Lots of frustration trying to integrate SmartThings... ready to abandon this project

Third party integrations
1

So, I’m new to HA, and after 2 weeks I’m still unable to add all my devices. I’ve tried everything, and finally throwing in the towel. I’m ready to throw the whole setup into the proverbial garbage, at this point. What a pain in my ass…

Here’s the point I’m currently at:

I have Hassio installed on a RP3 B+.

I have my philips hue and google devices added without issue.

I’ve setup DuckDNS, and it’s working fine. https://MYDOMAIN.duckdns.org directs to my HA configuration from inside or outside my home network.

Here’s what I’ve been through to get to this point:

  • First I couldn’t get the Pi to connect over wifi, finally got the USB stick configured properly.
  • Then I couldn’t get duckDNS to work, becuase my ports weren’t forwarding correctly. Becasue…
  • I was being blocked by my FIOS router in front of my RT-AC68U Asus router, so I had to figure out how to completely bypass the router, and disable it from assigning IP addresses, and disable all access points.
  • So I finally get remote access working, and DNS server set up, so I’m ready to add smart things… nope!
  • Then I was getting an error when inputting the smartthings token " “SmartThings could not validate the endpoint configured in base_url. Please review the integration requirements.”
  • So, I tried to get NGINX working unsuccessfully (still have no idea how to get that working… it keeps stopping on it’s own, and the error log says:
Generating a RSA private key
..........................+++++
.........................................................+++++
writing new private key to '/data/ssl-cert-snakeoil.key'
-----
sed: bad option in substitution expression
  • So, I’ve decided to just say “fuck it” and move on. I’ve been trying to follow countless videos and tutorials, and it’s just not working. Any ideas or assistance is appreciated.

Which brings me to where I’m at now…

I’m trying to Integrate my SmartThings Z-Wave+ devices (Mostly some presence sensors and Lutron z-wave+ switches). I’ve gotten to the point that Hassio tells me to add the smart app… where I can see it, but when I select it I get an error “network or server error occured. Try again later.”

At this point, I have no idea how to proceed… HELP!

At this point, I feel absolutely defeated by Home Assistant.

2

Did you check the troubleshooting on the integrations page?


Did you follow the tutorial on the same page? Don’t use videos or any other non-official tutorials, home assistant is moving so fast and lots of these tutorials are outdated.
3

I did try that, without luck. I thought it would be an easy fix, because for the longest time I’d get the "SmartThings could not validate the endpoint configured in base_url. Please review the integration requirements.” error.

Somehow that was fixed (still have no idea how), and it asked me to add the smart app to my SmartThings list. The smart app isn’t working and I cannot install, or remove it. I’ve tried without success to run a few python scripts to remove the smart app from my list in SmartThings, as detailed here:

The troubleshoot link has an NGINX SSL configuration known to work, but I have no idea where to even type it… the guide doesn’t say, which is a bit frustrating for someone trying to learn as they go. I tried to type it into the NGIX SSL integration config section on Hassio, and that is incorrect.

I also have no idea how to ‘run the command outside your network’… using the cmd window? Python? Putty? WHAT?! I was going to use my phone as a hotspot to be ‘outside my network’, but without knowing where/how to input those two separate sections of code, I feel completely helpless.

4

Why not ditch smartthings and get a zwave usb stick?

1 Like
5

If I can’t make this work, I probably will… I just have all my device handlers all set up, and no idea how that all transfers over.

I really hate feeling defeated by something I should be able to figure out. There’s SUCH a steep learning curve for HA. Making it all work requires the end user to have knowledge/skills in areas of home networking and programming that I just haven’t had to use in… ever.

I wish that there was somewhere I could go to learn under someone via skype or in person, who really knows what they are doing.

6

You know

  1. why would you use wifi on something this important?

2 & 3. Not HA’s fault.

5 onwards - probably solved by using home assistant cloud.

1 Like
7

I was only using wifi because there’s no way to have a wired connection where I’m working to set it up. When it’s finished, it’ll sit next to the router. Either way, that was not difficult to solve.

