Cloud vs. Local

What, if anything determines if a device is “Local” or Cloud"?

I have 2 identical motion sensors and 1 is Local and 1 is cloud.

Thoughts?

The groovy DTH that you are using. Some can run locally. Some cannot.

Check to see if they are using the same device type handler

I just noticed 1 was motion and one was using motion/light. I changed it to motion and now both are Local. Which is better? If that’s a thing…

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The ‘protocol handlers’ (the business end, rather than the configuration bits) for a number of the stock device handlers were implemented natively in the hub firmware. That allows devices using those handlers to run locally. One of your sensors has been paired with the Z-Wave Motion Sensor handler, which can run locally, and the other one has been paired with the Z-Wave Motion/Light Sensor which runs in the cloud.

Neither of the handlers has any generic fingerprinting code in them so they should only automatically pair with specific devices. So unless your identical devices aren’t actually identical, or you force paired them to particular drivers in the IDE, I can’t suggest a reason they have those particular handlers.

I haven’t looked closely at the handlers, but one just supports motion sensing and the other also includes illuminance. One of them presumably more closely applies to your devices.

I guess they were “assigned” those at the time of pairing. I really never noticed. I made them both motion only as I have no need for illuminance in there. They are now both Local.

What called my attention to this is most if not all of my devices used to be cloud, but now most are Local. Is that due to Groovy going away?

The best I can say is ‘possibly’. If you have any Zigbee or Z-Wave devices with the device type ‘placeholder’ then they are the new Edge drivers. There are two main reasons why you could have those without having done anything deliberately to get them.

  • Over the last few months an increasing number of devices have been pairing with Edge drivers rather than device type handlers. So if you had a new device, or had deleted and reinstalled a device, it might be using an Edge driver. The IDE entry for those devices would look rather empty.
  • A snapshot of the list of beta hub firmware testers was used to create a list of testers for migrating existing devices from device handlers to Edge drivers. So if you were on that list it will have been possible for one or more of your devices to have been migrated to Edge drivers. I’ve not had that happen for me (and I may not have been on the list on the date of the snapshot) but I believe when that happens the IDE page for the device keeps a lot of the old detail from the handler.

I checked a bunch of devices and I don’t have any that have have been migrated to Edge Drivers. It’s my understanding that if they are using drivers it would show up here.

correct… if you see “Placeholder” for a device in IDE then it is using an Edge Driver or is a cloud to cloud integration that is using the new architecture. In the app, the additional menu item “Drivers” will appear for directly connected devices using an Edge Driver. It does not show up until the Device is using an Edge Driver.

I only have 4 “placeholders”… 3 cell phones and 1 Ecobee thermostat.

Even before edge had been announced, smartthings have been trying to move more and more of their stock device type handlers to local operations. So it could just be that now more of your stock DTHs are local than used to be.