Frustrated by the state of things

For how long is actually “after how many minutes”. Hmmm, you can’t set up reminders to notify you every y min… :frowning:

Which isn’ really what I want (or already had). I think I just need to write the smart app. It is relatively easy except for the fact that I need to schedule events to make it work and we all know how wonderfully scheduled events work with ST :frowning:

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That’s the million dollar question I’m sure I asked immediately upon hearing these old Dashboard Solution SmartApps were deprecated without warning (and thus completely unavailable to folks who migrate to Hub V2 or inadvertently delete).

The answer is stubborn myopia. They wanted to clear the way for new Dashboard Solutions and CEO Alex Hawkinson himself said that he’s so glad he had the privilege of migrating his 200+ devices and be forced to totally clean up his Account to take advantage of the new way of doing things with SHM and Smart Lighting; nb: I’m only adding about 10% sarcasm in that paraphrase – ie, he didn’t say “privilege”, but he meant it.


EDIT: Let me be 100% clear: My description of “stubborn myopia” is meant objectively; I’m not making a positive or negative judgement.

Many great tech CEOs (Apple, Uber, Oracle, …) are viewed critically by insiders and outsiders; but the long term results are all that matter.


Yup… Thanks to @SBDOBRESCU, we can quote:

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You are so optimistic :slight_smile: I was my first year on ST also. They may have promised these wonderful new things but I am waiting on promises from over a year ago so I will believe it when I see it. I still don’t understand the concept of removing old functionality BEFORE adding the new technique. We are left unable to do things we had working perfectly before this decision was made.

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I use rule machine to do this with my garage door. This is my programming logic and it works great.

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Maybe this better represents what I am thinking. And there is no optimism here, “the list will expand quickly over the coming days and weeks” Is nothing optimistic when this statement was made in September and we are now in December…And Routines are not able to run locally…

Maybe we should make sure this is clear: The best thing I did when I migrated was (somehow) maintain the dashboard and the rules. I use the garage door functionality along with the alerts daily. If that left me suddenly, I’d be very annoyed. Very.

To an earlier point, why can’t that be brought back? It still works and is immensely useful. I use it more than the rooms and things layout.

@slagle, any thoughts?

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16 weeks is still “weeks”. 52 weeks is still “weeks”.

And:

Well… folks did say that “end of the year” could mean “end of 2016”; and, at least in the above referenced post, Alex did say “do plan”, not “promise”.


I hope everyone on the Community realizes by now that projected timeframe announcements out of SmartThings are meaningless (or, at the very least, subject to definition).

More encouraging would be for SmartThings to realize it is respectful to their Customers to strongly avoid making any timeline announcements. Since the quote above from Alex happened after the 2 to 6 month delay of Hub V2’s own bare bones release, you’d think he would have been more cautious.

But we’re seeing far fewer announcements with release dates now, no?

Let’s hope SmartThings at CES makes extremely vague or pessimistic announcements, that we all can avoid further disappointment and disillusionment … and maybe even swing to the side of being “pleasantly surprised” later in 2016.

=> Because someone would have to admit they were wrong and put some effort into making things right.

NB: I am not saying anyone actually is or was “wrong” … but in order to put back this functionality, it would require that someone value our input sufficiently to accept decide to throw us a bone, take responsibility and be accountable to restore that functionality.

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OK trying Rule Machine but I got stuck on "Select capability"
I don’t see “Garage Door Capability” or even “Door Control” in the list for either “Define Trigger” or “Define Conditions”

What garage door do you have?

CES 2016 announcements may be vague, but they’ll never be pessimistic. From any company. Just sayin’… :wink:

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I wired a z-wave relay to act as a momentary contact switch, which triggers the garage door just like the button on my wall. I used a project box, extension cord, and some spare wire lying around the house to get it all together. I paired that with a tilt sensor and it’s simply beautiful. It has the highest WAF out of everything, so I’m really glad I still have the dashboard (and alert) functionality!!!

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Me too, I use a tilt sensor, and that is the capability in Rule, was actually asking @Ron

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Linear but I don’t see how that matters. I customized the device and remove “contact” switch because I didn’t see the point of having contact switch along with Garage Door since they both have “Open” and “Close” but may mean different things.

“Garage Door Capibility” or “Door Control” capability meaning of Open and Close is obvious. Contact switch doesn’t make sense for a door.

Why doesn’t “Rule Machine” support one or both of these capabilities ?

Adding @bravenel in discussion. I know he looked into this, but I don’t remember what the conclusion was.

Quite frankly because I haven’t been able to figure out what’s going on with garage doors and ST. Which capability is being used, and in what device types?

My own garage doors are Linear relays with an ST contact sensor, so Rule Machine can just flip a switch for me. This used to be the combination sort of supported by ST in V1 mobile app. Then that went away, evidently, although I haven’t paid any attention to details. Full disclosure, I have not automated my garage doors with Rule Machine, simply because they aren’t automated at all other than sending me a notification if I leave them open after we’ve left, and I’ve been too busy to redo that.

So my question is, what is the definitive, supported by ST, garage door capability, and is it really supported or just a wanna be? If it’s officially the way things will be supported going forward, I’d be happy to add it to Rule Machine. If it’s still a confused mess, which it has seemed to be, then I’ll wait.

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Shameless plug here for maxwell’s custom command support…
Perfect use case right here… poke, poke, poke…

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I don’t understand this issue but it’s your app @bravenel so your call. I thought supporting “Garage Door Capability” just means you can subscribe to open and close actions as well as call the open and close methods. Seems to work for smart apps I have written in the past but honestly I have not tried recently so perhaps that is yet another thing broken at ST.

I just want a simple notification that my garage door has been left open. When I bought ST it was the first thing I implemented and I was so happy with the results I bought a ton of devices to automate my home. If I had bought my ST hub today I would have returned it already. I can’t believe the very first thing I was happy to make ST do is now broken. What a mess.

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it is door control… I have it in my smartapp that links a virtual/simulated garage door with a switch/relay and sensor…

I actually recently added the switch capability to the virtual garage device so that I can tell alexa to open and close it as amazon echo only supports switches and not doors.