Why is this system so broke

Apps & Clients Mobile Tips & Tricks
122

I just sent this request. Am I doing this right? I never get a response.

1155×380 43.1 KB

124

I also PM you the ticket #. Tomorrow I will be glad to post all the ticket numbers I opened. No one ever responds.

1 Like
125

I responded to the questions that were asked in the ticket. Today I spent time working on fixing the bulb that the Smart things system can not find. This is what I did once again.

  • Went into the web interface and renamed the bulb, logout, login, rename the bulb back. This works 50% of the time. This time it failed.

  • Put the bulb in pair mode and try to connected it to the SmartThings hub. It showed up a new device but when I turn it on and off it fails. I tried this maybe 5 times.

  • Deleted the bulb from the system using the Smarthings App. When you do this you have to remove it from Smart Lighting (smart app). You can not have a Smart Light function with out having at lease one device. So I use a different bulb as a place holder. Then I tried to pair it again. It failed.

I have learned that if you are persistant the last step will work if you try it enough times. I took may 12 times and it conntected. I added it to the old rule and replaced the placeholder bulb. WORKS!!!

It is crazy that I and others have to play these games every week. Every time happens it is a different bulb.

1 Like
126

This morning all the inside lights turned off at sun rise but non of the out side lights turned off. The good thing is non of the outside bulbs were removed from the system. That happens most of the times when the system fails to follow its schedule.

127

This morning my morning routines on my office hub (v2) did not work right and set off the alarms.

At home (v1) it worked fine.

SMH.

128

This morning my routines didn’t work correctly either, specially the thermostat programming. V1 hub.

129

All my lights turned on today at sunset. That is a good start. I know with Smarthing I can never go more than 7 days without a failure that makes me take at leaste 1 hour out of my life to fix it.

I have a super hi-tech car that never fails me. This system turns my light bulbs on and off and it fails me every few days. It has no mechanical parts. Just a bad implementation.

130

Today all my outside bulbs turned on at sunset, all nine. My second office turned on at sunset. The family room failed to turn on. I am now getting failures every day. It used to be every 5-7 days. Why is this system so broke!!!

131

We have been out of town for a few days. Tonight my family room bulb did not come on. Tomorrow I will delete the schedule and try it again.

132

I see many post on failures of all types and the post are long and scattered with comments. i don’t see any consolidated post with users listing the devices, servers, fw versions, rules ect ect that are failing. A moderator should start a thread and keep the thread clean so users can list exactly what failed with details to see if there is any thing that stands out. I have been using ST since march with a mixed bag of devices and rules with no problems so far (knock on wood)

just a suggestion 


133

Things are somewhat more organized in the “known issues” section of the community – created wiki, although we do need more people to contribute there:

http://thingsthataresmart.wiki/index.php?title=Category:Known_System_Issues

134

We have been traveling for 3 weeks on business and vacation. We got home yesterday and everything worked fine. Today the outside lights did not turn on at sunset. This system is so broke!!!

All I want is a system to turn my outside lights on and off at dusk and dawn. If this system can not do that why would anyone trust it to do anything more???

135

I know you’ve had the same issues for many months now, which I’m sure is very frustrating.

But honestly, if all you need is lights on a schedule, there are many reliable alternatives for that. You don’t have to deal with Smartthings at all. So why keep suffering?

2 Likes
136

I get the feeling that you are saying that I should just give up on SmartThings because it will never be fixed. Is that what everyone is doing? Moving on to something that works? What should I buy?

I am still shocked that in 2016 a system does not exist that can turn light bulbs on and off twice a day reliability.

137

Everybodies issues and needs are different.
I have Fibaro Motion Sensors and Dimmers, Sonos speakers, ST Motion sensors, our phones as presence sensors, WeMo Switches, Insight and bulbs and run them all through ST using Smart Lighting and CoRE. I’m afraid you will probably not like this but my system has been running faultlessly since the hub was upgarded 2 months ago.

Probably not what you want to hear but if I was asked about this system I would say it was very good but to be aware that the system is cloud based and if you use an internet connection that is a bit flakey, then you will have issues. (Not saying this is your issue BTW).

I run rules to turn lights on and off while I am away to give the impression that someone is in. Brilliant.

Even my wife is now impressed
and that says something. :wink:

1 Like
138

System has been working very well for me. Nearly my whole house is on motion triggered lights as well as lights that turn off/on on sunset. I would say overall my success rate is over 97%.

Still think your ‘weak link’ is the GE bulbs. Seems like some bulbs in large meshes have many points of failure.

1 Like
139

GE Link bulbs are the express reason why Philips originally cut off access to non-Hue bulbs late last year (a decision they later reversed after public pressure). The GE bulbs are unreliable and have poorly implemented their Zigbee stack and they have problems with every platform.

They are cheap for a reason folks. Do your Hue bulbs behave in this way? No? Then it might not be SmartThings that’s the problem.

3 Likes
140

Nope. Quite the opposite - I keep adding devices. Unlike your experiences, my outside soffitt lights and garage carriage lights, as well as 3 outside outlets turn on and off with sunset and sunrise so reliably that I can’t remember any recent failure - even after replacing my hub a few weeks back - and through the entire life of an early release of hub v2, and the entire life my hub v1 was in service. My sunset/sunrise automation was one of the first things I did with hub v1, and that was very soon after I got it in December 2013. Sure, during some major ST incidents not so long ago I was having problems with everything like lots or people, but it’s always come back just fine.

A point to note is that I do not use bulbs like the way you do. My bulbs are all in lamps. The older GE ones are flaky, but my newer ones have been solid performers. Even better are Hue and Osrams (opinions vary). If you’re having so many problems with those bulbs, can’t you replace the switch and use dumb bulbs?

As @luma said:

141

Are you having this issue with any other type of bulb besides GE Links? Are you also saying that you are using those outdoors?

142

My outdoor GE light bulbs have come on at sunset and turned off at sunrise for months. Is very rare that they forget to turn on, and that usually happens after an update. Going into Smart Lighting and clicking done, or in ide and clicking update takes care of that. I know that GE bulbs are not officially supported devices so I handle them in that way, meaning I don’t expect them to work great in ST. My bulbs are connected to ST through Hue bridge. And Smart Lighting doesnt actually turn them on, it turns on a zwave. From there, I handle the bulbs all night with motion. The reason I am doing this is to take advantage of the local processing and hub scheduler, which seems a lot more reliable than the cloud.