Now that I have our alarm system integrated with ST the number of things has ballooned up into the mid-fifties. I’m struggling with how to organize things in the mobile app.
Currently I’ve got one group for the alarm, one for infrastructure (mostly things I never need to look at) and then one group per room or area of the house, kitchen, family room, basement, etc.
I was considering an alternative that was more structural than geographic in nature: doors, windows, motion, smoke, glass break sensors, etc.
What have you decided on and how is it working out?
I used to do this, went recently to a room based structure. I like it this way because you can have different temps and things like that display for the room.
I have them organized by room, but with outdoor temp and thermostats on the main panel. It just seems that when occupying a certain room, it makes sense to have all devices at hand. But with that said, I find it is just to inconvenient to launch the app, wait for it to synch/refresh, navigate to ‘things’ and then the room, in order to turn something on or off. Plus the integrations with Hue and the thermostats are kinda clumsy.
I ended up putting a number of frequently used ‘scene’ widgets on my home screens using either Hue or Tasker. These are things I usually run manually every day. If I want more granular control (for A/V gear, access to all lights, etc.), I use iRule, where I have a number of screens based on activity.
In the bedroom, most thing are all set by motion sensors and timers, but I do have a docked Nexus 7 on the nightstand (my clock radio so to speak) running @625alex’s ActiON, iRule, and have some Tasker/HAM Bridge ‘scenes’ triggered through ‘OK Google’ using AutoVoice for things I want to trigger manually (‘watch the news’, ‘listen to music’, ‘play a podcast’, ‘shutdown the system’, etc.). The goal is pretty much not to use the SmartThings mobile app for much of anything other than setup and notifications, and of course, control of things when I am outside of my LAN.
I would love to know more about this. I use the Android app, and don’t seem to have the ability to change / modify how things are grouped - I’m stuck with where the install puts them on the app - now everything I have sits under Things, but there are lights, switches, vents, sensors and cameras there. I’d love to be able to group them a little more logically.
On iOS if you long press on a Thing you can drag it around and drop it onto other things to create a group or onto existing groups to add to that group. I’m guessing android is similar though I don’t know for sure.
I agree Scott this process is a little inconvienient. I use the “Lights & Switches” dashboard. Thats where i keep all my frequently used stuff. That way the steps followed are 2 steps instead of 4. And i find lights and switches loads faster then the things view since I am only loading half the data. I have all my virtual (scene) switches here as well.
Load App>Lights and Switches>click light (or in your case virtual switch to control scene)
As for displaying “information” there is going to be a way to use the banner at the top of the dashboard page to display (hopefully customizable) info. For isntance a temp sensor on each floor and outside quick and easy to view.
I admit the app does need some TLC but at least there is an app. Insteons is way worse lol, ISY doesn’t have one, Vera has some community ones that suck, Wink just updated theirs and it looks ok but functions like a 3 year old drinking whisky, so for now kudos to STs for actually having and app that performs its intended prupose and doesn’t look like ass
