Why is this system so broke

This just happen to me now. All my outside lights came on at 5:15. They are set for sunset. Here is what I show for sunset in my dashboard.

This is a snap shot of the last status of the bulbs.

That shows that they changed state 10 minutes ago. Around 30 min early

What does that mean? Is the Smarthings Scheduler in the cloud broke? Or is there something else?

Yesā€¦check this thread out

Yes. It has been for well over a year.

My outside lights did not turn off this morning. That is like 5 days in a row. It used to fail maybe once every 4 days. Now it is every day. There is no way it is an interference issue. 100% of the time I can turn them on and off with my phone. It is a scheduling issue.

Yes. I see the problem too.

Another day when my lights did not turn off at sunset. It almost seams that sunset no longer works in the system

Itā€™s a long-standing problem. Maybe two years now? As has been mentioned previously in this thread, the SmartThings scheduler is broken. They are working on a replacement.

@Judgless,

Iā€™m really not sure whatā€™s going on with your Smart Lighting app, but Iā€™ve had a Smart Lighting rule set up since day 1 of itā€™s release for turning on/off my outside lights at sunset/sunrise. Prior to Smart Lighting, I did the same thing within the Lights & Switches dashboard. I rely on this every single day (going on 2 years now), and only once it did not work. Do you have anything odd happening with multiple rules, or modes, or zwave/zigbee mesh issues?

There are many ways for this to be the caseā€¦ my personal favorite (as it has bit me several times) is multiple smartapps that do slightly different things to the same devices. The automations made sense individually but as they triggered in real time turned into a complete mess. Some of these were from my own smartappsā€¦ live and learnā€¦ Forgetting that zwave/ZigBee devices do have a limited range seams to be pretty common on the threads as well as not wanting to do proper wiring(neurtral).
As the scheduler has been flaky for a while there are ways around this. I have found sunrise/sunset +1 or +2 mins is more reliable than simply sunrise/sunset. IDK why Rules Machine seams more reliable than Smartlighting, but it has been my experience and is an option. Also IFTTT can trigger sunrise/sunset events too. Finally if sunrise/sunset is very serious for youā€¦ use all 3. ie IFTTT for sunrise/sunset, Smartlighting for sunrise/sunset +2 and Rules machine for sunrise/sunset +4. There are lots of ways to skin a cat, sometimes you need to use all of themā€¦ wisely :wink:

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Every once in a while one of my GE Link bulbs will behave this way. I find that turning off the physical power switch for 30 seconds, then turning it on fixes this. YMMV.

My GE Link bulbs are not reliable either ā€“ but I donā€™t think itā€™s really the bulbsā€™ fault. For months and months, they worked greatā€¦ then out of no where, I had to reset them with the power switch dailyā€¦ then no change on my part, after a few weeks of daily headaches, they just started magically working again. I canā€™t see how thatā€™s a bulb issueā€¦ I believe there was a minor hub update in that timeframe. Now my closet lights are seamless with the door opening, like they should be. I donā€™t trust them enough for anywhere else in the house though. If I have additional issues, you can bet they will end up on my Hue hub.

I added an offset of 2 min and it worked two days in a row. Prior to that it failed 8 days in a row.

I was out of town for 3 weeks and did not work on the issue. Changing the offset started causing the lights not to turn off at sunrise. I started playing with an different offsets for both. It finally started working reliably everyday.

I have had an issue with one bulb. It use to work 50% of the time. It would work 100% if I used the app to turn it on or off. I have replaced the bulb twice and it did the same thing. I replaced it a third time and the new bulb would pair but it always showed up as a ā€˜Thingā€™. I went to the ST web site and forced it to be a GE bulb and it started working.

I will give an update in a week. It is crazy the amount of games I have had to play to get this to work.

Something to consider is that you maybe need a repeater to reach the device location.
I have approximately 53 connected devices and only the zigbee devices in the rear of my house would disconnect.
I swapped a z-wave ge wall dimmer for a zigbee ge wall dimmer and none of my devices have disconnected since.
I tried multiple zigbee smart plugs and none of them seemed like they repeated the signal.
Only the GE wall dimmer worked for me.

The only light that I am still having an issue with is about 8 ft from the hub. Do you think a repeater would help?

Over the last 6 days everything has worked except two issues. One night I lost internet access for 15 min. It came back at 1:00am and the out lights were still on. At sunrise they never turned off.

A different night the one bulb I have replaced 3 times did not come on. All the other nights it did come on

How far is it from your wifi router? Wi-Fi signals can interfere with Zigbee, so the closer the bulb is to the Wi-Fi router, or a Wi-Fi access point, the more likely it is to lose messages dUe to Wifi interference.

Try temporarily moving the bulb to the next room and see if that improves reliability. If it does, it may need more space from the Wi-Fi router.

My lights have been working fine the last 19 days. I think 100%.

Last night the light one in my family room stopped turning on. Using the SmartThings phone apps I could not turn it on or off. I tried re pairing the light. It did not work. I removed the light from the smart apps and the system. I tried to re pair again. It goes through the pairing process but SmartThings hub never finds the bulb. I am going to order another bulb. This is probably the 15th zigbee bulb I had to replace.

Tonight I had the same issue with another light in another room. It randomly stopped working and it will no longer pair with the hub. This is the worse home automation system out. Who has time for all these problems?

This morning. It showed new device. My family room light was found and I added to the network and re setup the rules.

The other light is still missing. It is 4 feet from the SmartThings hub. It is crazy how broke this system is.