How to send data from my LAN connected device to HubV2?

stjohn · November 12, 2015, 3:50pm

Hey everyone!

I’m trying to setup a situation where my LAN connected device (Raspberry Pi) can send notifications to SmartThings HubV2 when it detects events (Motion, Network Traffic, etc).

But I’m having trouble figuring out where to send messages to FROM my Raspberry Pi (preferable via HTTP). The best documentation I could find was here: https://github.com/SmartThingsCommunity/Documentation/blob/master/cloud-and-lan-connected-device-types-developers-guide/building-lan-connected-device-types/building-the-device-type.rst#subscribing-to-device-events

But that just tells me how to subscribe to upnp events. Any ideas on how to subscribe to HTTP callbacks?

stjohn · November 15, 2015, 3:14am

Okay, so how does the Hub know which devicetype to send that data to? I’m trying what you have, I’m getting a 202 ACCEPTED from the Hub, but nothing is making it to my parse function.

stjohn · November 15, 2015, 5:18am

Okay, so I found these posts:

And I got to a pre-release version of the docs, I think: http://smartthings-documentation.readthedocs.org/en/latest/cloud-and-lan-connected-device-types-developers-guide/building-lan-connected-device-types/building-the-device-type.html

But I still can’t figure it out, I think I’m missing the subscribe portion, but the docs only talk about upnp.

Kristopher · November 16, 2015, 12:29pm

Hey @stjohn

Check this thread out where I create an endpoint for my camera system:

Blue Iris motion detection to activate smart app Automation Ideas

I don’t use Blue Iris, but iSpyConnect. I think it has the same functionality though – when iSpy detects motion, I have the software hit an HTTP endpoint. Here is the SmartApp to do that. You’ll also need to create a simulated motion sensor. /** * Camera Motion * * Copyright 2015 Kristopher Kubicki * */ definition( name: "HTTP Motion Endpoint", namespace: "KristopherKubicki", author: "kristopher@acm.org", description: "Creates an HTTP motion endpoint for your camera or other device", category: "Convenience", iconUrl: "https://s3.amazonaws.com/smartapp-icons/Meta/intruder_motion-cam.png", iconX2Url: "https://s3.amazonaws.com/smartapp-icons/Meta/intruder_motion-cam@2x.png") preferences { page(name: "selectDevices", install: false, uninstall: true…

stjohn · November 16, 2015, 4:19pm

Thanks, @Kristopher! In this case, it looks like you’re doing an OAuth web call. I was hoping to keep my calls inside my LAN. I’ll save this for a last resort.

obycode · November 16, 2015, 4:24pm

As far as I know, its not possible to send data over the LAN to the hub and have it received via a device/SmartApp except via UPnP. This is the reason that the current version of ObyThing Music only communicates hub -> Mac and not the other way, and the new version uses OAuth to communicate back to the hub.

stjohn · November 17, 2015, 4:14pm

Here is a piece of code I’m trying to play with to experiment:

gist.github.com

https://gist.github.com/stjohnjohnson/5dfe4d5caf3e2afa5a56

devicetype.groovy

/**
 *  Raspberry Pi - IP Camera
 *
 *  Copyright 2015 st.john.johnson@gmail.com
 *
 *  Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not use this file except
 *  in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at:
 *
 *      http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
 *

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package.json

{
    "name": "RPiSmartCam-smartthings",
    "version": "0.1.0",
    "description": "Abstract out access to webcamera",
    "scripts": {
        "test": "echo \"Error: no test specified\" && exit 1",
        "start": "node server.js"
    },
    "repository": {
        "type": "git",

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server.js

var express = require('express'),
    bodyparser = require('body-parser'),
    request = require('request');

var callback,
    app = express();

// Accept JSON
app.use(bodyparser.json());

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To run it, just do:

npm install
npm start

It default uses port 8000, you can change it at the last line of the javascript.

stjohn · November 19, 2015, 4:15pm

Wow, this really needs to be in the documentation. Thank you so much for your help with this!

