Piston to catch devices disappearing from SmartThings

#1

1) Give a description of the problem
Devices are disappearing out of ST leaving only IDs in Webcore routines. Need a way to detect when this happens.

2) What is the expected behaviour?
Webcore alert when a device goes missing from ST

3) What is happening/not happening?
I’m not sure if WebCore can do a comparison against these dead IDs that remain after ST loses the devices.

I have had 6 SmartThings devices mysteriously drop out of SmartThings over the last few weeks. They have fully disappeared from the ST app. I only find out when routines stop running or stop taking voice commands from Alexa and then someone in the family complains about it and I have to investigate. In the Webcore routines I had them in, these devices show as just an ID like this:

stwebcore1
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I would like to see if I can do the following:

  1. Webcore routine runs every 1 hour and collects all device names in ST into an array variable
  2. The routine checks the current device names against the names in the variable from the previous run
  3. If a discrepancy, such as this ID showing up in the list of devices, then send an email alert with the discrepancies detected.

I’m not very good at designing routines so appreciate any help and guidance if something like this is possible. Thank you.

#2

I m not sure it is possible to track devices that disappear but I will leave that for the experts on this forum to respond to that.

I guess I should ask… what devices have disappeared?

#3

I’ve had 2 GE in-wall switches, 1 smart plug, and 4 Hue lightbulbs disappear from ST in the last few weeks.

#4

I may be wrong with this, but I have a suspicion that a piston does not run at all if it contains any orphaned/deleted devices.

It may be worth testing this if you can first. I’m not sure how you could achieve what you’re trying to do. I’d be concerned why devices are disappearing. Have you made any changes?

#5

If it is a trigger, you are right. An orphaned device cannot fire a piston.
If it is a condition, then the rest of the piston should still function.
If it is grouped in an action, then that single device will not do the Task