I’ve had SmartThings for years and have connected many devices to it including Alexa. I see that there are nice inexpensive wifi outlets and devices from Amazon, FEIT and others but have no idea how to connect them to SmartThings. The officially supported device list is rather small compared to what’s out there. So, if I connect this device to Alexa (it’s a FEIT outdoor outlet), can ST tell Alexa to turn it on/off (I don’t think so but I’m not sure.). Can I connect these devices another way, say via IFTTT? I’m a pretty basic type of user (no IDE stuff) but figure there must be somebody smarter than me that has done this. Thanks!
There is no direct integration, and also unfortunately FEIT does not have an IFTTT channel.
As you mentioned, it is possible to do it through an echo routine, although it’s a little tricky, because you have to also create a virtual Sensor since at the present time Eco routines will only trigger based on a sensor, not on a switch. But it’s definitely doable, lots of people have.
See the following FAQ. The topic title is a clickable link. Edited to update and as @Paul_Oliver Notes below, another option in the FAQ, the smart life app integration, would probably be even simpler in this case. 
BTW, by the end of 2022 this may all be much easier as the more manufacturers adopt the new matter standard. But we are probably a year away from that now.
Matter - smart home connectivity standard (formerly Project CHIP)
There are at least 2 ways to do this:
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Pair the plug with the SmartLife (SL) or Tuya apps. Open the device in SL and click on edit (pencil) in upper right corner. It should list 3rd party integrations. It will probably list Alexa and Google. If you are really lucky it might list Smartthings (ST).
Assuming ST is not listed create two tap-to-run automations (scenes) in SL. One to turn the plug on and one to turn the plug off.
After you do that go to ST and click + sign, add device, by brand, Tuya, other and run the integration. The 2 scenes you created in SL should show up in no room assigned.
Create a virtual switch and use that switch to create 2 ST automations. One to toggle the “on” scene and one to toggle the “off” scene.
The imported scenes will probably be listed as off line. If so go to the ST web portal (my.smartthings.com) and operate each scene. This will wake them up and only needs to be done once. -
Use Alexa. Create a Simulated Alexa Switch (SAS) in ST. Then go to Alexa and use the SAS to trigger and on routine and an off routine.
The 1st option is more reliable and does not depend on Alexa.
If you are in the US you can easily create a virtual switch for option 1 in ST Labs under the menu tab.
If you have questions let us know and we will try to help.
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Yes, those are options 4 and 5 in the community FAQ that I linked to.
Thanks, my Wyze outdoor power outlet does not support Tuya, Smart Life or IFTTT. I have tried option 2 with Alexa in the middle. Alexa connects to Wyze and turns the outlet on/off with no issue. I set up a Simulated Alexa Switch in ST and see it in ST and Alexa discovered it as a Sensor. The sensor/switch toggles in ST. I used the SAS as a trigger for two Alexa routines (on/off). The routines run manually perfectly and toggle the power outlet. The only issue is that when I use ST to change the state of the SAS (open/close), Alexa fails to trigger the routines. Any suggestions. I feel like it’s so close (but yet, so far!).
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I’m replying to myself just to say that I solved this. I reread all of the articles and found one tidbit which was “if it doesn’t work, disable SmartThings in Alexa and re-enable”. This fixed it and now it works. Thanks JDRoberts and Paul_Oliver for the quick replies and help! I’m looking at the 10 open browser tabs trying to find who posted the tidbit but can’t find who. This community is awesome.
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Glad to hear you got it working. This gets much easier after the 1st try.
It’s in the FAQ on using a virtual sensor to trigger an Alexa routine:
in particular, if echo can see your sensor but the sensor will not trigger an echo routine, follow the steps in the how to article exactly and that will fix that problem.
Yes it does get easier. I set up the second outlet in 5 minutes
This started when I bought another Echo with the clock feature for my nightstand that’s currently a Black Friday deal and saw Amazon offered an outdoor power outlet for $10 more. The device is manufactured by Wyze and each outlet is independently programmable. I probably spent more time than I saved in money getting it going, but I think of these things as puzzles, not problems, and with a little (ok, a lot) of help from my friends it got solved. Thanks again. And also to B. J. Pierron, whose code allows the Simulated Alexa Switch to operate as a switch and sensor!
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That has been a great contribution to the community. Unfortunately, it will stop working once the groovy cloud is discontinued.
However, another community member has stepped up to offer an edge driver version which can do the same thing. it is still in beta because the entire edge platform is still in beta, but there are some community members using it and you can read more about it here:
[ST Edge] vEdge Creator: a virtual device generator for end users
I’m not up to speed on what this means to me. It sounds like another time sink for users like the move to the new app from Classic. And now I’m hearing about the older hubs being relegated to the dust bin in the near future. I’m a V2 user. I’m in the software business and understand that these are required. We try to limit the impact to our users in both frequency and severity of required migrations. Similar to my customers, I made a decision years ago and am now vested in the ecosystem. But, it does make me wonder about all the new alternatives.
Smartthings is in the middle of a major architectural change.
Major major.
Up until now, most smartapps and many DTHs, all of which were written in the groovy language, ran in a cloud that was hosted for free by Samsung and made available to any customer.
That service is going away.
Instead, DTH is which run on the hub will be written in LUA, a different programming language, and are described as “edge drivers.“
Custom Smart apps and any other custom DTHs will have to be hosted by the customer themselves and then communicate with smartthings cloud to cloud.
The DTH is which are already using the new cloud architecture show up in the IDE as “placeholder.“
Once this transition is complete, the IDE itself will go away. So again, major major changes.
It’s not just a matter of updating existing Groovy code: everything will have to be rewritten from scratch unless you find that you can now use the official features.
There have been multiple official announcements about this:
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. Staff have said multiple times that the majority of smartthings customers have 15 or fewer devices and never use any custom code. So they won’t see any differences and won’t have to change anything, it will all happen behind the scenes for them.
But those using custom code will have to find substitutes for that code. 