Why Do I Experience Lag, Sluggishness, or Unresponsiveness with my Devices?
Why Do I Experience Lag, Sluggishness, or Unresponsiveness with my Devices?
Summary (TLDR)
Sometimes you may experience a lag, sluggishness, or unresponsiveness across your devices and may want to instantly blame us (we get it...) but what could also be happening is the platform you're running on may be cloud based, experiencing issues, or just flat out not working. The below video shows the same products used across three separate platforms and the response time of each. This is not meant to be a hit-piece on any manufacturer, but merely a demonstration as to how it isn't necessarily an Inovelli (or other manufacturer) issue.
Products used:
Hub/Gateway's (from left to right): Samsung SmartThings v3, Hubitat Elevation, IQ Panel 2
We sometimes hear that our devices are slow to respond, sluggish and wanted to do a head to head comparison across the various hubs to see once and for all if it was something to do with our switches or the hub it was used on. The biggest culprit of these types of tickets is SmartThings, so we wanted to see how it stacked up against a couple other hubs we had around the office.
Setup
We had all three hub/gateway's about 4 feet from the testing stations. The hub/gateway's we used were: Samsung SmartThings v3, Hubitat Elevation, and IQ Panel 2. The products we used were Ilumin RGBW A19 Bulbs and Red Series Dimmers. We paired three separate bulbs all at the same time prior to testing and did not touch them until testing. With the dimmer switches, we did not have a setup that had three separate switches, so we used the same test switch (we paired them and then removed them and then paired them across the three hub/gateways).
Test #1: 3x Ilumin Bulbs turned on/off at the same time
The first test (0:08-0:29) was to see the response time across all three hub/gateway's using our Ilumin RGBW bulbs. As you can see in the video, Hubitat and the IQ Panel 2 (Alarm.com) turned on instantly, whereas SmartThings took about 8 seconds. Similarly, when we turned off the bulbs, Hubitat and the IQ Panel 2 turned off instantly, whereas SmartThings took about 6 seconds.
Test #2: 3x Inovelli Red Series Dimmers turned on/off at the same time
The second test (0:45-1:15) was to see the response time across all three hub/gateway's using our Inovelli Red Series Dimmers. As you can see in the video, Hubitat and the IQ Panel 2 (Alarm.com) turned on instantly, whereas SmartThings actually just timed out with a network error.
What Does This Mean?
While it's hard to determine why the results were the way they were, it's pretty clear that investing in a hub that has either a great cloud network (IQ Panel 2) or local control (Hubitat) will have its benefits in terms of speed. A saying that has always stuck with us is, "your smart home product is only as smart as your hub". Again, the purpose of this article is not to show which hub is better as there are many different factors that need to be considered when choosing a hub. Our team uses a mixture of hubs (Eric H, Courtney, Nathan = SmartThings / Eric M = Hubitat) so we're as impartial as it gets.
FAQ's
Q: I don't experience this lag with other brands on SmartThings. Why do I experience it with yours?
A: This is likely because the other brands are using the built in SmartThings device handlers which run locally, whereas if you use a third party device handler, it will run in the cloud. Unfortunately, in order to activate the advanced features of the switch, a third party device handler is needed.
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