I’m not blaming HA at all for my lack of knowledge on how to manage a home network with multiple routers and proper port forwarding with DNS setup… just mentioning that it’s part of the learning curve for most people.

I still have no idea how to remove the smartthings smart app from my list, why it’s not working in the first place, why the python scripts are not working, why I can’t get NGINX to work properly, etc… there’s a ton of different information out there on youtube tutorials, and none of them seem to apply to what I’m doing (docker, portainer, mqtt, letsencrypt, etc)…

I don’t want to leave my configuration to a $5/month (or more if price changes) service and be lost if I want to take control of it.

8

Stop following youtube videos which are often out of date. Look up, follow the docs link.

1 Like
9

Yes, I did follow that link… that’s the guide I’ve been trying to follow, and I cannot figure it out.

If you click through my links, I’ve even posted my error logs from my multiple attempts.

Here’s the results of my check with DigiCert:

DNS resolves MYDOMAIN.duckdns.org to xx.xx.xx.xx

HTTP Server Header: Python/3.7 aiohttp/3.6.1

TLS Certificate

Common Name = MYDOMAIN.duckdns.org

Subject Alternative Names = MYDOMAIN.duckdns.org

Issuer = Let’s Encrypt Authority X3

Serial Number = XXXXXXXX

SHA1 Thumbprint = XXXXXXXX

Key Length = 4096

Signature algorithm = SHA256-RSA

Secure Renegotiation:

TLS Certificate has not been revoked

OCSP Staple: Not Enabled
OCSP Origin: Good
CRL Status: Not Enabled

TLS Certificate expiration

The certificate expires February 24, 2020 (89 days from today)

Certificate Name matches MYDOMAIN.duckdns.org

Subject MYDOMAIN.duckdns.org
Valid from 26/Nov/2019 to 24/Feb/2020
Issuer Let’s Encrypt Authority X3

Subject Let’s Encrypt Authority X3
Valid from 17/Mar/2016 to 17/Mar/2021
Issuer DST Root CA X3

TLS Certificate is correctly installed

Congratulations! This certificate is correctly installed.

10

I get totally lost at this step:

  1. Some reverse proxy configuration settings can interfere with communication from SmartThings. For example, TLSv1.3 is not supported. Setting the supported cipher suite too restrictly will prevent handshaking. The following NGINX SSL configuration is known to work:
# cert.crt also contains intermediate certificates
ssl_certificate /path/to/cert.crt;
ssl_certificate_key /path/to/cert.key;
ssl_dhparam /path/to/dhparam.pem;
ssl_protocols TLSv1.2;
ssl_ciphers 'EECDH+AESGCM:EDH+AESGCM:AES256+EECDH:AES256+EDH';
ssl_prefer_server_ciphers on;
ssl_ecdh_curve secp384r1;
ssl_session_timeout  10m;
ssl_session_cache shared:SSL:10m;
ssl_session_tickets off;
  1. While the error message (above) is being displayed, run the following command from outside your local network to confirm it is responding to the ping lifecycle event:
curl -X POST https://{BASE_URL}/api/webhook/{WEBHOOK_ID} -H "Content-Type: application/json; charset=utf-8" -d

Where {BASE_URL} is your external address and {WEBHOOK_ID} is the value of webhook_id from .storage/smartthings in your Home Assistant configuration directory.The expected response is:

{"pingData": {"challenge": "00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000"}}
11

@Traxtar944,

do you can post your config (without secret data) and your logs .
you can activate debug for smarthing with this config

logger:
  default: info
  logs:
    homeassistant.components.smartthings: debug
12

I don’t know where to type that… do I add it to configuration.yaml?

13

yes in your configuration.yaml
doc: https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/logger/

14

I just ran into this issue when setting up my HA Pi with HASS.io. Issue ended up being that I shouldn’t have included the port on the end of the base url. Once I removed that it worked fine.

15

Did you ever get this figured out? I’m having the same issue. Not sure where to enter step 3.

16

Nope… never figured it out. It never ended up working, and nobody could help me. Pretty disappointing to be honest.