What has happened to this platform?!?!

@JDRoberts I think your long post about the direction missed one point that most of us here on this forum forget. We are the fringe. The majority of the people on this forum already go over their ‘average user’. We are pushing at the limits at times, and we defiantly are no longer the focus. To Samsung a userbase with 50+ devices in their house is not ‘better’ than one with 5, in some ways its worse. We drive support complexity up so they have to make tier 1 and 2 smarter to just support us.

Is it beneficial to make sure our fringe cases work and make us happy compared to someone wanting to turn on their front porch lights automatically? Sucks but we are not the core anymore. Their goal is defiantly be ‘more like apple’ and the ‘it just works’ model. As you add things, the chance of ‘just works’ goes down. My v1 with the 4 lights and 1 motion I had…solid. Then I was lulled into stability and added like a mad man…boom hit the problem of osram lights or zigbee bug whatever…not passing commands reliably. Backed down, went Hue and was lulled back.

ST is wanting to have the market clout of Hue, but with a more complex setup. The moment Hue added motion sensors their complexity went up…I bet their support queue noticed

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As an ST newbie (just started fiddling a month ago) I have to say I’m disappointed how flaky the system is. I thought after all this time on the market it would be rock solid. It’s not even close. I have a whopping 9 devices: Samsung Arrival Sensor, Samsung Multi Sensor, 3x Leviton Z-Wave Plus plugs, 1 Leviton 15A Z-Wave plug, 2x GE Z-Wave Plus in-wall outlets, and my smart phone.

My experience so far: the smart phone worked as an arrival sensor for a couple of days then started acting flaky. I quickly gave up and bought the arrival sensor. That at least has been reliable. The multi-sensor went to 50% battery w/in a few days and has dropped off the network twice now. It’s been offline for a couple of days and I’m debating whether to re-add it or just return it. The outlets and plugs have mostly worked but I’ve had a few random periods of them going offline. Right now one of the plugs is sitting on my desk but still shows active. How do I “fix” that?! Finally, the app itself periodically acts up - shows status incorrectly or just doesn’t work.

The good news is despite the flakiness of the app, the devices seem to work 100% of the time thru Alexa even if they show off-line in the app.

Bottom line, I’ll keep playing w/it because I’m a tech guy and am willing to live w/a bit of flakiness for some spiffy functionality. But this stuff should work better than this.

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My personal opinion (experience from other devices, not smartthings) is you do not have enough devices of a single type to get a good reliable network. I am taking a leap of faith on this conclusion as your list lacks details.

The multi-sensors are zigbee, correct? Seems you do not have any zigbee switches, outlets or repeaters to establish a good zigbee mesh - I am in the same boat, but my limited number of zigbee Iris motions sensors are all close to the hub. I plan to add a few zigbee appliance plugs to help out.

On the smart locks, what kind? I use Z-wave specifically because I have invested into so many z-wave switches; it is my most reliable protocol in my house as I have close to 20 z-wave devices establishing my mesh. I have built this up over a period of a few years. But locks also come in wifi, blutooth and zigbee.

WeMo, I have avoided these devices as they are wifi (I believe) and therefore do not reinforce either mesh. I am also of the opinion that it is best to minimize the number of devices on wifi as I dont have a mesh wifi setup.

The bulbs are zigbee, but I do not know if all smart bulbs act as repeaters. The hue bulbs do, but then are on a different zigbee protocol. Kind of frustrating.

Now, your home wifi, which setting? 2.4 GHz or 5.0 GHz? I run 2.4 GHz, which interferes with zigbee. This could be a source for your issues as I suspect it is a source for my Phillips Hue issues.

SmartThings is my fourth foray into HA and one thing I learned from experience is try to standardize your protocol and layout the backbone for your mesh first. Then fill in the devices.

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Funny how this and several other posts, the OP has issues with zigbee monitors, which I do not. But I do have issues with my Hue bulbs and yet your experience is they are very reliable for you. A great reflection on the number of variables that play into what is now advertised and simple and seamless, but in the background is quite complex. I assume my issues with the hue bulbs is a similar issue to the cause many others have with the sensors.

