Help with IFTTT controlling switch in SmartThings with webCoRE

[nathancu (Nathan Curtis)]

I read somewhere that SmartThings depricated the physical v. programmatic function on devices. Due to the issue @JDRoberts mentions in this thread:

Detect Manual Operation of a switch vs. program/app operation?

This is technically possible with zwave (“was physical” vs “was digital”), but the problem is that not all manufacturers follow the convention of reporting physical vs digital initiation and, even worse, if the message passes through a repeater the “was physical” information often gets lost, which means the method becomes unreliable. And some manufacturers, such as Evolve, always report every event as “physical.” And some switches don’t send the hub a report at all for physical events. Put all of this together, and it’s both unreliable and a nightmare to troubleshoot. The issues went on for literally years (3, if I recall correctly), and eventually SmartThings did make the platform change to stop reporting the distinction. So you could write a custom DTH to try to capture the infor…

Even if they didn’t you can tell from the thread that while the spec supports it, not all manufacturers implement it so it’ll be spotty at best.

With cloud connected devices like SmartLife switches the odds are you will not be able to differentiate it easily if at all.