Custom capabilities for a driver

[nayelyz (SmartThings Developer Support)]

@orangebucket

I haven’t used the actual sample custom capability example, but I have tried something similar, and indeed similar to what @alex.49.98 has. You can’t fix anything by rebooting the hub after installing the device once because you can’t actually install the device once.

Ok, I double-checked and it seems the rebooting workaround doesn’t help for all device types. It is successful using a Zigbee device because, despite the error of “capability not found”, the device instance is created.
After rebooting the Hub, I was able to install a LAN driver that used the capability defined in that Zigbee device.

So, in this particular case, @alex.49.98. You’ll have to follow the steps I shared above:

Custom capabilities for a driver

Yes, you need to create the custom capability through the API to be able to use it in your driver. Here’s more info about how to create them, display types, etc. Once you created your custom capability, you need to: Add them to your driver profile As the device profile is created automatically, it also creates a device-config including these capabilities. Refer to those capabilities in the driver. To do so, you need to add a JSON file of its definition and then, construct it like explained here: [ST Edge] - Custom Capabilities Issue - #11 by Zach_Varberg There’s no documentation regarding the support of custom capabilities in Edge Drivers yet but I suggest you stay tuned on the documentation release notes:

This means you’ll have to switch to JSON format to use build_cap_from_json_string as Graham mentioned.

Note: If you have questions regarding that, please let me know.

@alex.49.98

name: GenericSensor # Other - it seems to be not a valid value when packaging but it is a valid value in the development workspace - curious

About the categories, the ones mentioned in the ST Schema reference are values that can be used in the discovery interaction of this kind of integration.
I suggest you take a look at the ones mentioned here, which you can use in your device profile:

Edge Device categories

Hi, @veonua You can refer to Change icons in new app - #24 by nicholam77 or use a pascal cased version of these categories. This second reference may be confusing because it is under the Cloud-Connected Integrations section, but this is something that has been discussed and it keeps being reviewed (making the documentation of profile categories agnostic between device integrations).

@alex.49.98

metadata:

mnmn: MegaScopes

vid: 20b925e0-45df-30ef-916b-4b7b2157a7cc

vid: 5eb403a2-501d-4273-8a6b-7929db19e027

vid: b2b97493-e76c-4997-9cbf-9f4d532a5c53

About this section, the value of mnmn must match the value shown in the presentation, in this case, “SmartThingsCommunity”. Get the details of your presentation with the command:

smartthings presentation id [-j or -y]

Also, there should be only one VID, a device cannot have multiple User Interfaces. You can create other device profiles (with different VIDs) to use in each one of them.

Note: The presentations b2b97493-e76c-4997-9cbf-9f4d532a5c53 and 5eb403a2-501d-4273-8a6b-7929db19e027 don’t exist with mnmn “SmartThingsCommunity”

@alex.49.98

I tried to start from the other end, from creating a device profile in the Developer Workspace for the direct-connected device but didn’t quite understand how it is related to an edge driver.

They are not related. You don’t need to create a project in the Developer Workspace to work with Edge drivers, they are packaged, installed, etc. from the SmartThings CLI.

@alex.49.98

Also, somewhere I found that I should be able to generate a config from a device profile using smartthings CLI but I only got errors

In the Edge drivers, you define the profile in the /profile/profile-name.yaml directory. This generates the corresponding profile once the driver is packaged. So, don’t worry about this step.

@alex.49.98

smartthings.exe presentation:device-config:generate

This command is used to generate a device-config configuration based on the ID received (profile, dth, etc.). This doesn’t create the device-config, it just helps you to generate the input
When you’re working with Edge drivers, you don’t have a device profile ID since the beginning, so you would have to define your device-config file by yourself.

SUMMARY

1. Change your configuration to use the build_cap_from_json_string function
2. Don’t consider the Developer Workspace when working with Edge Drivers, unless you want to see some config examples using the device profiles manager but those profiles are not used in Edge.
3. Be careful with the metadata configuration you define in your driver’s device profile.

Let me know if you need to go over the development of an Edge driver step-by-step, there’s no problem with that.
Also, If you want some privacy (and to avoid sharing some sensitive information), you can send an email to build@smartthings.com.

Note: It would be helpful that you shared with me the type of device you’re trying to integrate (Zigbee, Z-Wave, or LAN) because each needs a different configuration.