I will check on my hue firmware updates tonights as well as my channels. I statically assigned my two WAP channels, but I do not recall them. I will compare this to SmartThings zigbee channel and the Phillips Hue channel. I suggest to the OP that he do the same.

@WB70 Do the Phillips Hue Zigbee channels correspond to standard Zigbee channels? I have both my wifi units at Channel 1 and Channel 6 (I recall). My ST zigbee is at Channel 20 great! My Phillips Hue however has been problematic and is set to Channel 15. I wonder if I should move it to Channel 25 instead.

Sorry for all the little posts. This forum layout is new to me. I’ll do a better job consolidating my posts in the future.

Here is a post from JDRoberts with respect to Zigbee and the Philips Hue Bridge. The entire thread makes a good read as well for interference overall:

The diagram I posted above is one of a couple of diagrams from that thread. Here is another:

Along with the same one I posted way up there:

You can see that Zigbee 14 and Wifi 3 is sitting pretty dang close together as @Thermo1 (Justin) stated he is on. That may or not be contributing to his issues. But it’s worth eliminating it as a potential one. If he changes wifi 2.4ghz to channel 11 this would be the best choice from this interference.

This is part of why I have approached ST as “one component of a distributed system” rather than having it be the be-all and end-all of my smart home. It’s a $50 hub, in a developing and somewhat unstable environment. Why put the full weight of multiple video feeds, audio output, etc on it when I can farm those out a bit?

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I’ve been with this platform since just after the kickstart and I will tell you this. It’s way better than it used to be. What I have seen is every Christmas things seem to go worse and then over the course of the year things improve. Then you rinse and repeat.

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One other thing which I haven’t seen mentioned is WIFI congestion. Here are a couple of screenshots of my situation!

In the channel rating list (the second shot) I counted 37 different SSIDs in my area. Maybe I’m just lucky, but I really have no problems with reliabilty other than devices dropping off due to low batteries. I even have my router less than 2’ from my ST hub.

Mine is literally less than 1 foot away (maybe 10 inches), and it has been this way for a year and I have never experienced a single issue with interference. I think people are affected differently in their environments and I’m sure some of it has to do with the equipment being used and how much one might be shielded over another type of router or modem / router combo or router with router / modem combo, Ethernet cable used. That’s on top of wifi and Zigbee interference or from your image including the neighborhood block party of all other SSIDs and the channel they are on.

From left to right here is Router / Modem / Cellular Extender / ST Hub / Hue Bridge / 2nd Modem for Landline <---- You would think I would have some sort of issues in a year. I have even run without issue Zigbee on 25 and wifi 2.4ghz on 11 without a single issue. Wish there was a magic wand for everyone.

My WiFi routes and ST hub are likewise within a couple feet of each other. There’s just no way in my current home configuration to do it differently without generating serious aesthetics issues with the wife lol

Fortunately, I’ve not had any WiFi/zigbee/zwave comm issues to speak of. As long as when I originally pair a device I do it within a few feet of the ST hub, everything has been working well. The only comm issue I have is that ST can’t see my Hue hub - but that is not a WiFi issue

Hey everyone! Thanks for all of the replies. I couldn’t reply any more yesterday because I’m a newbie and we have a max daily post :slight_smile:

So I installed a light switch and also purchased the above recommended zigbee -zwave repeater. I also moved from channel 3 to channel 11. So far things seem MUCH MUCH better.

I have not reset the network yet, but will do that tomorrow.

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Really? What Zigbee channel is your Bridge using?


ST is on zigbee channel 19
Hue on channel 15

I wouldn’t be surprised if they are counting other iterations of SmartThings, such as the Samsung Connect. I believe those users would not be using the SmartThings Apps.

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Change Hue to 25.

So when you goto to add a thing, ST isn’t automatically discovering your Hue Bridge?

That’s a lot of congestion. I use the wifi analyzer built into the mac OS and I have close to as many sources as you show, but most of mine have signal strengths around -85 or lower. I will try to screenshot mine tonight. What app/software did you use?

It’s Wifi Analyzer on Android from the Play Store.

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Wow! I envy you for being able to have all of your cables nicely organized. I can never seem to achieve this.

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There’s an analyzer built into the OS? Where’s it located?