What is the point of Offline Mode, am I forgetting to turn something on?

Woke up this morning and saw my phone told me my hub has gone offline. So, I got out of bed and was just hoping my system was doing its normal stuff in the background without notifications. My lamp in my room ended up turning on, just on a slight delay more than normal. Normally, when motion happens in my room in the morning the house turns on the alarm and disarms (Good Morning). The lamp turned on, so I assumed it was good to go out into the home. I went to my modem and router downstairs and no alarms. I restarted my modem and router and then hit the button on the hub. Hub reconnected and I moved and the alarm started going off.

Two problems here:

  • Alarm didn’t sound when I went downstairs (the system clearly didn’t perform the good morning actions while offline)
  • BIGGER PROBLEM: Why did the system not function as normal while offline? The only thing that I would expect not to work is Mobile phone presence sensors or anything outside the system (IFTTT).

I bought v2 because if the power goes out and the internet goes out, my security system should continue to work.

1 Like

Unfortunately the only thing running local right now is Smart Lighting smartapps. Even that’s very limited. So yeah, I feel your pain.

2 Likes

and some SHM(smart home monitor), but yeah there should be more…

2 Likes

You aren’t the first to buy the ST marketing magic of running local…

1 Like

Unfortunately, that’s not how smartthings is currently designed.

Only some devices are eligible to run locally. (For example, the hue bridge/smart things integration does not currently run if your hub is not connected to your ST cloud account.)

And only a very few smartapps are eligible to run locally, basically smart lights automations and a little bit of SHM.

And even then, being eligible to run locally isn’t the same as saying a specific rule will run locally. The smart app has to be eligible to run locally and it has to include only devices which are also eligible to run locally. So you could set up a smart lighting automation that did not run when the cloud connection was broken because it included a hue bulb.

To see exactly what is eligible to run locally on your own account, see the following links:

http://thingsthataresmart.wiki/index.php?title=FAQ

1 Like

We should also note that unlike most security systems, at present the smart things mobile app has no way of talking to the hub if the cloud connection is not available. That means you will not be able to arm/disarm SHM, or turn anything else off or on that doesn’t have a physical switch that is running locally.

In addition, SmartThings has no way of sending notifications when the cloud connection is not available. This is different from many security systems which offer direct cellular communications. All of SmartThings notifications are processed from the cloud.

I know when SHM was first released in November 2015, all the notifications would stack up and then when cloud communications were restored, they would all be sent at once. So you might be getting a message several hours after the event actually occurred. I don’t know if it still works that way, it might be worth testing.

1 Like