Groovy deprecation - October 15, 2022

General Discussion
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Announce on an obscure podcast? Seriously?!

Given the current state of the Lua/Edge drivers that date seems way too close to be believable as the death date for Groovy.

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I would hardly call Staceyā€™s podcast ā€œobscureā€. Iā€™d wager itā€™s probably the most popular smart home focused podcast there is.

Thereā€™s definitely still a few kinks to work out of Edge drivers, but IMO theyā€™ve matured nicely over the past year. SmartThings has a pretty comprehensive set of standard drivers to replace their Groovy ones. Thereā€™s a planned automatic migration from Groovy to Edge. Community members are releasing some really nice custom versions (that can FINALLY run local!).

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I agree with @Automated_House that Stacey Higginbothamā€™s podcast is definitely not ā€œobscure.ā€ Sheā€™s a major analyst in the space, particularly on industrywide implications. (Just look at the panels she appears on, particularly as moderator.)

That said, Iā€™m not sure itā€™s the most popular for individual users, but itā€™s definitely the most popular for industry news, which I suspect is where this qualifies.

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If they launch it before fixing the voice control and UI issues for multicomponent devices, it will definitely be too soon. JMHO of course.

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This is what Iā€™m interested in. Iā€™ve moved all my devices back to ST provided DTHā€™s or Edge drivers, or a couple community developed Edge drivers, except 2 out of my 280 devices! Iā€™m not really wanting to invest more time developing on the ST platform, so this peaked my interest.

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Tagging @RBoy

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And 9/30 happens to be a Friday. Anyone whoā€™s been around long enough will know the joke about Friday implosions on SmartThings, lol.

If this is true I bet the SmartThings team will be running off to happy hour early that day and turning off their phones. I would!

Oh, and donā€™t they need to get Edge out of beta first? :joy: Oh wait, thatā€™s not how they do things.

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deĀ·preĀ·ciĀ·aĀ·tion

  1. a reduction in the value of an asset with the passage of time.

So it depends on your interpretation of the definition of the term ā€˜depreciationā€™. I believe using my understanding of the definition of the term ā€˜depreciationā€™, that SmartThings Groovy is already in a ā€˜depreciationā€™ state ever since they announced that when adding new devices to SmartThings they will now use Edge drivers vice DTH drivers.

So for me until they say something like, shutdown, decommission, or end of life, then thatā€™s when Iā€™ll believe Groovey is coming to an end.

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Itā€™s not depreciation, itā€™s deprecation. Deprecate:
to withdraw official support for or discourage the use of (something, such as a software product) in favor of a newer or better alternative

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This was a really interesting interview with Mark Benson, although not sure if everything he said made sense to me (or that I agreed with everything he said)ā€¦

ā€œWe have the Rules API which makes it easy to create simple or complex rulesā€.

I wouldnā€™t say using the rules API is particularly easy for your everyday user. Hopefully heā€™s referring to the elusive routine creator!

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I think he was indeed referring to Routines in the mobile app, which uses Rules API in the backend. But still no signs of a UI for Rules API that can create more complex automations.

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He did mention the routines in the app first, then the API.

Also - I thought his comments around Matter Controller vs Matter bridge were a bit vagueā€¦
Support for Matter as a controller but not as a bridge, so other matter ecosystems couldnā€™t control smartthings devices.

Which I get, but does that mean that the main advantage is simply anything badged as matter compatible will be compatible with smartthings? So basically just more devices compatible out of the box, but not system to system compatibility?

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yes, exactly. Hue is a good example of Matter as a bridge. Hue devices themselves are Zigbee based, have been around forever and arenā€™t, and wonā€™t be, Matter certified. But Hue will be updating their bridge to expose those devices as Matter devices to other Matter controllers such as SmartThings, Apple, Home Assistant, etc. SmartThings also has zigbee devices connected to its hub, but they will NOT be exposing them to other Matter controllers like Hue will.

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Got it. Thanks

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My interpretation of what Mark Benson said was that 30th September was when the switch off would begin. Stacey seemed to pick up on his comment about the ā€˜transitionā€™ already being in progress and conclude it was when the lights finally went off.

With a fair wind that could be the day that the stock DTHs are turned off, but I would imagine there will several other dates ringed on the calendar after that.

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Is there a transcript of the podcast available somewhere? Podcasts are not my preferred medium - Iā€™d much rather skim through text quickly than have to sit through a long podcast to try and find the interesting bits.

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skip to the 40 minute mark for the SmartThings bits

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Will the new app release coincide with DTH switch off ? That is a lot of headache if so

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What new app?