I want a rules engine, not apps

Glad you like it! Figuring out a nice way to select multiple devices is on the todo list. Thanks for the feedback.

If you have a moment to write a review on the App Store ( https://appsto.re/us/Bhie5.i ), it really helps enable us to continue to support and improve the app. Thanks!

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Will do, it’s been a god send! It seems to be more reliable than the actual app from samsung! I’d like, some more integration for my sonos with custom messages and the ability to add timers for motion sensors.

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Thanks! I appreciate the feedback.

Custom messages are supported now. You just need to make sure that your device is selected under “Which speech synthesizers?”, then you’ll see the “speak” action.

We’re working on adding something that should handle the motion timer case you mentioned.

I checked that section, but my sonos speakers are not showing.

Oh right. I forgot that for some reason, the Sonos device type doesn’t support the “Speech Synthesis” capability. Does anyone know why that is? You can use a custom device type that does - https://github.com/obycode/smartthings-smartapps/blob/master/Sonos.groovy

@obycode Speech synthesis is for devices that support TTS nativly, use music player for those that dont

Oh is that the intent? I guess that makes sense, since we can just pass the url to a music player.

Yea, this is the way it works per Tim, whether it makes any sense or not.
Two ways to go on this, if you have the URL to the TTS, you can pass that into playTrackAnd
, just like any other MP3, if you need the TTS conversion then pass in the text into playTextAnd

Now according to the official docs, this method is supposed to exist for music players: playText(string), however it doesn’t exist on my sami speakers and every other music player device I’ve poked into uses playTextAnd
 go figure

Oh yeah. I see they updated the capability to include more commands that should have been there. I’ll make some updates!

Would love to see offsets in sunrise/sunset times. So like now you can choose, is after sunset. I would like to see “is after sunset offset by +/- min”

It would be helpful if feedback on the relative dimmer setting was visable when setting up a dimmer. Right now it’s pretty much a guess. When you have three lights that can all be seen at once, any difference can be easily spotted.

TIA

@ericcirone: offsets to sunrise and sunset wil be coming soon.

@lflorack: I’m not sure what you mean. The current value shows to the right of the slider, isn’t that what you need?

Yes, that % indication is exactly what I’d like to see. But that doesn’t show up at all on either my iPhone or iPad. Now that I see where it’s supposed to be on the screen (from your picture), it appears that it’s cut off on my devices.

Ahh, there must be some layout issue. Is it an iPhone 4? Or do you have zoom enabled? This should be simple enough to fix in the next release. Thanks for letting us know.

EDIT: I just tried enabling zoom and I do indeed see the problem. This will be fixed.

I have an iPhone 5s and an iPad Air2. The iPhone is not zoomed. The iPad is zoomed to 2x to fill the screen. However, even when it’s not zoomed (1x), the % is still cut off. Thanks for looking and fixing this!

I have another request: Right now, delays are not retained (at least on the screen) and this would be really nice if they were. Explanation: When I go to the delay screen (like the one we are discussing, above), the delay entry at the top of the screen always shows ‘0’, even though I had set it to some number previously. Sometimes I want to go look at what I had set it to earlier, but since it always reverts to ‘0’, I can’t see that information. BTW, the % of dimming is also reverted (as far as I can tell) to 50%.

Am I making sense?

Yes, you’re making sense and you’re right, the delays are saved, but not shown in the rule, and when editing a rule, it reverts all settings to the defaults, instead of your previous selections. Both of these issues will be fixed in v2.0 that we’re working on now.

Excellent! Thank you for listening and improving!

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I hope with the availability and popularity of SmartRules and IFTTT that SmartThings don’t just forget about this essential requirement.

As good as these applications are, there is one huge problem with them that’s not advertised; they are cloud-to-cloud integrations, they run in the cloud, none of the logic is stored or run locally on your SmartHub. So you are relying entirely on the developers of these apps SmartThings to be able to provide 100% service availability, in addition to requiring 100% uptime on your own Internet connection. If either of these fail, every rule ceases to exist.

I’d additionally be concerned about security, do you really want to completely open up access to all your devices to a small mobile app developer? Security around IoT platforms will become a huge problem as popularity is increasing, limiting your exposure is crucial. Pressure will be put on Samsung, Google (etc), but access via these integrations could create a huge hole to your system.

This kind of logic needs to be executable from the SmartHub itself, so dependence on the Internet and hosted services is limited. I’m sorry obycode, you’ve done a great job with what’s available but I sincerely hope your success with this app is short-lived with SmartThings implementing a proper localised solution to this problem.

Hi Jamie. I have a few counter points in response.

SmartRules does not use any third-party cloud, only the SmartThings cloud, where all other SmartApps run. There is no cloud to cloud here. You create the rules on your iPhone (or other iOS device) and they are sent to SmartThings where they execute like other SmartApps.

Again, nothing is ever sent to us; the information only exists on your device and in SmartThings. We connect with SmartThings securely using OAuth and store the token securely in the iOS keychain. Access via this token can be revoked at any time, even without access to the device, by uninstalling the SmartApp.

Long term, I hope that we can get SmartRules running locally on the hub, but its unclear if/when SmartThings will open up local execution to third party SmartApps. Even most of their own SmartApps currently run in the cloud and not locally on the hub.

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obycode, thank you for your response and for clarifying some points.

I have indeed made some incorrect assumptions regarding the integration between your application and SmartThings. Realising now that your logic runs in the SmartThings hosted platform and the mobile app talks directly certainly reduces cause for concern.

The point regarding logic running in the cloud still stands, but I understand this is a more general problem with SmartThings as developers (including their own, as you say) can’t get additional logic to run in the Hub (right now).

I’ve left my original comment, but made the necessary corrections in case anyone reads without seeing your response.

Thanks again.

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