What features require the internet?

[rjwerth (Robert Wertheimer)]

Hi everyone. I’ve installed one hub system into a vacation house and I’m considering adding a system into my main home. Since the “meltdown” of the Smartthings platform I’m a bit concerned and confused as to how reliant Smartthings systems are to the net. Could someone answer the following questions for me:

With all the threads about performance issues, I’m rather shocked that “simple” functions such as rules seem to be affected by the meltdown. Can’t these hubs hold their own w/o the net?
What functions work w/o the internet?
What functions work w/o Smartthings servers?

I do not want to buy into a system that is completely ineffective w/o the net and/or Smarttings servers. Sure, I get the fact that I’ll have no remote functions when I’m away but really, I can’t locally sign into my hub and work things w/o the net? That isn’t going to fly in this house. A device needs to fully function (within reason) off the grid.

[Kriskit (Chris)]

Fairly sure that it’ll pretty much be a white brick with some blinky lights without the internet and/or the SmartThings servers.

[blebson (Ben Lebson)]

The only thing that will continue to work without the internet or ST servers is the Smart Lighting SmartApp, and only ones that use default ST z-wave or zigbee devices.

Check out the following links to see what’s running ‘locally’ on your hub (assuming you’re in the US):

• Local SmartApps: https://graph.api.smartthings.com/localInstalledSmartApp/list
• Local Devices: https://graph.api.smartthings.com/localDevice/list

[geko]

@rjwerth

I can’t locally sign into my hub and work things w/o the net?

No, you cannot. Only certain automation rules will continue to work and only if all the devices are “local”. Specifically, you won’t be able to use the mobile app to control your devices or check their status even if you’re on the same local network as the hub.

[JDRoberts]

We should also add that in this context “local” doesn’t mean “running on your LAN.” For example, without the cloud ST will have no control over Harmony or the Hue bridge even though those have official LAN integrations.

Instead, in this context “local” means “eligible to run locally on the ST hub” and that is only a few devices. No published list, either, you just have to check the links above and check your own account.

[rjwerth (Robert Wertheimer)]

This is all extremely disappointing. There is absolutely no reason why a hub shouldn’t be able to perform most functions without the net. It doesn’t take a lot of CPU power or memory in this day and age to perform any of the functions they currently are doing. The only real need for an external server is for easy access over the web. Having their servers do anything beyond pairing the phone with the hub is a waste of bandwidth and a recipe for disaster (as we have seen for the last 3 weeks).

[JDRoberts]

Indeed. See the following discussion in the developers section of the forum.

Local Processing in Hub V2

Continuing the discussion from What's the deal with Nest?: Correct. I was answering this question below in the global sense. i.e., There will always be the possibility of various benefits available to Official Device Handlers and SmartApps that are not available to un-certified Community Developed ones. At the moment, the local processing benefit is inapplicable to Nest in either case. I’m not sure ST has guaranteed that community developed SmartApps/Device Types will be included in local processing right after certification. Yes, it may be included down the road, and this is not yet clear on how or what the process is to enable community developed stuffs to run locally.

[geko]

@rjwerth

This is all extremely disappointing.

Even more disappointing is that SmartThins is notoriously irresponsible pushing untested (or extremely poorly tested) updates both to the hub and to the cloud. For the past six month, every update introduced some critical bugs that take weeks and sometimes months to fix.

delayBetween(cmds,<timeinms>) does not work

so i am writing a device type purely as a Sonos TTS Announcer using VoxCommando it would work extremely well if only the following code would actually work as i need a delay when dissolving and creating sonos groups. cmds = [] cmds << Command one cmds << Command two cmds << Command two delayBetween(cmds, 2000) there is not a 2 second delay between sending these commands. but in this example the commands are execute roughly over a 3 second period total. is there a maximum time limit for the delay of 3 digits rather than 4?