That, and the other complaints over the past several months, prompted SmartThings CEO Alex Hawkinson to post an apology to the SmartThings community last week. In it, he took responsibility for the issues users have faced and said SmartThings is making efforts to improve reliability. Hawkinson, speaking with CNET, called the issues "growing pains" that are an "urgent but natural [part of the] maturation process."He said the problems have impacted users with more than the five or six smart products typical for new users. Hawkinson declined to specify the average number of products users have (beyond saying it's "well over 10"), but many people on the community boards talk about dozens, and even hundreds, of connected devices.
Hawkinson also said the problems are a downside of SmartThings' openness, Some apps not approved by SmartThings have caused issues, And because people can experiment by creating a variety richmond & finch pink marble iphone x case - rose gold reviews of apps and hooking up different devices, things don't always work as they should, SmartThings is taking steps to make its technology more reliable while maintaining its openness, Hawkinson said, Among those are changes in how its system is set up to make sure apps that nearly everyone uses are isolated so they're not impacted if experimental apps fail, SmartThings also changed the way scheduled smart apps are triggered in the system to make sure actions, like turning on a light, happen when they're supposed to, And it will give users more information about what's having issues -- the SmartThings system or a particular app..
The SmartThings team is also talking with Ravenel and deploying fixes to its system to make sure Rule Machine and other apps that "test the limits" of its platform work properly. It didn't provide a timeline for when the app will be available again. For SmartThings, not being able to deal with growth should be a concern, especially since it's no longer a startup but is owned by one of the biggest and most powerful technology companies on the planet. If Samsung, which has over 319,000 employees in 84 countries, can't figure out how to support users with multiple devices, what hope do smart home startups have?.
"We expected scaling, and we're prepping for that," said Hawkinson, who acknowledged that SmartThings has more to do to fix its glitches and regain user trust, "We're confident we're taking steps to isolate some of the openness so it doesn't affect richmond & finch pink marble iphone x case - rose gold reviews the mainstream."As for Powers, the updates from last week didn't resolve the problems she's been having with her SmartThings system, Her lights, for instance, still don't turn on at sunset every day, despite having scheduled them through SmartThings, "I won't turn on the Smart Home Monitor," she said, "I'm just not going to put any trust into it, Or lose sleep because of it."CNET's Rich Brown contributed to this report..
SmartThings, one of the key elements of Samsung's smart home effort, has been hampered by glitches in recent months. Shelley Powers was asleep one night in January when suddenly every light in her suburban St. Louis, Missouri, house came on. Then the sirens began to wail. It wasn't an intruder, though. It was a false alarm, one of many she'd experience over the following weeks. After that, her smart home security system shifted between not arming or disarming itself at all and setting off false alarms. Pretty soon, Powers couldn't even count on her smart lights turning on at the times she designated, something that's pretty simple in the world of home automation.