Idea: How to cause Wink to trigger event on Smartthings, vice-versa

It’s a long story I won’t bore you with too long a story, but I must use both Wink and Smartthings because my Changerlain garage door opener won’t work on Smartthings, and my custom air exchanger must use Smartthings becuase Wink won’t support a temperature differential on/off (and a Smartthings app does the job perfectly). So, I must use Wink and Smartthings at same time. Based on a third need I have, I need to have an event fire on the Smartthings hub when an event fires on Wink, and likewise have a wink fire on Smartthings when an event fires on it, both based on the same device. Bottom line: How to make a custom Smartthings app fire when the garage door is opened or closed where no solution exists on Wink alone.

So, my problem is, how to force an event to pass back and forth between the Wink and Smartthings hub when I need it. Searched and searched but found no answer.

So, I tried to think of my own solution, and this is what I cam up with … I would welcome your thoughts about how viable the idea is before I try it, or ask if you have any other ideas to accomplish the same result.

I thought is to get a set of z-wave 3 way switches that can work on wither Wink or Smartthings. Then, connect one of the 3-way switches to Wink, and the other to Smartthings and then wire the two 3-way switches together like normal. My thinking is that when I have the Wink or Smartthings turn the 3-way switch on or off that belongs to it, the 3-way switch will change the status of the second 3-way switch on to off (or off to on) causing an event to be sent via the opposite switch to the other hub thus providing a method to send an event from the Wink hub to the Smartthings hub (or vice versa) as my application requires. So, all I have to do in order to trigger an event on from one hub to the other is to turn the appropriate 3-way switch on or off from either hub.

I should admit I don’t really know how 3-way z-wave switches work, so my idea may not work all, just not sure, but looking for an answer to the problem. Perhaps I might have to use 2 primary 3-way switches to make sure both switches will fire the others event.

I would hate to throw away money on 2 3-way switches to accomplish this especially since my application would not even use them (I would probably tuck them away somewhere (no load attached to them) as they would never be used except for sending event trigger back and forth). But, this application is important to me and I am willing to spend/waste the money.

Will this work? Will it not work? Are there any other ways I can trigger an event to fire on demand between the Wink and Smartthings hub?

Thanks for any help!!!

2 Thoughts

  1. If this is only based on open/close of the garage door, why not just add an additional open/close or tilt sensor to your garage door and put it on smartthings
  2. You might be able to use IFTTT . Not guaranteed to be instant, but generally near instant. I see wink has a channel, but don’t know what it offers related to the garage door

Thanks for the great info kevintierney! Although I have seen the acronym IFTTT many times, not familiar with ti at all, will investigate. Thanks! (Adding a smartthings sensor to the garage door for tilt would however only solve half my problem as I need to be able to make things happen on Smartthings when the garage door opens or closes as well as open or close the garage door on wink when certain things happen in my Smartthings app).

Beyond that, my curiosity led me to want to find a way to have the two systems communicate in some way like a mini bridge or something between each other. without regard to my specific need right now I will check out the IFTTT you speak of, Thanks.

3 way will not work only one switch is smart the addon switch is just wired remote for that switch.
IFTTT is a possibility but i have found it un reliable and slow.

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@DonWatson3558 thanks for ask if the info. Note if every one would give that much info…

@scpickle is correct about the three way switches. That just won’t work.

If you are willing, please give a full description of what you need to fire on both sides.

I believe that using IFTTT, like @kevintierney said, is going to be your best bet.

There are a lot of options, just need a little more detail.

The basic idea is sound, but as @scpickle said it won’t work with three-way switches because that’s just not how they work.

3Way Switches

For example, the GE switches which use the physical traveler wires have a zwave master but the second switch is not Z wave and wouldn’t actually be seen by either smart things or wink. It only communicates with the master over the physical traveler wires. It doesn’t talk to the hub.

IFTTT

IFTTT is very popular, but the lag time varies from account to account. At my house it’s a pretty consistent eight seconds, which works fine for many use cases, and we rely on it heavily. But there are other people who have a lag time which is either much more variable or much longer.

We should note that different triggers have different lag times as well in some cases. One of the fastest is sending a text so if it happens that you use case would allow for, say, smartthings to send a text to your IFTTT number and then have that trigger a wink robot then that might be pretty quick. IFTTT is a totally free service (it’s paid for by the manufacturers of the devices) so it’s worth trying to see if it works for you. See the IFTTT discussion in section 5 in the following

IFTTT is going to be the most straightforward method, it’s just a question of whether it’s fast enough for your particular requirements.

Philips Hue Bridge

Another option which would work more like your original idea is to use the Phillips hue bridge as a man in the middle. The Hue bridge can allow for many different connections, and I believe it’s possible to have it connected to both smartthings and wink. (If not, it’s a Wink limitation and you would have to ask them.)

If you have a V2 hub, the most recent hub update now polls the hue bridge every 5 seconds instead of every five minutes. That means if wink turns a Hugh bulb on, SmartThings will know about it five seconds later. So communication that direction should work pretty well.

I don’t know how long it takes before wink knows that a Hue bulb has been turned on or off, though.

zwave secondary controllers

If you have rooted your wink hub there are a few other options but they require a lot of technical experience and chances are if you had done that you would’ve asked your question in a different way. So I’ll just mention that some people have connected their two networks but The set up is pretty complicated and the outcome isn’t perfect so it’s not going to be the first choice for most people.

My recommendation would be to start with IFTTT and see if that works. It gives you two way communication, you don’t need to use any additional devices, it’s easy to set up, and it’s free. The only question is whether it’s fast enough.

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Is your Chamberlain garage door a MyQ door? If so, smartthings can control it with this MyQ Lite smartapp, without needing Wink. Just need a contact or tilt sensor on the door.

