I keep an old SmartThings hub active at home for just one reason. When my broadband fails, I get a “hub is unavailable” alert from the app. The really useful thing about this is that it happens regardless of whether I’m at home or away. I assume that the SmartThings cloud service & hub monitor connectivity to each other, and alert the user (hub via local network or cloud via cellular/hotspots) when the connection has been lost. When I get this alert away from home, it generally means a broadband issue I would otherwise been unaware of and means I can call my service provider while there are still people in the office!
I’d love to be able to ditch the SmartThings hub if this functionality could be replicated in HA, and I was thinking this would be a great “value add” feature that could maybe be provided for Nabu Casa subscribers?
That notification from SmartThings is why I left SmartThings. Was never my ISP down, always the SmartThings cloud. At least weekly. Not sure it’s a good way to show your network is up.
A possible alternative would be to install the Speedtest integration and set an automation based on the Ping or Download speeds. When there’s an anomaly, have it alert you. This will work when you’re on the same network, but obviously won’t if you’re not.
Off network, you could possibly install a widget on your phone to show Ping and if it doesn’t refresh, there’s a problem. Not ideal, but a possible option.
Thanks. That’s interesting - it’s pretty much the opposite experience of SmartThings to what I’ve had! I’ve only had it a couple of years, but in that time weeks/months will go past without any alerts and I pretty much forget it exists. Every time I have had an alert it has always related to network connectivity. I wonder if their cloud service has improved since you ditched it?
To be honest the notifications on local network aren’t an issue really as that’s easy to setup based on a ping sensor/speedtest service as you say. My main focus is the external generated alert, and that’s what NabuCasa seemed ideal for. As it would be from the (HA) Cloud, I’d hope that if the Nabu Casa was having issues, it wouldn’t be generating alerts anyway…
I realise I could subscribe to various services like UptimeRobot but they rely on having internal sites open to the internet/port forwarded, and the nice thing about Nabu Casa is it avoids that requirement.