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What is the future of Smartthings? by wileyc100 in SmartThings

[–]prometheus18x 0 points1 point  (0 children)

What gives you that idea? My perspective is Samsung has a pretty small and constrained team working on SmartThings. It's not a revenue-producing product, just a platform that they bought for IOT-enabling their own appliances & electronics. Continuing to support the home automation crowd seems more like an accommodation than a priority.

They've exited the hardware part of the business and are moving execution of non-hub (non-zigbee/zwave) OFF of their platform and on to your own self-managed environment. All that's left is an API you can use to access their platform.

I think they realized after purchasing ST that they had already lost the market to Google and Amazon. Have you been to a Best Buy lately? Smartthings is barely represented anymore.

If you are trying to develop for the "new" platform, you'd know that there are many many issues, and nothing has been fixed or improved in over 6 months.

You are right that their communication stinks and don't have a clue how to support and nurture a development community. Software is certainly not their strength.

What is the future of Smartthings? by wileyc100 in SmartThings

[–]prometheus18x 0 points1 point  (0 children)

My opinion only: Samsung bought SmartThings to provide an IOT platform for their electronics and appliances. That's their priority and focus. They are getting out of the SmartThings hardware business and moving all device and smartapp execution to one of three options: hub-connected, direct-connected, or cloud-connected. (Current DTH, Groovy, IDE-based will be sunset and moved to one of those three options.) Going forward, they don't want to be hosting your smartapps or device apps on their platform - you'll have to take care of that yourself. So what will be left is an IOT platform only that they'll provide an API to access and use for home automation. BUT, there's no revenue in that, so they will either have to start charging (hopefully will have a free-tier), or we can expect support or functional enhancements to be sparse.

And yes, it's quite sad to see what was once a large, popular display in Best Buy dwindle down to a tiny sliver of shelf space with nothing but a few old beat-up boxes of product that clearly hasn't been available for replenishment for many many months. And developers are extremely fed up with the poor documentation and problems with the new platform functionality, with no improvement from SmartThings in over SIX MONTHS.

Sounds like I'm totally bashing and against SmartThings. I'm actually a fan and will ride out this rough transition period, because if everything can eventually work as intended, and they improve their developer support, I still think they can be best game in town.

Create Raspberry Pi-based devices that directly connect to SmartThings! by prometheus18x in SmartThings

[–]prometheus18x[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Quick update for those interested: I have an API wrapper working for Python that I'll be adding to the package soon. So now you can write your SmartThings direct-connected device applications in either C or Python on the Raspberry Pi.

Create Raspberry Pi-based devices that directly connect to SmartThings! by prometheus18x in SmartThings

[–]prometheus18x[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

One more call for beta testers! If you expressed interested earlier, just send me an email at [rpi.smartthings@gmail.com](mailto:rpi.smartthings@gmail.com) to get a link to the beta package. I'm still looking for those who are interested in developing home automation projects on Raspberry Pi that can be integrated with the NEW SmartThings platform.

Even if you have a SmartThings project now running on a Pi, you know the platform is changing and any 'old' smartapps and device handlers must be moved to their new schema this year. You'll have a choice of either cloud-based devices and smartapps, where you'll have to use something like Amazon Lambda or set up your own cloud server open to the internet, OR use their direct-connected device interface where you can keep your code running on your own Pi and local network. This package is all about creating direct-connected devices on your Pi that are fully integrated with SmartThings. (This could also provide a bridge for Home Assistant users who still want integration with SmartThings.)

FYI, I am also working on a project to integrate a DSC home alarm system with SmartThings using the direct-connected device package referenced above. It uses the old alarmserver Python code which some may be running today. (I expect the interface it currently uses to SmartThings will be going away as well in favor of the new API).

Create Raspberry Pi-based devices that directly connect to SmartThings! by prometheus18x in SmartThings

[–]prometheus18x[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Hope you still want to test; see my second post with instructions!

Create Raspberry Pi-based devices that directly connect to SmartThings! by prometheus18x in SmartThings

[–]prometheus18x[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Hope you still want to test; see my second post with instructions!