Thank you so much to everybody for the GREAT info!

I guess I intentionally didn’t completely describe my need on purpose, as I was interested in discovering a method to have the two communicate. I had even thought of using dimmer switches (both Z-Wave primary (no remote) in order to pass a “number” instead of just a simple binary trigger. I have never heard of using two primaries, and I had never even considered using 2 primary switches until now. My thinking was that if all the remote did was switch the power from one wire to the other, perhaps the primary wouldn’t know or care if the opposite switch was a primary or remote. If that’s all a remote does, I don’t see why it wouldn’t work. If one switch does not know or care what type the other switch is, I was thinking I could use a Z-wave primary on both in order to have trigger an event of both switches when a change is made and an event fired on both the Smarthings and Wink hubs. Like I said, adding 3-way dimmers would be even better as I could pass a number – using a different number for entirely different applications and ignored by those applications that were not set to use the number received. This would allow not just an event to fire, but data to be passed to indicate to either the robot or smarthings app to know which event fired and act accordingly for each robot/smarthings app that would fire and first check if the reason it fired was because it’s particular “number” had been transmitted (if not, exit and do nothing. If so, do whatever function each particular robot/smarthings app is supposed to do).

I understand that most of you have said you can’t use two primary switches with no remote in the circuit. I just didn’t/don’t have any experience with ever having tried. I suppose I should look at a logic diagram and learn more about what exactly happens when a 3-way switch changes state. If they function by passing some type of “signal” over one of the wires, it obviously would not work. If they function by the change of state by either the black or red wire being hot, it might.

But, here is my requirement for now … I have a Chamberlain garage door opener on Wink, and a Smartthings APP which acts as a temperature differential controller to turn on or off a garage fan if the outside temperature is some number of degrees cooler than the inside garage temperature (I have that number set as a setting on the Smartthings app). (1) If somebody opens the garage door by pressing the button, nothing would happen with the Smartthings exhaust fan, (2) If somebody presses the button on the wall to close the garage door, the exhaust fan would turn off if it was running, (3) if the Smartthings app decides its time to exchange inside and outside air due to temperature changes, it would turn on the exhaust fan, and open the garage door. Likewise, if the exhaust fan is running and garage door is open, and the Smartthings app discovers the outside temperature or inside temperature has changed by the desired number of degrees differential, it would turn off the fan and close the garage door.

Hope that makes sense! Thanks to everybody again for all the help!

As part of their security standard, each zwave device can have only one primary controller. Other Z wave controllers cannot see the traffic to and from that device.

Most switches which use a physical traveler wire cannot be themselves turned on/off with any method except physically pressing on the switch. You can’t send a network command to them because they don’t have a network radio.

As soon as the device has a network radio, it gets assigned to one and only one network.

If you have your two master dimmers, it’s still true that each one can only belong to one network. Once it belongs to wink, it cannot talk to smart things and vice versa.

If you use two master switches, the only way they can talk to each other is by going through the same network controller.

So that’s why the method you’re describing just doesn’t work. There’s no way to turn on the auxiliary switch except physically pressing on it. And while you can turn on a master dimmer by sending it a command, it can’t talk to the other dimmer unless they are both on the same network. There won’t be a physical traveler wire between them.

Detecting an environmental change

But there are other ways to use a man in the middle. I’ve mentioned before that I used to do this even in commercial installs. In one building we had a box with a remote controlled toy car in it. Starting the car from one network would then cause motion to be detected by a motion sensor on the other network, so the car acted as a man in the middle. Later we changed that to a more professional looking fan. Turning on the fan with one network triggered the motion sensor from the other.

There are lots of physical changes that you might be able to capture with a sensor on the other network. Changes in light, heat, motion, sound… It just depends what sensors you have available. But it’s much easier for SmartThings to recognize an event on a wink controlled device then the other way around, just because SmartThings Provides a much wider range of sensors with more granularity.

The point about IFTTT is that it is designed to be an official software man in the middle. Each network has its own “IFTTT channel.” And you can hook any two channels together in an “If This, then that” recipe. If a Wink shortcut comes on, then turn on a SmartThings switch. And vice versa. It doesn’t cover all features for all devices, but what is there is really easy to set up and use. :sunglasses:

Did you see my link above? Check out the MyQ Lite smartapp. If it works for you, there is no need to integrate Wink and ST.

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Please, please look at the wiring for these switches. It is nothing like a regular dumb switch. This will not work. At best, the fire department can probably save most of your home.

Honestly, based on your scenario, a tilt sensor connected on your door connected to st would do exactly what you want.

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i have both a Wink hub and Smartthings hub with Wink devices on Wink Hub (so they can get updates) and ST and other devices on ST hub

I’m currently using Stringify to tie the two together (like if wink door sensor detects motion, turn ST front light on). Unfortunately the app is iOS only at the moment but it works great and is much faster than IFTTT

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I know this is an older post but I am wondering if it’s at all possible to have a wink door sensor trigger a smartthings device? I have some door and window sensors that will not work with smartthings for some reason and they only show up as “tile” or something like that so i want to make it when the front door is open it will trigger the lights or when the door closes it will lock my door which works with smartthings and not wink. I have iftt but can’t seem to find out how to connect the 2 together. Thank you

You can use a SmartThings sensor to trigger a Wink action by using the Wink shortcuts IFTTT channel, but it doesn’t go the other way.

Also, I’m not sure, but you may be able to do this with the free stringify app. I know it does have integration with both Wink and SmartThings, I’m just not sure of all the details. Anyway, check it out and see if it can do what you want. :sunglasses:

https://www.stringify.com