A web service SmartApp: public approval or what?

General Discussion
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21

The only solution is patience.

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22

There are a lot of weird things about SmartThings; but like any individual, thatā€™s what makes them special :innocent:.

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23

Ok, this is getting a bit ridiculous.
After other weeks of wait we had no reply/approval/rejection nor anyone from SmartThings wrote to us.
BUT, apparently, SmartThings replied THIS to one of our users who was asking for the Gideon approval:

ā€œ8/19 from Samsung Support: We are currently working with Gideon.ai to get their integration working. In their current written integration, it does not work as it was improperly coded and did not meet the requirements to work.ā€

The user, of course, thought we were not saying the truth about the SmartThings integration while we are here working every day to get this thing done.

I can understand SmartThings has a lot of things to do, but how can it be possible that no one replies to us and then they reply in this way to our users?

Can someone enlighten us?

Thank you

24

Perhaps a miscommunication? I donā€™t see any comments or notes on the submission for Gideon to indicate that review has been started. Adding @slagle

25

I think so, but itā€™s really embarrassingā€¦
We are open to do all the work and all the changes required for the approval and to give our contribution to the SmartThings community.

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26

@tgauchat Is it standard to not appear on the marketplace? Iā€™m working on a web services SmartApp and having the oAuth install workflow would save so us so much timeā€¦right now we have the oAuth2 but the smart app has to be added via the dev portal. We donā€™t need it published on the marketplace since only our customers could make use of it. Any tips on how to go about that would be appreciated!

27

Please send me a Private Messageā€¦

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28

Gideon is great, I look forward to Smartthings working with them to get it going!

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29

I added the SmartApp to my SmartThings account but it wonā€™t let me install it. I do not have a connected lock and it looks like the lock is required. It says to please fill out all the required spaces. The lock area is the only required space that I canā€™t add.

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30

I am trying to check out the Gideon App but I canā€™t connect my ST hub. The ST SmartApp asks for a lock that I donā€™t have. It looks to be a required option. Can you change it to a optional device?

31

Hi Guys,
itā€™s fantastic that so many of you want to try our implementation.
Unfortunately we are still waiting the approval from SmartThings.
They said they should approve it by end year.
We also asked if it was possible to release the smart-app and to link it in our app but they said it was better to wait the approval from them.
Right now there is no way to use the Gideon smart-app from Gideon.
if, for some reason, by end year the smart app will be not published, we will release it again on the forum and we will add the implementation on our Android and iOS app.

Cheers,

Michele

32

Add it to the smartthingspublic repo in github, then we can update and publish from there

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33

Any news on your integration with smartthings ?

34

Hey Guys,
here is an update of the ST integration in Gideon.
I spoke with the guys in ST a few weeks ago.
The plan is to announce the official integration in February.
In the meantime we decided to open a beta test with a limited number of users and to publish the code on the github repository.
If you want to be included in the beta you can send me a PM here or you can send an email to the Gideon support (support@gideon.ai).

Cheers

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35

Great news after just 6 months!
I guess something is moving between ST and Samsung? I always assumed their problem with accepting and publishing smartapps was related to the fear of clogging their servers. February is behind the corner.

36

They are sorting out the right way to work with services like us.
I hope to have good news soon.
i ll keep you updated here on the forum :slight_smile:

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37

Hi all,

Iā€™ve published the source of our API Smart App. Itā€™s available at: https://github.com/NicolaRusso/SmartThingsPublic/blob/master/smartapps/gideon-api/gideon.src/gideon.groovy

Any contribution/feedback to the code is very appreciated!

If anyone want to join our beta test just visit: http://www.gideon.ai/beta-program

Thank you! :slight_smile:

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38

Cool, it really baffle me how Smartthings decided to boycott themselves not having the devices api-accessible by default.
What is the point in forcing people to copy & paste a dumb script (ā€œfetch the API source code from Githubā€ sound better indeed) instead of just give the users an ā€œenable API accessā€ feature?

39

Being a Kickstarter supporter (i.e., Iā€™ve been here since the epochā€¦); I am very aware that this is genuinely: just a legacy issue. SmartThings has a lot of clever architectural elements in it, some of which are innovative, and some perhaps should have just been left on the brainstorming conference room whiteboard.

The use of SmartApps to provide, in theory, highly granularized control of access to ā€œThingsā€ in lieu of a traditional API is definitely not a ā€œdumbā€ idea. Whether or not is it optimal, I canā€™t say. I think, in practice, it has proven to be quite versatile (e.g., SmartTiles was build over 95% inside a SmartApp that runs on SmartThingsā€™s cloud!!! ā€¦ i.e., the model is much more powerful than just an API.

The problem with the model is partially that it has been slow to evolve with the changing needs of the product, developers, and customers. But we know that SmartThings is doing a lot of R&D in the background to address things both in the short and long term.

Opening traditional API access to a Platform that is, contrary to marketing, not quote-unquote-all-caps ā€œOPENā€, is complicated from an administrative and business strategy perspective. It is not just an engineering challenge to do this on top of a legacy environment!

Submitted respectfully and just my own opinions.

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40

Thanks for the answer!
Iā€™m sure I didnā€™t say anything new and people on this forum have probably read the same objections hundreds of times (Iā€™m not a regular here, Iā€™m a developer and always hated the whole groovy/cloud thing since my day 1).
It is not my intention arguing about architectural/marketing decisions since:

  1. nobody care about what a random Joe Schmo think about it
  2. its a black box to me since I donā€™t have all the variables available for anything that would make any sense.
    Iā€™m just saying that ā€œtraditional APIā€ (that would not even have to go trough the smartapps, if you ask me, but give direct access to the ā€œlocationā€ database) would result in 3rd party compatible clients for everything imaginable.
    Writing a webfriendly application is 101 material for every platform these days.
    Would they works nice side by side with the groovy/smartapps ecosystem? Probably no.
    Would I care as a developer/user? Probably no.
    Writing a client for android, windows, web would be trivial and being able to use game consoles, smart tv, websites, alternative clouds services that access the API would be the immediate advantage and the endless feature-tease from Smartthings people would just be over once for all.
    And donā€™t get me start talking about the moment I realized that those simple scripts (OK OK dynamically compiled Language geez) werent running local on the hubā€¦