Is there anything I can do to support multiple device types for the same raspberry pi?

pstuart · November 19, 2015, 4:25pm

This isn’t really a callback, its just a response to an outbound lan request. The hub still needs to open a port outbound and wait for a response.

The hub ip and port (or mac) will not remain open for any responses (wish it would) for longer then 10 seconds as well.

Hopefully these things will change one day.

pstuart · November 19, 2015, 9:10pm

I understand what the code is doing, it is opening up the port, but if it stays open then that is interesting.

If you set the DNI to your computer’s mac (or IP:PORT) and hit this url and send something, I wonder if it will work without the refresh?

I’ll check when I get home… This could be very useful if it stays open.

pstuart · November 21, 2015, 1:54am

Confirmed, this does work.

stjohn · November 26, 2015, 2:28am

Okay, so this works perfectly. But I still have the problem that I want to support multiple devices for the same Raspberry Pi. How can I do that and still send push events to it?

What if I have four motion sensors hooked up to the Pi and I want to send four different motion events?

ogiewon · November 26, 2015, 3:09am

@stjohn I have plenty examples of multiple similar devices attached to one Arduino that you can use as a starting point. Check out my Multiplexer SmartApps and virtual device types in my github repository. Lots of discussions here as well which you will find helpful.

Announcing the "ST_Anything" Arduino/ThingShield Project Projects & Stories

1/16/16 - Updated to reflect recent ST IDE nomenclature changes and v2 SmartThings Phone App image. Just a heads up - The current Arduino IDE 1.6.6 has a bug in it which throws a compiler error (invalid namespace) when trying to build ST_Anything. Please continue to use v1.6.5 until 1.6.7 is released. You can use the latest “Hourly Build” of the 1.6.7 IDE as well, since I have confirmed the bug has been fixed in that version, as of 11/28/15. I am happy to share with the SmartThings Community a project that my son and I have been working on for the past two weeks - ST_Anything! Our goal was to make it as easy as possible for anyone with some Arduino hardware/software skills to be able to get a new “Device” up and running in a matter of minutes versus hours/days. We have implemented many…

My hope is to add LAN connected support to my ST_Anything project, so you’d have the option of either the ThingShield or an Ethernet Shield to communicate with the ST Hub.

Longer term, port ST_Anything to Raspberry Pi and possibly Windows.

Dan

colin.sul · December 2, 2015, 6:33pm

Just to clarify, the MAC address entered into the “Device Network Id” field must be uppercase without colons (i.e. 4D3005HB6334, not 4d:30:05:hb:63:34). The parse method seems to not be called otherwise.

MikeDL · December 31, 2015, 9:00pm

I can get the esp8266 to post to smartthings when I press polling but no future updates without pressing polling again. I am just monitoring ST logs and not worried about the device value. I have the MAC address in the Device Network Id with out colons.

Device Type - Only worried about logging output

github.com

Mdleal/SmartThingsPublic/blob/master/devicetypes/esp8266/esp8266-test.src/esp8266-test.groovy

/**
 *  Copyright 2015 Charles Schwer
 *
 *  Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not use this file except
 *  in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at:
 *
 *      http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
 *
 *  Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed
 *  on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License
 *  for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.
 *
 *	Arduino Security System
 *
 *	Author: cschwer
 *	Date: 2015-10-27
 */
 preferences {
    input("ip", "string", title:"IP Address", description: "192.168.1.150", required: true, displayDuringSetup: true)
    input("port", "string", title:"Port", description: "8000", defaultValue: 8000 , required: true, displayDuringSetup: true)

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Arduino esp8266 sketch
https://github.com/Mdleal/Arduino/blob/master/esp8266/%20esp8266DHT-ST.ino

Joe_Jarvis · January 2, 2016, 3:12pm

Did you solve the problem of multiple devices? I found that the device network id needs to be unique so if i wanted to support 4 different smart thing devices from the same machine (windows in my case) then i can only add one to device on that mac address.

stjohn · January 3, 2016, 7:18am

I haven’t solved it yet, sadly. I’ve moved on for a bit and I’ll probably come back in a month or so.

