Source
r/homeautomation•
Jessassin

Just bought a SmartThings hub & accessories - should I be worried?

SMART THINGS

Was hoping I could get some feedback... In the last couple of days, I purchased the SmartThings "Home monitoring kit" which includes a hub, two contact sensors, a motion sensor, and a plug switch. I also purchased a few Ecolink Z-Wave contact sensors, to wire to my existing hardwired sensors), and a set of 12 z-wave (I think) bulbs to go with the system.

Of course, after purchasing everything, I started reading up on this sub and discovered tons of threads of people complaining that their hubs were acting up, sounding like the cloud service infrastructure was to blame.

I have not yet set up my hub yet. I still have the opportunity to return it. Should I? If so, what alternatives should I look into?

Any input would be very appreciated.

Posted Apr 13, 2016, 8:03 PM UTC

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DianogaSmartThings Employee•

Note: I work for SmartThings but do not speak on their behalf

Now is definitely a rough time to get started with SmartThings. Reliability isn't anywhere near what we want. My experience in my own home has actually been pretty good for the past few weeks (much improved since we rolled out the new scheduler) and I believe that lines up with the majority of customers. There are many people who are still seeing regular issues and that is what you're seeing on the forums.

If you aren't ok with a degree of instability for now, it's probably worth returning SmartThings and either looking at other solutions (others can point you in good directions) or just waiting for our platform to stabilize. I can say that we have every engineer within SmartThings working to fix the reliability problem. There will be regular improvements coming as quickly as we can safely make them.

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sfryder08•

Either way, thanks for speaking. I know there's a lot of instability right now, and a lot of anger within the community. As a developer myself though, I get it that things go wrong, and I realize that I'm essentially a beta tester for the platform at this point. I can deal with the issues as they happen, and nothing I'm doing with ST is 100% essential. If it goes down for a few hours, I can deal.

That said, I have the time and know how to tinker. There's no way in hell I would recommend this for my parents, or someone with no technical capabilities. It's a cool platform and I see a lot of potential, but this is still a niche product and in no way meant for mainstream consumption.

Any details for what we can expect at the developer conference? No need to spill any major announcements or anything, but just wondering how much SmartThings will be discussed.

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DianogaSmartThings Employee•

I wouldn't recommend it for non-technical users either. I hope to change that someday, but there is a ton of work before we get there.

As far as SDC goes, my knowledge is pretty limited. I know we'll have a presence there. I think it will even be a heavy presence. As far as what all that entails, I have no idea.

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JessassinOPSmartThings•

I appreciate the input. And I appreciate what seems to be an honest response.

I can understand peoples anger towards things they expect to work - especially when it seems a lot of people are relying on the service for DIY alarm systems and such. It is good to hear that improvements are being made, and is extremely comforting that employees of the product use the product themselves. Some of the best software out there is developed in the same fashion.

Thanks again for the input.

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DianogaSmartThings Employee•

I've actually been using SmartThings since the Kickstarter shipped. I have about 60 devices currently connected and a bunch more that I haven't had time to setup since moving. I definitely feel the pain when the platform doesn't perform. Almost all SmartThings employees are also running setups in their own homes to varying extents.

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sfryder08•

The developer community for SmartThings is basically on strike right now, the hub can be unreliable sometimes to the point of uselessness, and the devs at Samsung aren't helping much either. Word on the street through this recent revolt has lit a fire under their asses.

That said, its still probably the easiest and best off the shelf solution you can get.

The Samsung Developer Conference is coming up in ~2 weeks, and I'm hoping these issues will be addressed.

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jryanishere•

It's been a MONTH of instability. A month! That is just ridiculous for a commercial product. I love ST, but I lost all hope. I just finished the full migration to HomeSeer. I am so much happier with stuff working.

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JessassinOPSmartThings•

Appreciate the input. The "dev strike" is what promoted me to make this post.

That said, I did research on several "ecosystems" and SmartThings seemed to be the simplest overall for what I wanted to do. Hopefully it isn't as big of a deal as some have made it seem. I know that negative comments are often the loudest, and hopefully that is all that is happening here.

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sfryder08•

Yeah, home automation is still in its infancy, and left to those with the time, energy, and know-how to make it all work. If you're not a technically savvy person, I wouldn't get involved with any ecosystem at this point.

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JessassinOPSmartThings•

If I wasn't tech-savvy, I wouldn't even consider it. I know "general consumer" HA is still a long ways away, but I do consider myself an early adopter of sorts. I knew some of the risks before I made the initial investment. I see this as more of a conversation piece / toy than something that will be very useful - at least to start with.

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lostboyof1972•

I don't think that's true. I think HA is closer to a shiftless, late-20's/early 30's college dropout living on his mom's couch and he needs to get his shit together, find a job and settle down with someone nice.*

Some of the problems that were existent back in the mid-1980s are still present just with different names. X10, I'm looking at you and your crappy Commodore-64 scheduling software.

*Male pronouns used, as I didn't want to incur ire of the SJWs by even allowing the implication that females could be less than reliable.

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sweeep11•

I have not had any trouble with ST at all for the past 2 months that I've owned it. I think it just depends on your luck at this point.

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Dragonkeeper2004•

Same here!

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MaIakai•

Ditto. I've used it constantly for the past 6 months. Only thing that stopped working was schedules for a short while.

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JessassinOPSmartThings•

Glad to hear you haven't had too many issues. I appreciate the input.

