wow, next there will be analyst and project managers.
Can you elaborate?
Iām aware of the slack channels, but from what Iāve seen, itās disorganized and mostly used to joke around and post photos. Iāve found that people in the community tend to be more helpful.
The unreliability of ST is frustrating for developers, but so is the lack of support. Iāve found that ST employees initially respond to a post, but as soon as you ask them something theyāre unable/unwilling to answer, they disappear.
Iāve been trying to get answers to a list of questions related to storing images and the carousel tile for 2 weeks. The only information Iāve been provided is that the storeImage api is no longer supported, it doesnāt have a replacement because ST only supports cameras that do live streaming, and thereās no sample code that shows how to live stream video in a device handler.
Well do it! Get off the pot, already Benji! YOU keep complaining about the negativity in the community, so if you donāt like itā¦ thenā¦???
And stop telling others to. Look Benji, I will continue to point out issues and shed light on negative issues with ST as long as I feel it is in fact the BEST concept in SmartHome there is, or until the execution of that concept is fixed.
When either of those changes, so will I.
Ummm boy, yessum them boots sure do tastes good as I lick em sirā¦ ummm boyā¦
And then the tech thatās self taught with a high school diploma will come along and fix all of it, right, the first time.
The Slack is exactly what Iām talking about but I guess if you havenāt spent enough time there then thatās the impression youād get of the place when in fact if and when the conversation gets serious, so do the ST employees. Plenty of people get help there but there will be some questions that they canāt answer, thatās the nature of any company.
But Iām guessing the Slack channels is just the start of things to come.
Iām not hogging the potty, Iām quite happy where I am 
Thereās pointing out issues and the negative aspects of ST which weāre all happy to do and then there has been the behavior of this community, two separate things oh and thanks for the pic, youāll get the irony of whoās who at some point Iām sure
Which one is it? I sure am confused.
Do you like the community or do you dislike visiting it/it is the worst part of ST?
Thatās okay, I understand, let me help you.
I like the ST platform, I dislike what this ācommunityā has become. These two things are not the same.
That clear things up for you?
It never was unclear.
If you donāt like the community why are you here? After all, your motto is - shit or get of the pot. You consistently admonish those that complain about the platform and ask why they continue to use it if they donāt like it. So, why is it okay for you to dislike the community but continue participation? Seems you want it both ways, Benji.
Oh thank you Benji. I am sure that you arenāt being condescending here, clearly only a helpful āPOSITIVEā community member is all.
You quoted me in reference to the platform, not the community, clearly there was some confusion.
A somewhat valid point but thankfully there are still positive minded people here who I do come here for, otherwise the terrorists win
Oh the irony, coming from the person who continually compares me to a lapdog for a raciest figure. I could take offense but thatās what you want
Your tone set the pace of this particular conversation, not mine. Have a good one!
I may not have learned much but that sure was entertaining!
So now maybe you get why people complain about the platform issues but continue to use it??? MAYBE?
As I said, best concept in smart home there is. Terrible execution. Complacency breeds mediocrity, or in this case near uselessness.
However, there are some positive aspects of the platform that we are all here for. And if we donāt keep complaining until it is fixed then the complacent pacifists win.
Perhaps you can see the OBVIOUS parallels I have been pointing out now for months.
The existence of far worse products does not excuse broken functions in this product. Even if this is the BEST or the ONLY product, complaining about functionality that is broken is still valid despite what you may believe. Make things better. Do not be complacent. SmartThings needs a kick in the arse, not a daily kumbaya. I am certain several staffers have agreed, including Ben.
No salesmanā¦
Letās try and keep the conversation constructive everyone. Getting more than a few flags about this thread. Iāll keep it open for now but if we continue to get flags Iāll close it.
This was supposed to be my happy thread, dang it!
The natives get restless and start cannibalizing when we donāt have fresh meat in the form of new apps or problems. The current problems (SHM) are stale. 
SHM? Is that a new app? Iāve never tried it! Whatās it do? I was reading sure threads about it but it sounds like itās a type of crash test appā¦ Kind of like a test crash dummyā¦ It finds all if the weaknesses in your systemā¦ But at 2am.
