Android Widget

Guess what? First thing I checked was to see if SharpTools still works!

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Thanks for the feedback! SharpTools is verified to work with Hub v2 and works without any dependency on the SmartThings mobile app. On some of my mobile devices, I only have SharpTools installed and don’t have the main SmartThings app installed at all. :smile:

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That’s a great tip for the time being. Thanks.

I should clarify that SharpTools is dependent on the SmartThings cloud platform (even with Hub v2). And with all the hub disconnects and reconnects over the past day or two, you may experience intermittent issues until they resolve the platform issues.

I’ve asked about being able to communicate directly with Hub v2 from SharpTools and they said it won’t part of the initial release. Only SmartApps that run with all local resources (eg. Z-Wave / Zigbee) will run locally on Hub v2 in the initial release. SmartApps that provide HTTP End Points like SharpTools and SmartTiles will still run in the cloud and have a dependency on an Internet connection.

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Is it possible to create a widget using SharpTools that controls a Virtual Switch?

Yes. Virtual switches are treated just like normal switches in SharpTools.

try it out before you decide to buy. sharptools. my main use case has made my life a bit easier that its was worth paying for.

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I realise this is an old, old thread but the recent replies have popped it back to the top so I’ll just add my voice to the recommendations for SharpTools. I’ve got widgets for the main lights in my house lined up on a home screen.

You can use either a shortcut widget or an active widget that shows the current status of, say, a light - the only trouble with the latter is that it doesn’t always seem to update if the light is switched on or off by a rule, presumably because to do so it would have to keep polling for status, which would be a battery drain.

As well as the widgets I use the Tasker integration - I use Tasker’s location rules in conjunction with SharpTools to set the mode to “Home” or “Away” as I find it more reliable than ST’s native presence detection :slight_smile:

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Thanks… Just got it working!!!

I bought it several weeks ago and love it. I just couldn’t figure out how to get it to work with virtual switches. It turned out to be a user error. I had to authorize SharpTools to be able to control the newly created virtual switches within the App and everything started worked as expected.

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SharpTools just stopped working for me. Not sure why this problem started. I get a “Result: Unexpected error: 401” no matter what thing or routine I try to control. Is anyone else seeing this problem? Any suggestions on how to fix it?

@lojack - sorry that things aren’t working as expected at the moment!

There’s a known issue that I’m working through with SmartThings. I worked with them yesterday to get a fix in place and tested and rolled out an update to SharpTools last night, but it looks like there is still some work that needs to be done to get this working for everyone.

You can follow the progress at this thread:

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Everything seems to be working as expected again. Thanks for the fast turnaround. :slight_smile:

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I’m sorry, I spoke too soon. The SharpTools android app seems to work as expected but the widgets are not working, at least mine aren’t. Any recommendation on how I can get them fixed?

Are you referring to the ability to use the widgets to control something? Or the widgets aren’t updating their state (yellow/gray coloring)?

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To control something.

As an example, I have a widget that turns off all the lights in the house. It basically turns off a simulated (virtual) switch. The simulated (virtual) switch works fine within the Smartthings app but fails to work when called from the SharpTools widget.

Update : The simulated switches (on my system) are not working from within the Smartthings routines either. Therefore, this may not be a SharpTools issue. Is anyone else seeing this problem?

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You might try watching the IDE Live Logs. I would look to see that the Virtual Switch is triggering it’s on/off state accordingly and look to see if the SmartApp that is using the Virtual Switch is also triggering as expected.

The IDE Live Logs for my SharpTools widget was reporting PUBLISHED off(). The SmartThings App simulated switch control is reporting PUBLISHED offPhysical(). I changed the widget so now they both are reporting PUBLISHED offPhysical(). Is there documentation that can tell me the difference. There’s still a strange behavior that I think maybe as designed and my expectations may need to be adjusted.:confounded:

Did changing to offPhysical() resolve things for you? I haven’t seen that command before, but I would hazard a guess that off() would be considered a virtual flip of the switch whereas offPhysical() would simulate a physical flip of the switch.

SmartApps can take action based on physical vs virtual triggers. For example, you might add logic to a SmartApp that says not to repeat a task if the light was physically switched off vs being switched off virtually in code.

http://docs.smartthings.com/en/latest/ref-docs/event-ref.html?highlight=isphysical#isphysical

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