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JessassinOPSmartThings•

Great to hear! Appreciate the input. Hopefully I have better luck than others

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Captriker•

same here.

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shakuyiSmartThings•

I set up my ST hub about 3 months ago and have over 70 connected devices. Asides from the random rule not firing off or device needing to be reset nothing has caused me pain to the point where I want to return it. Since the new scheduler came out a massive improvement came. True there are still issues but do your research before giving up on it. You will quickly learn that unless you do DIY and do all the coding (if you have time) that ST is the way to go. Wink is a lot slower and does not support nearly as many devices as ST does. VeraPlus seems to have pretty poor UI in comparison and the hub was just released so I would hold off and see how many people like it. Can't really speak for the others but take a look at the ST community as well. You will see the staff is very responsive. I am very hopeful that things will continue to improve with each update and hopefully they can get Rule Machine back on track. Looking forward to SDC and hopefully it brings some good announcements.

Always remember the complainers will outnumber the satisfied customers.

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nyvram-_-Wink hot tamale•

Wink is a lot slower and does not support nearly as many devices as ST does.

you can be passionate about your hub without trashing a different one. there are those of us who use wink and have done just as many creative things as you have and haven't run into any unsupported devices yet.

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cmlaney•

I had a wink before I switched to smartthings. It was definitely slower, noticeably so, at the time, but I've heard the platform has improved since then. He may not have been trashing wink, he was just pointing out what has been true until recently.

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JessassinOPSmartThings•

Really appreciate the input - especially from someone with a larger deployment. The reason I chose SmartThings was how dead simple it seemed to set up, and the incredible flexibility it offered.

Hopefully I do not run in to too many issues, but given the rest of the input in this thread, I think my best bet is to still stick with SmartThings, especially given that it could still get better.

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buttgers•

I'll throw my hat into the ring. I just picked up the ST hub a week ago. It's better than I expected, but I can definitely see everyone's point of contention with it. That said, for some odd reason my hub went offline despite being connected to the internet with the proper status light showing green (actually connected with proper IP and all).

After a day or two of troubleshooting my network and ensuring it wasn't an issue on my end I chatted with ST's online support and they got my hub back online in an hour or so after I gave them full details of my network setup and how I tried to fix it myself first.

For that I'll say SmartThings is not bad at all. Still, the hackneyed way things are integrated by an end user community that doubles as the developer community is terrible. Samsung needs to step up and get SmartThings under control.

I'm still debating on returning it, as I picked up a Wink hub anyway. If they fix their issues I won't mind buying it full price in the future.

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JessassinOPSmartThings•

Appreciate the input. Interesting that you had issues which could not be resolved on your end - wonder what happened there.

I am sure there are many things that could be better - but I imagine the same is true for other hubs/ecosystems. I think I am going to try my luck and see how it goes.

If you do decide to switch to another hub, could you let me know by replying to this comment? I would really appreciate that. Would be curious on how it works out for you.

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buttgers•

Support told me that the device was looking for a server that didn't exist or something. The support rep had to get engineering into the mix to figure it out:

Yeah, it was an issue on our end. There was missing information in our backend, so the Hub was trying to communicate to a different server. You're now all set.

They were prompt in fixing it, so that was nice.

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JessassinOPSmartThings•

That's good to hear. Hopefully I will not have to interact with their support - but it is comforting to know that their support can produce actual results given enough information.

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JonathanGraft•

I've had the 2.0 hub since November and only had 2 times where I had to reboot the system. Otherwise has been very stable and responsive.

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JessassinOPSmartThings•

Good to hear, thanks for the input.

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Killer1526•

Try out InControl(Axial). Very stable and the software is much more flexible then smartthings. I run both at the same time. Smartthings local running app still doesn't let you do something as simple as make the light level in a room a conditional when turning a light on in response to motion. You have a rely on server side apps for this. Just silly! I only use the local "smart lights" app on Smartthings and Echo integration, so I haven't been affected by the server issues. Who wants an all server side system? The sensors and switches are inside my house, I want basic stuff to work even if my internet is down!

https://www.incontrolha.com/

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[deleted]•

[deleted]

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buster31337•

I bought the SmartThings device about 6 months ago and so far have been pretty happy with it. I can tell you that after a few months of SmartThings not being able to find a solution to my custom app all of a sudden not being able to talk to a wildcard SSL webservices api, they sent me a Multi-Purpose Sensor for free. I didnt ask, they just sent it. Thats pretty cool. I think these guys are trying hard to take a beta platform and make it stable. Although the hub is $100, I do enjoy not paying a monthly fee currently and getting free technical support. The economics of this model mean that it is inevitable that there will be a monthly charge someday.

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dynamictype•

I bought ST on the day the major issues starting going down. Initially I had some pretty frustrating issues but recently it's been much better. Having said that, some of that was based on my behavior changing

For example, the biggest failure I was seeing by far was time based scheduled events failing. All other rules would fire fine (motion, presence, etc) but time based would fall. The only time based things I had was lighting so I switched to the smart app Smart Lighting which runs local on the hub and I haven't had that fail since

The other failure I've gotten but relatively rarely (once a week?) is a rule fires but not every action in it succeeds. So if a rule fires when I go to bed to turn out the lights and lock the door not every light turns off. Again though, this is rare.

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AndroidDev01Homeseer S6 Pro, Z-wave,•

CNET just linked here...

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