What if my internet connection goes down?

Devices & Integrations
1

I’ve looked at the main page of the FAQ, and a few of the entries linked from it. I also did a search, and didn’t find a concrete answer (mostly speculation from some time last year).

As a prospective user, one significant question I have is what happens when my internet connection goes down? Some of the discussions I found here talked about plans to add 3G support to the hub. That’s overkill for my purposes.

For my (fairly basic) needs, I don’t really care if the hub is unable to text me to tell me the dog arrives home from work (perhaps one day I might).

For now, I need to know that if I program my lights to come on an hour before sunset, that ‘programming’ is stored on the hub so that even if the whole internet is down my lights will still come on at the right time.

Or does it require a constant internet connection so that SmartThings’ servers can tell it what to do at the right time?

Thanks … Mike

2

You need a constant internet connection. Nothing will happen (scheduled events, motions triggers, etc…) if the hub can’t communicate with cloud-based servers.

3

To me, this is the single biggest problem with SmartThings. If you lose the internet (which I did recently), you’re sitting in a very expensive and hard to control cluster F.
There has to be some way to push more of basic stuff to the local hardware inside of our houses. I get the smart apps and interconnections with web services, but turning a light on and off should just work.

4

2 Things.

  1. You can get a cellular backup on your router if you like. Something like a cradlepoint or Sapido can work too.

  2. The second version of the SmartThings Hub will have some local capabilities.

2 Likes
5

@Ben That’s awesome! You should also keep in mind folks who would like to upgrade to the newer Hub… May be some sort of trade-in program?

1 Like
6

@Ben - Two things:

  1. That’s great news about V2 of the hub. Can’t wait to get one.
  2. You are a TITAN of the forum. Your speedy responses are both helpful and brutally efficient. Good work!

Ok - one more thing: Will there be any advantage to keeping my old hub and the new one? Or, can I just sell the old one to cover some of the cost of the new one?

1 Like
7

Thank you Ben. I think I’ll hold off and see how the product matures.

Mike

8

I agree… this is a deal breaker. Can’t see any good reason to need an internet connection on all the time.
In fact I am not comfortable with an outside company having the ability to unlock my home… I really thought Smarthings was a standalone zWave controller.
I guess I will have to roll my own with either a Aeon Zwave USB stick on my mac mini or a RaZberry board with the Raspberry Pi

9

This is a deal breaker indeed. Home automation should work whether you have internet or not, especially for vacation mode and such. When I’m away I can’t debug internet connection problems. Also, while it is a nice addon to get the notifications on my smart phone from anywhere - this is secondary to automation just working.
Technically speaking, there’s absolutely no need for a Server to be in the loop unless of course you want to relay commands and status via the internet. I’m surprised that they have this requirement even for stand alone automated operation.
I currently use an Aeon Stick with Openzwave and looking for a commercial product as I don’t get time to add support for the newer devices. I was hoping Smartthings would be the one but I have to continue the search.

10

All right then… this calls for some elbow grease :slight_smile:
Will try to put together a Razberry Pi over the November holidays

11

Yeah, it’s not a big deal to hook up a ZWave stick to a comp. the question is can you do that and an iPhone/Android app to control it and a cloud service to access it remotely and an ability to write plug-ins and integrate 200 devices? If so, I’m with you. :smile:

12

Will v2 just be a firmware update, or a whole new set of hardware?

13

There will be a new hub involved, in part becuase we need to beef up the processor to handle the local commands.

14

I am currently travelling. My internet went down for a couple of days. It has now be restored but I cannot check my multi sensors on line. Not much use to me now are they?

15

Are you able to provide any rough idea of an ETA for v2? I really like what you guys have done so far but would definitely like some level of local capability (and maybe Bluetooth as well).

ETA: Never mind, I just saw your post on another thread about Q1 2015.

16

Well… I am not really looking to hookup 200 devices. Just control my door lock, check the garage door opener, control the thermostat and pull in stats from the energy meter.
However… I can see mission creep coming on :slight_smile:

1 Like
17

I want to check on hub V2 status because I can’t inflict Smartthings on my family if it’s overly dependent upon connecting to cloud servers somewhere far far away.

This is a reminder that the #1 biggest problem with today’s Internet is that it is too reliable – just like too much cleanliness leads to a dysfunctional immune system.

Is there any technical documentation on the V2 hub?

18

No we do not have this yet. This will be the place to find it (linking from our docs most likely) when we do release such documentation

19

In the meantime can I beg or plea for one little fix – the ability to see the names of the devices without having to shake the device? That simply doesn’t work and can’t be that hard to fix can it? Please. Pretty please. Desperately please?

1 Like
20

Exhaustively (and, dare I say, desperately) covered, but not resolved, in this Topic linked below… Come and join the conversation…