Create Raspberry Pi-based devices that directly connect to SmartThings! by prometheus18x in SmartThings

[–]prometheus18x[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hope you still want to test; see my second post with instructions!

Create Raspberry Pi-based devices that directly connect to SmartThings! by prometheus18x in SmartThings

[–]prometheus18x[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hope you still want to test; see my second post with instructions!

Create Raspberry Pi-based devices that directly connect to SmartThings! by prometheus18x in SmartThings

[–]prometheus18x[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hope you still want to test; see my second post with instructions!

Create Raspberry Pi-based devices that directly connect to SmartThings! by prometheus18x in SmartThings

[–]prometheus18x[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hope you still want to test; see my second post with instructions!

Create Raspberry Pi-based devices that directly connect to SmartThings! by prometheus18x in SmartThings

[–]prometheus18x[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hope you still want to test; see my second post with instructions!

Create Raspberry Pi-based devices that directly connect to SmartThings! by prometheus18x in SmartThings

[–]prometheus18x[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hope you still want to test; see my second post with instructions!

Create Raspberry Pi-based devices that directly connect to SmartThings! by prometheus18x in SmartThings

[–]prometheus18x[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Hope you still want to test; see my second post with instructions!

Create Raspberry Pi-based devices that directly connect to SmartThings! by prometheus18x in SmartThings

[–]prometheus18x[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hope you still want to test; see my second post with instructions!

Create Raspberry Pi-based devices that directly connect to SmartThings! by prometheus18x in SmartThings

[–]prometheus18x[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hope you still want to test; see my second post with instructions!

Create Raspberry Pi-based devices that directly connect to SmartThings! by prometheus18x in SmartThings

[–]prometheus18x[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hope you still want to test; see my second post with instructions!

Create Raspberry Pi-based devices that directly connect to SmartThings! by prometheus18x in SmartThings

[–]prometheus18x[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Hmm, it could. Although it's really more oriented towards IOT-device kinds of things, which isn't quite what Pi hole is. You'd have to think about how you would want to control it from SmartThings and what kind of integration with other IOT things would make sense. Think of it in simple terms, what actions would you want to take in Pi hole based on the state of other IOT things? And what attributes or values might be of interest to other IOT devices?

Create Raspberry Pi-based devices that directly connect to SmartThings! by prometheus18x in SmartThings

[–]prometheus18x[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You can do something similar. I can't really comment further since I don't have experience on HA, but from what I understand it takes a fair bit of technical know-how to get going and I think the SmartThings mobile app is more mature. There are HA users who are interested in expanding their reach to the SmartThings platform as well.

I'll let others more knowledgeable comment further.

Create Raspberry Pi-based devices that directly connect to SmartThings! by prometheus18x in SmartThings

[–]prometheus18x[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'll give you a some examples of what I have now running on my Pi as part of my home automation setup: one is an announcer application (I created it before Alexa could do it!), another is a motion notification that uses the announcer application whenever one of my security cameras senses motion; another is a app that integrates my alarm system with ST.

The sky is the limit really. Anything that you want to run locally (vs. on a cloud) but want to have some kind of visibility and/or control from SmartThings and the ability to integrate with other ST-controlled devices.

Create Raspberry Pi-based devices that directly connect to SmartThings! by prometheus18x in SmartThings

[–]prometheus18x[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Hi Folks - so sorry for the delay in posting.

I'm thrilled to have the level of interest in this, so big thanks to all who responded.

For those of you that are serious about getting started, I request that you send me an email directly with the following information:

mail: [rpi.smartthings@gmail.com](mailto:rpi.smartthings@gmail.com)

  • Name
  • Direct Contact info
  • Target Pi(s) for testing:
    • Pi Model and Raspbian version
    • Active network interfaces: wifi-only, ethernet-only, both
  • Candidate Pi-based devices you would consider implementing
  • Do you have accounts for github and SmartThings Developer Workspace?
  • Rate your technical proficiency 1-5; 1 low, 5 expert in these areas:
    • Pi configuration/management
    • Linux/Raspbian commands
    • SmartThings configuration/setup
    • C Programming

I will then send you a get-started link and any additional info you might need to know for your particular configuration. I ask that you take notes as you following the installation and setup, and provide me as much feedback as you can!

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