - just tried it again - I would expect a ā€˜firmware update startedā€™ event but there wont be any ā€¦ will keep an eye on it but so far pulled the battery 3 times today and only on the first time which was like 4hrs ago I saw that event after that the sensor went offline for 3hrs ā€¦

Edit: it doesnt give that event but a ā€˜firmware updatedā€™ after its completed it just did ā€¦

I had 10 remaining motion sensors which had not updated automatically out of 22. Of the 10 which i reseated all of them updated within the hour when left next to the hub. Strangely I had no issues with the above process.

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@r4nd0m Itā€™s possible that with enough attempts you could end up hitting logic on the hub that will prevent a given device from attempting for 24 hours if the update has failed to complete 3 times in a 24 hour time period. This logic is present in order to avoid a device on the edge of connectivity from attempting to update until its battery has been completely drained (at least, in a very short period of time). For devices in this initial update (SmartSense devices manufactured by Centralite), this logic is typically superflous (as the devices on check in once every 24 hours), but if the device is checking in multiple times due to a battery pull, the logic could still be triggered.

The 24-hour ā€œblacklistā€ is stored in RAM, so if you really want to force a blacklisted device to update sooner, a hub reboot will clear that state.

As we add OTA for more devices in the future, the limit of 3 failures in a 24 hour period with a backoff of 24 hours may be modified as we see fit to avoid the very negative user experience of having a device drained due to failed OTA attempts.

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I think Iā€™m seeing something similar here. I just went out of the house today for 3 hours and had 16(!) false motion alerts across different sensors around the house.
Iā€™ve had this setup for close to a year with almost none. On the rare occasion I get one or two but not this many in 3 hours. Luckily I have cameras I could check.
@posborne This is not right considering Iā€™ve not moved the location of my motion sensors in this long.

Ok so I dont seem to be alone with this then ā€¦ thanks for confirming - its odd as it seems only to be in areas that are usually completely quiet ā€¦

I was out for 3hrs myself but didnt had any luckily but I was woken up by plenty this morning ā€¦

All my devices are fully up to date already so Iā€™ve just disabled OTA on the hub to see if the situation improves. If it werenā€™t for the fact I have a lot of cameras around the house I would have been extremely concerned!!

Ok. Fill me onā€¦ Where is the of ota option?

https://support.smartthings.com/hc/en-us/articles/215394303-ZigBee-OTA-firmware-updates

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So did I just now ā€¦