Now on my mobile where I configure the SmartTiles dashboard, I only see the option to set “Power Meters” and “Energy Meters”, one of these options gives me the current usage in watts, the other one gives me a slightly odd reading of the current usage rounded up to the nearest Kw.
What I really want on my SmartTiles dashboard in addition to the existing current usage in Watts/Kw’s, is the current running cost per hour (i.e. £0.65 p/hr) along with “Today’s Usage” in both “£” and “kWH”, the months usage also in “£” and “kWH” like shown on tonesto7’s smartapp.
How can I achieve this. I am Very new to the smartthings and have no experience in the Groovy language.
tgauchat
(ActionTiles.com co-founder Terry @ActionTiles; GitHub: @cosmicpuppy)
2
Hi Elliott…
SmartTiles focuses primarily on official SmartThings “Capabilities” (see developer Documentation), and, unfortunately, the list and definitions of these eveolve extremely slowly.
The reason us that we have limited development resources and, generally, only devices that fit the Capability chart are likely to be used by a lot of customers. That’s because different manufacturers and models will have the same interfaces and automatically be compatible with the same Tile type in SmartTiles.
SmartThings allows ad hoc arbitrary added custom Attributes, Commands and Events in a Device Type Handler, but two different programmers can now use entirely different non-standard interfaces to devices with similar functions. It’s like if the DTH for GE lights called events “switch: on/off” and the DTH for Hue lights used “light: lit/shut”.
SmartTiles’s Tiles currently cannot be customized by users, but we can develop custom Tiles for a consulting fee or when we have a lot of requests.
We also encourage customers to petition SmartThings (@slagle@jody.albritton) to add more official Capabilities and to make sure these are previewed to the development Community for feedback, and to make everyone follows the Capability definitions precisely.
Thanks for your reply, If I understand you correctly; SmartTiles is closed source and focuses on the official out of the box experience of the SmartThings experience.
Thus there is no easy way for the end user to integrate 3rd party smartapps into the SmartTile experience
I was hoping I could simply achieve what I wanted to by changing a couple of lines of code. I.e. Edit the Efergy Engage code from tonesto7 and assign the current cost in £ p/hr as another power meter.
tgauchat
(ActionTiles.com co-founder Terry @ActionTiles; GitHub: @cosmicpuppy)
4
Yes; SmartTiles is closed source.
I think thousands of SmartTiles users would say that it is definitely an “outside-the-box” utility. It provides a powerfully “simple” user interface for SmartThings not provided by them or any other vendor.
The next generation of SmartTiles (“V6”) will be quite a bit more modular, thus making it easier for us to accommodate custom Tile types, including composite Tiles and options for existing Tiles. Coming up with a means of incorporating arbitrary tile definitions (i.e., a “Tile Language” similar to the Device Type Handlers defined in SmartThings’s Groovy), is a bigger challenge, but is certainly not out-of-the-picture. We just have a lot higher priorities, including, in the meantime, hard-coding special Tile definitions for high demand special device types, or paid custom requests.
Yes! If you can get several Efergy users together, then you can split the cost of a custom Tile development for SmartTiles. If you can get many users together, then we might develop the Tile of our own accord or as low-cost premium option.
Thanks, by out-of-the box experience, I meant devices and technologies that the smartthings hub officially supports without the use of 3rd party device handlers and smartapps.
tgauchat
(ActionTiles.com co-founder Terry @ActionTiles; GitHub: @cosmicpuppy)
6
Yes… exactly: SmartTilesis a “3rd Party SmartApp”, so, by definition, it is not “out of the box”.