I have a mini-split AC system with three heads. I’ve unfortunately found the AI that should be making sure the three areas stay reasonable temperatures isn’t very intelligent. The system can’t run both heating and cooling at the same time, which makes sense. The AI, though, looks at each head as an individual unit and doesn’t take into consideration that it can’t cool one room at the same time as heating another so it pretty much goes with one head regardless of how hot or cold the temperature is getting in other rooms. To further the frustrations when it’s running it’s still pushing or pulling heat from the other heads even if they individually are set to only fan mode.
Being a little technologically savvy I figured I can at least build some automations that’ll actually use parameters from each head switch modes and turn off as needed. The problem I’m running into is the automations script system on iOS currently can only do one temperature comparison (equal, greater than, or less than) for each device at a time. So it can’t check if one of the devices is within a temperature range. It also doesn’t have logical negation capabilities anywhere. Do the smartthings apps on other platforms have better scripting capabilities?
I also got a hub (the Aoetek version of the gen 3 Samsung hub) hoping to use my limited programing knowledge to hobble together a fairly basic routine, but I’m seeing the previous generation, groovy, language is being phased out. So I probably shouldn’t put something together that’ll be useless in a couple months. Is there any information on the next system?
- One feature of The new system is called the “rules API“ and it supports much more complex logic than the rules engine that is built into the smartthings app, but it’s still in development and not fully documented. You can find more about it in the following section of the forum:
- Alternatively, under the new architecture you can write your own code in any language you want, but you also have to host it yourself. And then you communicate with smartthings via the REST API. Here’s one thread with an example of that approach:
Simple SmartApp Tutorial (SmartApp SDK)
- There are also some community members who are now using node red flows with a lot of success. Again, you have to host them yourself and then communicate via the API. you can find some discussion of this option in the following thread. (Note that the link I’m giving you will be discussing it with at least awareness of the new platform that is coming. Earlier discussions from 2019 and 2020 dealt with either Webcore or other groovy options which will be going away).
Node-Red and Smartthings - #41 by mwav3
- some community members are also using the Samsung Automation Studio with node red, but I haven’t looked into that option myself and I don’t know very much about it. Here’s the main link, and then you could ask more in this forum if you’re interested.
So there are several different options just depending on the route you want to take.
Tagging @Automated_House
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