I wouldn’t have thought that my question would start this level of debate. Thanks for contributing, everyone.
I’m new to SmartThings, and as a new customer I enquired to SmartThings official support about whether they had this feature and they sent me here, only for it to descend into an argument. This doesn’t look great to people who are on the verge of deciding which Smart Home Device to choose.
My bone of contention was that I wasn’t putting in a feature request, though my question seems to have been interpreted as one. And being assured that there is definitely not a lot of interest really isn’t helpful. I’m interested, there seems to be lots of (define lots of etc.) people interested on other threads. That there were only 22 posts on this thread is not sufficient evidence that there’s not a lot of interest, which is possibly backed up by the amount of debate that’s been generated. It’s not great for a newbie making his first forays onto a community forum like this to be shut down so quickly. Though I do appreciate you taking the time to respond, tgauchat, and for the parts of your initial comment that were helpful. Thank you for that.
I’m surprised the debate shifted over into what makes a successful business and even about what constitutes capitalism. I thought this was a community united by an interest in home automation. I’m interested in having a smart home I can control on a device with a floorplan. I’m not here to make money, or to make it my full time job. If you are that’s fine, but we’re not all here for that.
It’s not clear which of us here are developers working for SmartThings, for companies offering SmartThings integration, or simply users of the system. But it seems like there’s animosity between developers and non developers, with the perception (real or otherwise) that non-developers don’t respect how much work building an application takes. This is what I’m surprised at. I’m not sure what has happened in other threads but it doesn’t look to me like a healthy community. Which is a shame.
Like I said above, I’m new to this lark, but I’m not going to stay if this is the what it’s like here. So can we reset this a bit?
I’m interested in having a floorplan which I can look at and instantly see the status of devices as they are laid out in the house.
It seems like there are no applications offering this, so I think it would be a useful community effort to build one. if you are interested in having this would you be up for helping to build it? as an open source project?
I’m not a developer, though I work in DevOps, so will need a lot of help. If the people who want this application can put in the gruntwork, would some of the more experienced coders here be happy to offer us their guidance? Not even so much as doing code reviews or anything like that, but just helping us when we get stuck?
I’m happy to set up a git-hub repo and to get started on this. But I really don’t know where to start. Does anyone have any recommendations? How does an application interact with the SmartThings hub? Are there API calls we could utilise?
If I in any way made it seem like I was upset at anyone, especially these
incredibly helpful developers, I regret doing so as it certainly wasn’t my
intention. I guess the fact is, talent takes time, and time is money. I
could go work a job for $30/hr, or I can code a project. When the crap hits
the fan, some people are willing to put in the effort for little
compensation, while others have more important matters on their hands.
As it has been stated, this is a community. We, for the most part, try to
stick together and I don’t really see any animosity between devs and
non-devs. Such is life in any community you’ll ever be a part of, so please
don’t let this decide what smart home solution you should choose.
Regardless of any of the comments here so far, I will continue to choose
SmartThings as my smart home of choice, and trust me, I’ve used QUITE a
few. SmartThings is hands down the BEST I’ve ever used. It can always be
improved though
I hate to say, dickymoore, that I’ve been in your shoes here before. I was
the guy who was like, “I wanna do this project, and if some coders wanna
just point me in the right direction, that’d be awesome!”. Well, they did,
and I didn’t. My project never did get off the ground, but the dev team
sure did try their best to help. Hate to say, but I don’t think you’re
going to get very far unless an experienced coder specifically in
SmartThings Smart Apps takes your project for themselves and does the grunt
work. It’s much too complicated to try and throw together without any
experience. (trust me, I’ve been there).
To put my two cents in, I sure do hope an experienced coder comes over to
take this under their wing, because it’d sure be a nice setup
Thanks for your input shawneric. I will see how far I get with beginners luck, enthusiasm and blind optimism. Would you be happy to share with me how far you got?
I’ve done this kind of thing before and I did get there in the end. Once with an Android app, once with a house remodelling. Both times it was much more work than I expected, late nights, early mornings, illness, crying etc. But still I got there. I might not do it this time but wanna give it a try.
I believe there’s a slack dev group you can join. Feel free to ask any of
the developers here and they’ll be able to point you in the right
direction. My only advice is this: don’t just ask them to do the work for
you, they’ll be more than happy to point you in the right direction, but if
you don’t do it yourself, no one is going to put it on a silver platter for
you. I had to learn this to hard way lol
I have not personally done this but someone on the Home Remote forum created the layout below. Home remote does integrate with Smartthings.
3 Likes
tgauchat
(ActionTiles.com co-founder Terry @ActionTiles; GitHub: @cosmicpuppy)
48
Please… definitely stay! Don’t take anything I’ve said in this Topic to lead you believe there isn’t a tremendous amount of cooperative, generous, progressive, and helpful discussion in this Community. It’s an amazing place.
A big reason I chimed in is that I really want to believe that ActionTiles has the potential to be themost efficient platform for this functionality.
More than 50% of what’s needed is already in our platform.
But for various very good reasons, we’re a for-profit venture and don’t find the open source model fits our goals and isn’t in the best interests of our customers. Hence the long discussion to figure out if there was any possible way for this to be done contractually closed source. So … yup – business complications on top of technical complications. I certainly understand why open source projects are attractive, especially in large markets where there becomes the potential for supportive revenue through customization, support contracts, etc… (i.e., RedHat Linux, WordPress, … and many, many more).
But … Indeed, though, there are many open source projects already underway that you could leverage and/or start from scratch as a fun and educational challenge.
Love this idea. Keeping myself in the loop.
Thanks.
1 Like
Vu.Q.Nguyen
(ThingsTwin SmartThings on Floorplan UI)
50
Hi! Is there an interest for this around? Let me share our app created for the exact purpose of visualizing your SmartThings devices on your own house floor plan. There is no need to work around in your flat panel, or try to learn a 3rd drawing tool. We tried to create this app with all built-in tools included.
We just released it to production stage (after 6 months of beta testing with folks in this community and on SmartThings user group on Facebook, too). It’s now starting to be used daily by people to view and control their devices. If you need more information, please check out some info below:
lol
Let me share our app created for the exact purpose of visualizing your SmartThings devices on your own house floor plan. There is no need to work around in your flat panel, or try to learn a 3rd drawing tool. We tried to create this app with all built-in tools included.