How often do your pistons not fire when they should?

#1

I’m new to ST (but very experienced at more advanced home automation), and am trying to understand how reliable webCore/SmarThings/Pistons are.

My question is, if all things are 100% set properly, and a piston should fire based on an event, how often does it not?

Lets assume that none of this is the case:

  • A battery is running low
  • The piston code is shoddy
  • A recent update changed something
  • Your internet is down
  • Your power is out
  • SmartThings is down

In other words, all conditions are perfect and a piston SHOULD execute the tasks it is set to do, does it always work? Yes or No, and if No, what % of the time would you guess that it does not?

Edit, I’d also be interested in user experience on how often SmartThings is down, if anyone has any feedback there.

Happens Daily, doesn't
#2

If you also rule out:

  • Congested home networks
  • Poorly laid out mesh networks
  • Sloppy Device Handlers, and
  • Many things trying to happen simultaneously

… then I say webCoRE has been 100% rock solid reliable. Every. Single. Time.
(notice in those 10 reasons that webCORE is only ‘responsible’ for one of them - updating)

In my many thousands of pistons (and too many houses to count), any errors I have seen have always been because of one of the above 10 reasons…

The only exception I can recall is when webCoRE’s “Fuel Stream” server went down briefly, but that is only a visual graph, so it had no impact on my SmartHome whatsoever.

By the way, when I said “Shoddy piston code” earlier, I did not mean that in a negative way. There is a lot happening behind the scenes, and it just takes us a bit of time to see what code works in which scenario…
(and of course, each house has different goals & requirements, so no two pistons will ever be the same)

Thankfully, the community here is one of the best I have ever seen!

#3

Earlier conversation we had I said 5% of the time my pistons won’t do what they supposed to do…
But since you are experienced in more advanced coding, I bet your pistons are going to have a way better results.
hell I just figured out how to use the global variables LOL

Yes lots of things will change the experience.
For instance I have 6ph hue light bulbs in my office and they are controlled with motion sensors (and a piston)
Now, for some reason 5% of the time, IF NO MOTION all lights go OFF BUT, one light bulb just comes back on for no reason.
ST? maybe
Signal problem? maybe
Piston problem - I doubt it

But I would love to hear from more people what their experiences like with pistons.