I’ve been running Vera in my home for several years (my most recent was the VeraSecure) and though overall it was pretty rock solid, I decided or swap over due to certain device issues I was consistently seeing conflicts with only Vera hubs. I’m pretty familiar with how everything runs and sets up, and coming to ST there’s a few things I’ve either taken for granted or are just missing entirely. With my Schlage deadbolt I could go right into it from the Vera app and add/delete pins, set parameters, do all sorts of things. In ST I have Lock or Unlock as my only option as far as I can tell. Am I missing something or is that just how simplistic ST is? If so, that’s fine (but kind of sucks), just kind of stumped me as to what to do there.
Regarding Scenes, in Vera I could have one scene where 30 minutes after sunset my outside house lights would come on, and 30 minutes before sunrise they’d turn off. As far as I can manage in the ST automations I need two autos to do that, and even then it feels kind of wonky with the IF/THEN setup. Also I could set a motion device as armed/disarmed, and make it so a motion device would arm at a certain time in the evening and if the device was armed and tripped, a light would trigger, but otherwise wouldn’t when its disarmed. So say at 8pm, my porch motion becomes armed, and any motion turns on an outside porch light and inside hallway light, but from 6am to 7:59pm that doesn’t trigger. It’s not like the technology isn’t there, I’m running all the same devices I had with my Vera, I just feel like I’m missing something obvious.
Any suggestions? I’m running a ST3 if that helps.
Thanks all!
There are two Smartapps you can look into.
ST offers Smart Lock Guest Access which you need to manually install. It offers the basic ability to add users and codes.
https://support.smartthings.com/hc/en-us/articles/200958090-Smart-Lock-Guest-Access
For a more complete smartapp, there is @rboys lock manager app…
Yes, let’s just chalk it up as being wonky. Automations are still being developed so who knows what changes/additions will be made in the future. There is also webCoRE that you can check out but note it does not work directly with STHM in the new app. You can also check out the new ST API.
welcome! 
You’ll probably get more people helping you with your automation questions if you post those in the automation section of the forum. Go ahead and start a separate thread for each use case, that will get you the best answers. Start your threads in the following section and put the topic title in the form of a question and you will get lots of responses. 
In most cases there will be at least seven different ways to do each automation, and everybody has their own preferences. That’s one reason you want to put each use case in a separate thread, it may be that one of the different methods is more applicable to a particular use case.
The seven methods are:
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The official smart lighting feature. This is the only option which will run locally except for some bits of STHM. So a lot of people will always start with this and see if they can do what they want there. to get to it, you start with the three horizontal line menu in the upper left of the app, then choose smartapps, and then choose smart lighting.
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Smartthings home monitor (STHM)
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scenes
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official automations (this is the rules engine you get to if you choose “add an automation“ in the app)
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The official rules API. This is new and still a work in progress and not many people are using it yet.
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WebCore. Very popular for complex automations and some people end up using it for everything. This is essentially a scripting language for smartthings which was developed by the community. Some people use webcore for everything because they’re used to it and because it’s the only option that lets you back up your rules.
(Here’s the short FAQ. The topic title is a clickable link.)
- Custom smartapps. Back in 2017 we used to use these a lot, The official features were pretty limited and webcore didn’t exist yet. There are still a few that are popular for specific use cases, but these days the official features do a lot more, and webcore does everything, so individual custom smartapps just aren’t needed very much anymore. But somebody may still recommend one if it happens to be a perfect fit for a particular use case. @rboy ‘s Apps are a good example of these. His are very complex with a ton of features And are highly popular for those willing to pay for a third-party license fee. There isn’t anything that comes close to his lock management options, for example.
Confused yet? 
we often say smartthings is very powerful, but not very discoverable. So hang in there, ask questions if you get stuck, you’ll figure it out.
Anyway, as far as your sunset to sunrise question, that’s very easy if you use the smartlighting feature.
Dang…I didn’t even see where to add smart apps until this! Ok so WebCore seems a little over my head, I’ll see what I can figure out though, and thanks for the heads up about the locks as well!
Ok so figuring out CoRe is a bit of a learning curve, just based on nomenclature and figuring out what times like “and” or “else” meant haha, but so far I’m loving how in depth you can get with your automations! One last thing (probably not, but that’s what I tell myself), I have LIFX integrated into ST, but when I go to integrate it into CoRe it doesn’t give me a place to paste the LIFX token. There’s literally no spot to paste it, it says “LIFX access token” all greed out is all. Hitting next just says invalid token, hitting next after that just takes me to the same previous page.
For webcore questions, ask in their forum, there are lots of people there who could help you. Again, put LIFX in the thread title and you’ll get more responses.
Smartthings supports so many different devices and the forums are so active that a lot of people only read threads that look like they are specific to them. 
It may seem counterintuitive, but the more specific your thread title, the more people will read it. So “question about webcore” might get only a couple of reads. “ ‘Access token” Will get more reads, but maybe not any responses. “ can’t enter access token for LIFX“ is likely to get a lot of reads and several helpful responses. It’s just the way people manage the flood of threads.
Also…CoRE and WebCore are two different things. Core was the original, but has been replaced by Webcore. There are a number of differences, and almost everybody is using webcore now. Your most recent post referred to core. If you really meant webcore, make sure your posts say that. And if you indeed are using core, not webcore, I recommend that you stop and go to webcore instead.
Ok…so last reply to this since I feel like an idiot now. I just spent $40 for the rboy apps but I dont see anything called WebCore there. Can you shoot me a quick link and then I’ll send any following questions to the respective forums.
WebCore is not an Rboy app. That’s why it’s listed as a separate option in my post above. (6 vs 7). WebCore is free.
That said, the Rboy apps are still very useful, particularly for the locks, so I think you’ll find that your money was well spent.
If you go back to the short FAQ link that I gave you above, just follow the link to their wiki and it tells you how to get started and where to get the free code:
Sorry if I sound short today, I don’t mean to, I’m just not feeling well. But there are lots of folks in the webcore forum who will be happy to help. 