UPDATE: Recent SmartThings User Experience & Platform Performance

That’s pretty funny. I went the other way and covered up all of my switches. You have to remove a cover to get to them. The whole house is controlled by voice or strategically mounted tablets. My setup isn’t the problem.

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Oh, every thing here is controlled by voice and motion. Right after I put in all ofif the bulbs my in-laws came to town for a month. Now, when the elder folks come to town I don’t spend a week resetting everything in the house.

My setup odd not a problem at all… It actually runs very very good. I have three echoes for vice voice control of the entire house. I use the Roger app for controlling echo away from home and I think only 11 motion sensors for automatic control.

It is actually very stable… Somehow! Lol

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Something I learned in the Navy, redundancy. If the automation fails, use voice. If voice fails, use the app. If the app fails, use the switch.

I have to have a backup to my backup. Single point failure is just not an option for me.

Which is why I’ve been thinking about a second hub. I want to find a way to clone my hub and have a backup ready to go at a moment’s notice, kind of like a raid system.

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We have the same philosophy in the banking industry. For some reason end users get pretty upset if they can’t get to their money or if their balance is incorrect. If it wasn’t for the end users our jobs would be pretty easy. :slight_smile:

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Oh I understand… Just like navy pilots… We want two engines… We want them both to work… We want backup weapons computers… We want to come back alive… End users… Such whiners!

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FYI: Just another known issue with no known fix.

Thanks for letting us know you are seeing this.

This looks like a known issue and other customers are experiencing problems with it as you mentioned. We are aware of the bug and our engineers are working on a resolution, but at this time there isn’t a definite timeline for when we can have a fix in place.

I’ll be keeping an eye on this issue and we’ll let you know when we expect to see it resolved.

Thanks so much for working with us.

Kind Regards,

Annie
SmartThings Support

That would be nice for sure. The only problem is that it is not complete as so much of your config lives it he cloud which we clearly now understand to be subject to corruption.

A way to snapshot one’s config and restore from snapshots is required.

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Interesting. You certainly had some bad luck with bulbs. Luckily, I haven’t had ANY of those issues.

I’ve had a mix for sure. My Cree’s and GE’s both sometimes just fall off though none recently. And I still have a few unprotected switches that family members still flip out of old habits. But all in all, they work 97% right. I like the multiple smart bulbs in one fixture vs the switch as I get a wider range of light control. My office has two bulbs, when gaming I have one light on at 10% which is less than both would be at 1% thanks to the uneven dimming. And the Hall’s come on at 1% of 1 bulb when the house goes to sleep. More than enough for not stubbing one’s toe.

The different bulbs definitely have an advantage. I have five bulbs in the kitchen for individual control.

In my hallway I installed two smart outlets and a motion sensor. At night and during sleep mode those outlets turn on and off based in motion, instead of running bulbs all of the time.

I am so happy to see that I’m not the only one who has things in their chicken coop.

We put 3 appliance modules out there

  • One to control the door

  • One to control their water heater when it gets too cold

  • One to turn on the run light in case of predators

I then also put in a door sensor and a Aeon Labs Multisensor for motion and temp.
So far its been working fine except for when the hens put pine pellets in the door track and it doesn’t let the door fall all he way down so the sensor still thinks its opened. Once the mud in the run dries out from our last snow I’m going to go build a lip in front of the door to keep that crap in the house where it belongs lol.

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@johnr won the official creative projects contest last year with what has now become CoopBoss. :sunglasses:

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Thanks JD!!
More fun stuff coming soon!!

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@JDRoberts you know I’ve been googling around to see others who had done this as I knew I couldn’t be the only one that did this. Sounds like @JohnR has the same setup as me. Thanks to RM I also have things in place that the temp has to be >=25 outside and time between sunrise and -90 sunset for the door to open. I also have actions that run when the door opens and closes to notify me if the door failed to open/close so I can go check on it. Eventually I’m going to put a couple foscams out there and tie them in with RM so that when motion is detected at night not only will it turn on the light but take a pic. Granted something would have to be very serious about getting into the coop at night since we put a lot of security measures in place but I want to know if something did.

My solution is based on a linear actuator and a custom PCB built from the ground up be a coop door controller. It’s a bit different than those coop doors that drop down as a string or wire is unwound from a spool. I spent a great deal of time with my door’s object detection circuit and firmware to handle the exact problem your seeing with debris in your door’s path. Another feature of liner actuators is they lock into position when the power is removed so the door locks tight when it is closed. This can be a big deal as a racoon can figure out now to lift a door or even work a latch. Minks like to stick their nose into small spaces and work doors open.

If I can help with your project please let me know! We all love to see pictures so please share if you have some…

Hey John I’ll share some as soon as the run dries out some more. That foot of snow we got here in the Denver area over the weekend is now rapidly melting so its a muddy mess outside. Right now I just have a room setup as “Chicken Coop” and I have all of my devices loaded into that. I went with zwave devices because I have a Aeon Labs Hem V2 outside so that is my relay point into the house for the zwave signal

Sounds good!
FYI on zwave: The CoopBoss is all ZigBee based. All my projects are ZigBee as I have the most experience with that protocol.

Denver area! I have a CoopBoss customer from Denver. Sounds like SmartThings needs a SmartCoop forum! You guys in Denver could start a user group. :relaxed:

Update:
I just noticed what conversation thread we are in. “Recent SmartThings User Experience & Platform Performance”. Yea we should probably move the conversation over to another location if it keeps up.

I have my own custom setup - while it reports to ST and allows operation, it will run completely autonomous as well (so my :chicken: don’t have to rely on ST working correctly :wink:).

The whole things runs off an $3 ESP8266 (which connects to ST using a local LAN device) and it reports door states (reed relays on either side of the door), external luminosity, coop temperature, and internal light status which are all controlled from the ESP using simple cheep sensors.

Based on customizable settings, the door opens/closes based on luminosity (no sunrise/sunset required) and will turn on the light before closing the door so they can tuck themselves in. The coop pushes values to the hub every 5 minutes (i.e., no polling required). To make sure that the thing runs completely autonomously, it runs off a 12V battery and solar panel - total cost for everything was just above $100…

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My coop door uses a cable style power window regulator from a car, ball-bearing drawer slides as the door track and micro switches as the up/down limit switches.

I don’t have any sort of object protection except the thermal cut switch that is built into all power window motors and a little bit of flex in the linkage connecting the motor to the door. The door also slides at an angle like a garage door so it shuts tight against a seal.

Of course, maybe this belongs in a different thread. I have all outlets and controllers setup to go zwave (it’s currenty controlled by a universal car remote assembly) but I haven’t been able to get reliable enough service out of the zwave yet to make the switch so it just controls the lights for now.

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Just to chime in, John’s Coop Boss is the bomb. Working flawles for me for many months and has object/collision sensing. I also rigged up a Blink camera in there pointed at the roost. When the door closes, RM triggers a single pic from the camera and I get a push notification from Coop Boss. I can check the pic to make sure all the girls made it in, then open the door remotely if I’m one or two short. I’m also using the lux sensor from Coop Boss to control dimmer levels and turn on my afternoon lighting in the house. AND I use the temp sensor in the Coop Boss to compare against another temp sensor to help figure out my thermostat modes. Maybe costs a few more bucks, but Coop Boss rocks!

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