IKEA Home smart 1 4+

There is so much that is very average about Tradfri, but price speaks. It’s a pain that you have to go to ikea store to get Tradfri. Software is very basic but has most of the functions required. Programming of timers is a right pain, doubly so when using it on an iPad. It would be better if you register lamps and devices to a computer then resolve the logical connections rather than having to use a ‘spare’ steering device. All very frustrating. So it’s ok for the money, but could be so much better with remote configuration, multi zone button remotes please so that I can control my lounge lights without my phone/iPad. Oh and how about remote control from out side of WiFi range and Logic functions.

Over the past year or so the frequency of failures with this app has increased significantly, to the point where now I have to restart my gateway every other day and just and hope it connects to my devices. There have been no changes other than software updates so either the hardware isn’t built to last or software bugs have made it unusable.

I woke this morning to find all my devices had disconnected overnight (a regular occurrence these days) and despite several restarts only a single device will reconnect. And this is after last week wiping all settings and reconfiguring everything from scratch. That’s an hour-long process I seem to have to do every month or so too. What’s worse; whatever causes the app to fail to recognise devices also knocks out all my remotes, so the only option is to use the hardware switches as if you have no smart devices at all.

This is intensely frustrating since it all worked pretty flawlessly for well over a year. To be honest I’m approaching the point where I’ll just trash the lot and switch vendors, it’s borderline unusable at the moment.

I have had many bulbs blinds and speakers running for about 6 months and generally they work well but are sometimes a pain to set up in the first place as is well documented. The app has improved a bit during the year.
Suddenly last week the timers stopped working and the app wouldn’t connect. When it re-connected it had returned to factory settings and lost all the pairings, rooms, timers. Presumably an update killed it. No power issues as hub and router both connected to a UPS.
Thankfully the switches still work as they seem to connect directly to the devices. But to re-connect to the gateway i will now have to link everything up again one by one which is extremely annoying and i may not have time. I will look into smartthings and phillips hue hubs to replace the gateway but not sure if devices can still be updated.
There should be a way of backing up the settings which are stored on the hub.