I’m just starting out in the world of home automation and bought some Zigbee products to get started. However, I’m having some trouble adding these products to SmartThings.
I’ve seen some ways to add unsupported devices through Scripts, IFTTT, and SmartThings IDE Advanced (which I’ve had some success with).
However, I’m having a bit of trouble.
Has anyone here used the IDE, is familiar with the site, or even someone who has managed to add a device there and can help me?
What is the manufacturer and model(s) of the Zigbee devices?
You can’t add physical devices to your hub using the ST Advanced Web App. When you select “Add a new Device” in the Devices section, you are creating virtual devices that are cloud based. Physical devices are added by putting the hub into pairing mode either for a specific manufactuer’s device or by doing a general “Scan Nearby” and putting the device into pairing at the same time. Physical devices like Zigbee, Z-Wave, and Matter devices need drivers that get loaded on your hub (Edge drivers) to function. There are stock Edge drivers that are supplied by ST that support a lot of devices and there are community developed Edge drivers that extend support for many devices that might not be in the stock drivers.
Once you tell us the info about your device(s), we can help point you in the right direction.
The IDE was part of the old pre-2023 architecture and is no longer available. Things are managed now in quite a different way. So any blog posts or videos or forum post you find that are dated before August 2023 are probably out of date and will just be confusing.
Why don’t you start by reading the community FAQ on the new architecture and it should give you the basics you need to know to follow everything else.
Once you’ve read that, it’s important to understand that not all Zigbee devices will work with smartthings. The independent third-party Zigbee standard allows for “manufacturer proprietary” clusters, which can be unique to one manufacturer. For example, one of the largest home automation companies, tuya, uses a lot of proprietary code in its devices. So it can be sometimes tricky to get those to work with smartthings. But may be doable. Also, there is more than one Zigbee “profile“ and not all of those work with smartthings.
The first rule of home automation always applies: “the model number matters.“ So we will need to know the following:
what country are you in? (The device and feature selection does vary)
do you have a smartthings/Aeotec hub, and if so, which one?
what is the specific brand and model for the device that you want to add to smartthings? We can start with just one, that would probably be simpler.
Anyway, welcome again. I know it probably seems a bit overwhelming at the moment, but there are lots of people here who will be happy to help you figure things out. start by reading the community FAQ because it will give you the basic ideas and terminology you will need
