Weekly Update from Alex - 06/09/16

Now that things are no longer progressing, it looks like we’ll no longer be getting the weekly updates.

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Hi all - apologies for missing the weekly update last week. I will double up this week with a brief summary on the outage from last week and then plan to post a separate update on this week’s progress.

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[quote=“alex, post:44, topic:50031, full:true”]
…the outage from last week…[/quote]

…and the outage/s this week too?

I might be the only exception as far as I can find… I didn’t experience any outage yesterday although last week’s did impact me specifically with access to the IDE.

Ouch, if Patrick turns caustic, than the sky has fallen.

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Sky has fallen…

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So, we were seeing a lot of positives there for a while… What’s going on?

How about an update that’s actually an update?
How about giving us something more than smoke and mirrors?
How about fixing the damn system?

As of right this moment, again, the app isn’t working, the api isn’t working, and guess what else isn’t working?

Lots of backwards movement this week or so.

Did ST get a new integration? Are we going to see an announcement about how you can sit in your broke down Yugo and wish you could control your home through the new Yugo/ST integration. What’s the slogan gonna be? “Smartthings, controlling your home on the go… Nowhere”.

I’m just really sick of what should be a stable platform that’s actually quicksand.

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i think the Yugo was more consistent and had fewer failures than ST… and Yugo was a piece of $#!%

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The platform was stable for a while but this last week or two everything seems to have fallen off the cliff. Simple things like taking an action based on some event work about half the time now and even when it does trigger the action they are at least twice as slow to occur. I have about 3 time based events and they seem to be working about half the time as well.

Based on history it seems pretty clear that the base architecture of the platform is fragile and easily broken. Maybe it is time to rethink it?

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Not trying to be a jerk here, actually trying very hard to be the opposite…

But the “Weekly Update” seems to be a bit of a microcosm of ST at large.

There is both an implied and explicit commitment to provide weekly updates to the community by the Chief Executive. This wasn’t just a casual commitment without cause, this was in the face of poor performance and reliability that resulted in loss of faith - not only in the systems, the engineering but also in the leadership.

Following a week of really bad outages, the worst since the weekly updates started, the commitment is not delivered upon. This is the Chief. The Chief has a calendar. The Chief has assistants, etc to help keep things on schedule. Yet, no update.

Then, the response is… “Sorry about that, will get to it eventually…”

Is this the culture of ST? Is this the sense of urgency, follow through on commitments the organization has? Is this the example from the top that is followed? Seems it’s possible.Everyone at ST can see this thread. If one is being led by example, this is not a good one.

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@alex What’s going on at ST? An update would be nice. Rumors are flying around regarding layoffs, cuts, departures, etc. Who’s left? Who’s gone? What is the future of ST? Should we be looking for alternatives?

Silence makes not answering these far worse. Where is the hope that this platform isn’t just rotting on the vine? Has the runway run out of tarmac? It’s almost exactly 2 years since the acquisition… Are all the founders just bailing ship? What’s up with Samsung and Artik? Joyent and the 1.2 billion investment in IoT? Any of that coming to ST?

Please, update us as to what is going on at ST. Address these rumors and tell us what the future holds.

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From the status page and incident report e-mail this morning…

“…The appropriate servers were restarted…”

When it’s my own IT infrastructure here at home (can I call it that?), a ‘server restart’ is embarrassing enough, but I usually get away with it, because…well…who’s gonna notice? lol

For you guys though? On what level is a server restart the professional solution to an outage bad enough to warrant a post on the status page?

I know I’m a bit out of touch with your infrastructure and all, but wow…




Hey, Tony!..watch out when you walk by that computer sitting, precariously perched next to the ThinkGeek.com coffee mug on my desk. It’s the new server for the #%$^@#$ system. Once I have it stabilized enough to the point where it only needs to be rebooted once every few days or so, I will put it down the hall in the janitor’s closet with the other server.

p.s. Note: I’m a big ST fan, and I’m still not going anywhere. I didn’t mean to be harsh above. It was meant to be humorous (again, I suck at humor). Please take it as lightly as possible.

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Hey all :slight_smile:

We will be posting something regarding the recent issues. We haven’t forgot about it. Sorry for the delay.

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Maybe Alex left so there is nobody to pick up the torch. And when they do, our luck is they will grab the wrong end, get burned and then they can’t update us cuz they will be at the Dr. getting treated for burns

Just sayin

If a viable alternative existed, I’m sure ST would be more concerned about trying to keep its customers happy.

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Do you really expect CEO to spill the beans in the community forum? :slight_smile: Whatever’s going on at ST, his primary job is to project the image of confidence and assure everyone that it’s business as usual. And, in fact, I believe it is. All these issues are not new, they’ve been there since the beginning and they will be there till the end. :sunglasses:

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I think someone’s doing pretty well on the Vera Plus controller, but without any zigbee devices. Close enough price-point, local execution, support for zwave/zigbee… viable alternative?

A co-worker and I are starting to evaluate HomeSeer… fully local execution. We’re developers, and I’ve already made a significant investment in devices, so the switching cost is low for us (most devices are compatible with both ST and HS). I’m willing to spend the $300+ for the hub, plus the marginal cost for per-written plugins, if that means I get a 100% reliable system. Plus what doesn’t exist, I can code myself in a weekend.
I’d like to avoid that though… since I’d have to rebuild my 60+ smart app rules (and I’m lazy for the most part).
If I were one of you who’s had alarms go off without the ability to turn them off… I’d be looking for something different by now. I won’t do alarms/locks with ST because of all the reliability issues I’ve read about over the last 8 months.

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Yep. There’re trade-offs, to be sure, but at least I know nobody’s messing with my setup behind my back and there’s no unexpected cloud flatulence. :thunder_cloud_rain:

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http://www.axialcontrol.com/

Take a look at this option too. Easy to use and supports a lot of different devices with plugins.