It will fire sirens in the middle of the night I hear. Good times.
Mine would get stuck on armed. Happened about four times. Discovered the workaround the second time it happened. My system is all about notification so it was just an annoyance.
There are two big problems that havenāt really been mentioned. (And for the record, I count as a project manager and the high-school educated tech. And sysadm. And occasional developer. So you can all love or hate me accordingly 
The first issue is that the big boys are playing in this field. Google and Amazon are both trying to take over this space, and they are absolutely making sure their platform doesnāt have these issues. Slower feature adoption rate but bigger lock-in and much, much better testing. (And back-end scaling/stability is their core business already.) The only way to fix that is to make their proprietary solutions so unthinkable to the average customer that they donāt eat the market. Beat them at stability and hw/sw support.
The other big problem plays into the first and was somewhat stated above: lack of proper real-world testing. There is an easy answer, something already used by competitors (micasa). Set up a beta prerelease channel that developers and power users can join to make sure their kit stays working. It requires a whole ton more communication and interaction from Samsung, and even (gasp!) helping fix app bugs in 3rd party apps. The platform developers will have to participate directly. Not marketing, not sales, not PR, but actual engineers. Testing, even full coverage api testing, wonāt ever do as much as one guy with a weird setup. (Even, or especially, if that guy is not a developer.)
It also requires cleaning up the release process so that members of that channel can upgrade/downgrade at will. If a dev gets locked in, āI canāt fix that until the September releaseā is a terrible answerā¦ (Done right, with true corporate support and intent, it would also include hardware samples to appropriate devs based on their ability to help with that particular unit.)
Not disagreeing with you hereā¦ but some comments belowā¦ And I wont go in to the fundamental flaw that is the system architecture, for ST to become reliable local processing must be enabled for all apps or at least having the ability for the user to enable itā¦
Amazon work on the basis of under promise over achieve, this works well but Google are far from perfect too, Nest has had itās fair share of issues and that is a far less complicated beastā¦
I donāt think this should be the case, especially at the moment, the system has been developed as a community system, so this support should be mostly if not entirely from the community (the knowledge and willingness is/was already there).
However the limited resource Samsung have should be focused on documenting system functionality for the community, communicating any changes to this functionality (in advance of the change taking place), ensuring that the documented functionality works as documented and reliably.
If those 3 points are met then the community would easily manage the rest, raising tickets to Samsung support about an app that has been developed by another user of the service would be a nightmare. I donāt think is a useful use of resource, although there should be some developers on the forum who are promoted to an elevated level who have the facility to engage directly with the internal Samsung team to identify and resolve issues identified with the platform (not the code).
Nest hasnāt had issues to the level of SmartThings. (Colloquially, ST was so bad here that I bought a v2 because of the promise that the apps will run locally even when the servers were down. As pointed out basically everywhere, and proven very strongly after my changeover in November, that is 99% false.)
Howās that working out these days? And more to the point, how can the community step up and fix issues such as the state corruption that prompted this whole mess?
If, by now, they donāt have full-coverage API testing in place then basically nothing will help them. Their current testing flat isnāt working. Without large-scale real-world testing, by both app devs and power/bleeding-edge users, nothing will change. (Actuallyā¦ lets rephrase that in light of the rest of this thread. Nothing has changed. Releases still break tons of apps. Infrastructure āupgradesā are hit or miss, mostly miss. On a regular basis, bog standard official-app functions like āpush button on phone, receive light in roomā involve crossing fingers and hoping.)
Somewhat unrelated, but I just looked to see when I switched from VeraLite. I got my ST v1 hub in May of last year. I lost some features right out of the box (delays, ecobee support, complex scheduling, etc) but āthat is OK, Samsung is less risky than a tiny hole-in-the-wall company!ā Of course, it was so unreliable (or dependent on unreliable infrastructure) that I bought a v2 in November. āV1 was a mistake, I should have waited for the one that does basic functions autonomously like the old controller did.ā If anything, since then it has been worse. All the CEO/marketing/āoutreachā handwaving about improvements is good, but not particularly useful when my lights wonāt turn on and my coffee wonāt brew.