Is There a Beginner's guide? (2014)

I’m new to the ecosystem and I’m not a developer, just to level set (though I am in the IT / dev business and get the space). I’ve gleaned through reading through a bunch of posts that the ecosystem is really in early stages of maturity. That’s fine, except that isn’t how it’s sold, and it’s going to leave a lot of frustrated users (which is a great way to kill a project). I see mention all over threads of custom apps being required to do different things, but yet nowhere on this community site (at least with intuitive searches like “deploying custom apps” or “beginner’s guide”) does it provide guidance on how to do that. It would seem that the community site should have a beginner’s-guide sticky that provides detailed guidance on how to perform some of the functions that are frequently referred to on the site.

Does that exist somewhere, and I’m just missing it? If so, it would benefit from meta tags with intuitive search phrases, and if not, consider this customer feedback – we need it.

People are very tolerant of rough edges, particularly on products like this, but only if there are accessible references provided on how to navigate through or around those edges.

Dave-

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https://support.smartthings.com/hc/en-us

Yeah – I found that - not what I’m looking for, but thanks. That’s for people that buy a ST starter kit and have no intention of adding Z-Wave, Zigbee, etc. devices. It also doesn’t show how to add the custom apps that seem to be required to do things like trigger a Z-Wave siren when there is a zone fault. Etc. In other words, I’m not looking for the “how to plug in and configure the ST starter kit” guide.

I agree with you that this stuff is tougher to find than it should be, but the link above does eventually lead to it in the “Build with SmartThings” section. This may be of help:

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We do need a how to section on the forum

Thanks Scottin - that video was a great help…

Dave-

Never found a “Build with SmartThings…”

You are resurrecting a thread which is four years old. A lot has changed in that time. :sunglasses:

Can you be more specific about what you’re looking for?

If you just want to learn more about using smartthings, there’s a decent get started section in the official knowledge base:

https://support.smartthings.com/hc/en-us/categories/200058800-Guide-to-SmartThings

If you’re looking for inspiration or project reports from other customers, you can find those by looking in the community – created wiki on the quick browse lists, looking down near the bottom of that page for the “project reports” section, and then choosing the first list, called “get started.” That has discussion topics on everything from “the 10 best things to do with smartthings” to “ what device should I buy next?“

http://thingsthataresmart.wiki/index.php?title=How_to_Quick_Browse_the_Community-Created_SmartApps_Forum_Section

If you’re interested in using smartthings as a development platform, see the developer section of the forum

https://community.smartthings.com/c/developers

And the developers website at Samsung: