SmartThings Current State is Stalled?

Oh Yes Please!. I agree with you totally on this, the real problem is that they might not be willing to do a timeline yet. However if they can give us at least the expected steps to each major roll out. And update us on where they are with it, that would work for me as well.

I would also like to add, since many people are developers here with skin in the game. They would be wise to point out areas or issues that they are having, as we could work together to figure out a way to resolve these issues.

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Far more valued companies have given roadmaps. SmartThings should be able to do something for us.

It would be amazing if they had a “Advanced Developer” forum, where they discussed issues. Specialists in the community could contribute to possible solutions, and strategies. That’s free easy to access information. Many of us have specialties. I was a programmer, was a data center architect/admin, and now am a DBA. That gives me a unique perspective, as many others will also have a unique perspective.

Heck, I would love to have actual community input in the design/interface!

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Like the post! Help build the likes, show @Ben our very reasonable request! :slight_smile:

We have this. You only see it if you are an advanced developer :wink:

Oh come on, that’s all your going to reply too? :expressionless:

I have stated a number of times that we are going to share our roadmap on this site, soon.

Additionally for those who attend the Developer Discussions every other week we are quite candid about what we are working on and what is upcoming. Just because things are demanded doesn’t mean we can provide them immediately .

So how do we get into that? I am not a good canister but others are from the community

Agreed the developer confines are great, but I think for those of us who cannot make the meetings or watch the videos it might be a good thing to summarize the info with text

LOL, advanced developer, sounds like the second stage of a disease


Guess I’m not an advanced developer, I don’t see that area either. Heck I don’t even have one of those fancy SmartThings t-shirts
 @Ben

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You are so, in one of the corded off areas :smile:

But not having a shirt is a travesty that can be addressed.

As long as the room is padded


I wanted to take a bit of time to respond to each of these points with my own views on them. Again, these are my (not SmartThings - unless specified) timeline estimates for each (now w/bullets):

  • Android still doesn’t have persistent image access, which means cameras are useless

It appears that some cameras behave differently with this and we will investigate the behavior — especially as we add new cameras to the platform. I think we’ll be adding several more cameras before the end of the year.

  • Can’t send MMS or email with or without an attachment either

No timeline that I know.

  • No user level support, so I have to annoy my wife with all my alerts

Before end of year we should be rolling this out.

  • No official Nest support, I get 5-10 requests a week to make my device “Official”

We have to change the way our platform handles data retention before can officially support Nest. This has also held u some unofficial releases that 3rd party developers have submitted as we didn’t want to “blur the line”. Expected Q4.

  • IDE is a mess
 It has become a slow, annoying pile of lack of debug logging because the response is too big, it doesn’t feel like it or somewhere my code is wrong, but it doesn’t know where


The Developer Tools project has kicked off in earnest and is getting greater visibility as it is clear that we need to improve in this area. Incremental changes should be seen throughout the next few months.

  • Sure, promises for a better IDE are thrown around, but no timelines given.

See above.

  • SmartAps that spawn child devices can’t even be logged properly

This should be a part of the IDE and logging improvements mentioned above.

  • Temp sensors are so random, I’m not sure what climate I live in.

Need more data to go on. I am under the impression that these are much better now (especially with v2 devices) and of there are consistent variations they can be addressed with user over-riding offsets.

  • Local IP support for devices / SmartApps is non-existent
 The answer is write it yourself


Not sure what this means. We have several LAN-based integrations. Additional sockets and communication options are available with latest and upcoming firmware updates. 3-6 weeks.

  • The SmartApp UI sucks, no real way to get a users input unless they are configuring the App. Even then, its a mess of dynamic pages.

We are looking at ways of addressing SmartApp display though the use of “HTML Tiles” where HTML, CSS, and even JavaScript can be used to get the appearance desired. Perhaps some of this will spill out into the configuration options available to developers. Q4

  • Android presence is broken, every time I reboot it says I’m gone then back


As we discussed on the call, I am not sure the behavior manifesting for you is a bug. We can certainly look at ways to cache last event state but that seems a bit like overkill. If you will, please write up the way you would prefer this behave and we can look into it.

  • Andorid ChartTile doesn’t work, but promised another method, no timelines

Still no timeline because I need more insight into this. @tonyc what say you?

  • No way to dynamically create, modify or hide tiles in a device type

Perhaps this will be a part of the HTML tiles mentioned above. Please define your desired use cases?

  • UI for the Things area constantly resets.

Need more info/screenshots/videos.

  • No support for streaming video

Unlikely in Q3/Q4. I would expect it soon after.

  • No UDP support for local hubaction

I lose track of this one as I have gone back and forth to developers on it a bunch. Maybe @doug-st knows something about the timeframe for this.

  • No response from Raw socket sends

Ditto - @doug-st or @scottvlaminck

  • Truncated responses from local hubactions, its a mystery as to how big a response can actually be.

Maybe we are getting out of my realm of comfort here. Unsure on scope/timeframe.

  • Have to create a smartapp or device just to browse other sample apps/devices

This should get much better as a part of IDE improvements. Additionally, for me, a goal is to get addressable SmartApps and Device Types that can be shared by URL Likely 2015.

  • No tablet version, iOS or Android

1st half of 2015

  • No Windows mobile

Next week.

  • No windows app

Before the end of 2014

  • No web interface for end users

Near and dear to me but not likely to get built until first half of next year.

  • No list view in devices for showing data in a response

@scottvlaminck or @bflorian?

  • No scene support

I am not convinced that scenes are needed. I am NOT saying that they could not be valuable but I do think their advantages can be achieved with current methods without the need to add ANOTHER construct to the world of SmartThings. The more we add the more complicated it is. I would rather see Hello, Home actions have more context awareness, for example, and act as a traditional scene.

  • No offline or cached mode if internet connection is down


Hub v2. Q1 2015.

  • No ability to sort devices in IDE also in Apps, etc.

Hopefully in the next few weeks with the new Developer Tools-focused sprints.

Ok, I am going to bed.

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Thanks @Ben! This is great to see and very much appreciated. Still a couple questions that weren’t addressed, like the sharing/access control issues, that I’m hoping you’ll answer as well.

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Sharing access contract l was addressed above in first couple questions. Will be rolled out this year.

Ack! Sorry about that. I even read your answers twice and missed it both times. Great news, thanks!

Ben - as I stated on the call my android phone does not put me away when I turn my phone off when I’m home. It also does not put me away and back when I turn the phone back on (I made sure it wasn’t just the presence timeout causing me to not see it). This is the preferred way for me since I prefer to turn my phone off sometimes!

By the way, if you have location history turned on, you can go to your account in google and see that history. Simple to compare that with what SmartThings thinks its seeing.

@pstuart During the developer call I noticed that you are using a nexus 5. Have you checked to see if you have one of the batch that does not make a good connection to the GPS antenna? Before the fix, my nexus 5 would randomly lose GPS lock and teleport me into town by the cell tower. Of course this triggered a presence event of me leaving and then returning once GPS lock was regained. I could see the teleporting on my google location history as well. I have since fixed that issue and while presence detection is better, it’s still not reliable enough to use for events in SmartThings. I settled on using the Life 360 app for presence, and that has helped somewhat. Once presence is more reliable, I will return to using actions based on it.