Difference between IFTTT, Stringify, WebCore, Device Handlers and SmartApps

[JDRoberts]

Did you read the complex rules FAQ? It should help (this is a clickable link)

How to Get Started Creating Complex Rules in SmartThings

(This is a wiki post: feel free to edit it or add to it as needed. Also, I can’t take any screenshots since I can’t use the app at this time due to its incompatibility with voiceover, so feel free to add screenshots where they would be helpful.) At one point, one of the biggest advantages of using the SmartThings platform was the wide variety of devices that it supported. However, by the end of 2017 several competing platforms had caught up in that regard. Where SmartThings still holds a significant advantage over some of the other low-cost home automation solutions is in the ability to really build really complex rules in a fairly simple manner. You won’t have to be a programmer, but you may need the help of other community members to get the logic constructed just right. Also, you …

IFTTT, Stringify, and yonomi are rules mechanisms created by three separate companies, and none of these companies are part of SmartThings. However, all three of these have provided some integration with SmartThings.

“Smartapps” are code which runs directly on the SmartThings platform, usually in the SmartThings cloud. Some were created by SmartThings staff, some are created by community developers. Anything which is called “custom code” is not officially supported and runs in the smartthings cloud.

Webcore is a custom smartapp whose author was later hired by smartthings for their own staff.

FAQ: What is WebCoRE? (And what was CoRE?)

CoRE (now WebCore) is a very powerful community – created rules engine for SmartThings. It allows you to set up stacked conditionals like “If A then B but only while C and not if D.” Setting it up can be quite complex, but there are many community members who will be glad to help you. For example, here is a piston that one member created to notify him if the dog had already been fed twice that day and he picked up the dog bowl for a third time. He needed this because he has a large family and people didn’t always remember whose turn it was to feed the dog. [image] The original version of CoRE Has now been replaced by a new version, WebCoRE, which moves the data entry to a web interface. This allows for flexibility and an architecture that requires more memory than is av…