LousyG · February 4, 2016, 1:13pm

Is this still working for everyone? I’m seeing very odd behavior with the “mac” field received/reported by my hub. I’ve been following along on some of these threads as I’m trying to create a custom LAN device. Ultimately, I’ll have a Raspberry Pi sending events to my hub, but for now I’m just trying to get things working on a Linux VM.

I’ve started with Charles_Schwer’s examples, and I’ve even gotten them working a few times. The problem is, it’s very inconsistent. When testing, I’m looking for the debug statements in parse() to show up. However, I find that more often than not, I see nothing for the device appear under ‘Live Logging’. Instead, I’ve found that these events are appearing in the “Events List” for the hub. Here, I’m able to see the event content, and I’m finding that the value in the “mac” field is not matching the MAC address of my Linux VM, but rather random devices on my network. Rebooting the hub sometimes causes things to work again, though they’ll eventually go awry again. Usually though, a reboot just causes a different invalid MAC address to appear here.

Here’s what’s really strange - if I change the network ID for the device to match this incorrect MAC address as reported by ST, the events are parsed correctly again and I see the debug messages appear in the “Live Logging.” I’ve tried sending these events from other VMs and hosts on my network, but I’m pretty consistently getting the same results.

I’m at a loss here. I’ve got a support ticket opened and I’m waiting for a response from ST, but I’m curious if anyone else has seen some odd behavior. It’s possible I’m doing something wrong, but I’ve checked things over thoroughly and I’m fairly confident in my work. I’m new to groovy and ST programming, but I’m a career software engineer, so this certainly isn’t uncharted territory for me.

redloro · October 19, 2016, 5:38am

@stjohn and others… just ran across this thread and wanted to share a nodejs service I wrote a while back to solve this exact problem. Basically it acts as a proxy and allows you to post data back to the ST Hub as you see fit; it’s built in such a way that all you have to do is write a connector (several available in git) to do what you want and communicate asynchronously and bi-directionally with the ST Hub. You need to write a SmartApp to handle all the inbound messages and route to the correct device, but the benefit is that you don’t need to deal with the pesky MAC address matching that takes place at the device level…

zcapr17 · November 28, 2016, 2:28pm

Hi all, I’m just about to embark on a project to integrate my first Raspberry Pi Actuator/Sensor with SmartThings. Ideally I’d like my single Raspberry Pi device to be represented as several devices in SmartThings.

I’ve had a look at the official SmartThings documentation for LAN-connected devices (which seems much improved since I last looked at it): http://docs.smartthings.com/en/latest/cloud-and-lan-connected-device-types-developers-guide/building-lan-connected-device-types/index.html

Please can someone confirm (or correct) my understanding that using the official SmartThings method (as documented in the link above) limits you to a ‘one MAC address <-> one ST device instance’ relationship? Is this still the case?

If you want to have a LAN connected device represented as several device instances in SmartThings, then you can use @redloro’s smartthings-nodeproxy solution (or similar). The key thing in this implementation is the subscription to all location events (!):

subscribe(location, null, lanResponseHandler, [filterEvents:false])

This is great, but can anyone comment whether this is more of a hack or is it officially supported by SmartThings? I’m just worried that if it’s not an officially supported method then it runs a higher risk of being broken by an update in the future. Also, could this not result in performance issues?

[Update: obviously, the other solution is to use the Cloud-connected method and engineer a REST Endpoint that forwards the messages to the right device instances. But I’d rather keep all traffic to the LAN if possible]

[Update: @Aaron, can you offer any official guidance?]

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How to send data from my LAN connected device to HubV2?

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