Important changes to Community Code Submissions and Developer Discussions

8 posts were merged into an existing topic: nVidia Shield TV support for SmartThings?!

We’ll, we did get the Lutron integration, and it’s quite nice. :sunglasses: Faster than via IFTTT with two way status updates. So that was a good one. But I know that doesn’t help UK members.

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I’m not a developer, but I really wish I was. Core and the flexibility of smartthings is what made me bye the hub in the first place. If there was a way to rate each smart app in terms of recommendation that St can see how many people love a certain app., it would really help dev and further improve what consumers really want published.

St is really taking their original marketing sales pitch for granted and I agree… Like with most Samsung devices … They are so quick to drop ‘old’ clients.
I am one of the consumers that log onto the ide and really think those people who go through the extent of buying St rather then saving up to buy from a home automation company in the first place are fully immersed and will show interest hence will log into the ide to improve their product.
I truly hope smartthings fulfills their promises to bring BLUETOOTH in the current hub amongst the other things that were promised. Otherwise I am selling my items as Samsung has over promised and under delivered for too long. I am far too familiar with their marketing strategies. They will release hub v5 with Bluetooth, NFC and more protocols after saying that v2 just did not have the proper facilities and reliability due to manufacturing errors and make hub v2 obsolete without future updates as they are 'moving forward ’ in a new direction. And no… They have never proven me wrong. I have a 3Dsmart TV that could easily receive a firmware update to give it a new look… But because it was released 2012… Well we know how this ends. My Galaxy Note tab 10.1 is so outdated it was sluggish until I 'updated ’ the firmware. Now it runs better than my wife’s new tab s2.
So let’s see how Samsung betrays us now.

It truly is the modern product life cycle to sunset products rather than update them. What companies like Samsung have not realized is that many people will pay a premium for a product that does not get shelved so quickly especially less tech savvy consumers. I know that is not Apple’s model but not everyone can be Apple. It seems that there is a revenue model in selling hardware but it has to be sold at profit and for the consumer it has to be fully upgradeable then the consumer will pay for a premium product. I think ST could certainly generate some revenue from developers not only for apps but also if they were to provide a hub that is fully open and let us develop to our hearts content. Just my 2 cents.

Had been meaning to make that badge an auto badge… It is now :slight_smile:

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Ha ha and I magically got that badge :slight_smile: I was just joking, but thank you for it :slight_smile:

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Badges?!

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I’d say I’m jealous… but I’m not very helpful… more of an instigator really… lol

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First, stop working 60+ hours per week, Tim. Not good.

Second, I am interested in why there are so many things that cannot be spoken of. Are they secrets from a competitive sense? Is this coming from Samsung? Are they just too uncertain and you don’t want to make additional promises that you might not be able to keep? Open should mean open in multiple senses. SmartThings has always tried to have open dialog with its community. It is tough to see that change.

:sorry:

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Pretty much. :frowning:[quote=“Ben, post:157, topic:79927”]
SmartThings has always tries to have open dialog with its community. It is tough to see that change.
[/quote]

Agreed. We agonized over this decision. Although this is tough, we wanted to be open and communicative about not being so open and communicative.

In the future we will be able to share more but as it stands right now we are just in a tough spot.

If that makes sense lol…

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The first rule of ST club, is we don’t talk about ST club.

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(crickets)

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An app store is coming with paid apps. I’d bet the farm on it. This allows Samsung to glean revenue from users and rewards the developer community with $$$. This will royally piss me off as a user. I am not a developer, but I use the code created by others (which I greatly appreciate) through the IDE. This is what makes this platform so powerful. If this goes to a paid app store, I will once again try some of the other solutions. Hell, they already got my money (twice, ver 1 and 2), so I am sure their attitude will be “don’t let the door hit ya on the way out”. A paid app store and reduced access to the IDE will kill this platform and their user base.

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How would they implement this though?
Close down the IDE so you can’t install custom apps? They would have to do that otherwise people would just circumvent the store

Most of the developers here probably wouldn’t sign on to letting ST take a cut when they can get money on their own web storefronts (as some already do), or just develop for the community for free (accepting donations).

I know of 2 different, popular web storefronts for ST apps (the owners are forum members). There is also a standalone web interface available for $$ (currently in a free trial phase).
Then I know there is an app on iOS available to purchase as well as a Tasker plug-in for Android you can buy.

I don’t think it’s a store because they are specifically taking their people OFF reviewing code for submitted apps. If it was a store, they would need to focus even more on that because if I am buying an app THROUGH SmartThings, I would expect SmartThings to 100% support the app in all official channels.

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Yes they would shut down or greatly restrict access to the IDE.

Some of the developers would not come along, but I think many more than you believe would be onboard with getting paid for the huge amount of work involved, even if the $$$ is a small amount.

I am also aware of the standalone paid apps and code, web interface(I am waiting for an invite) and the Tasker plugin. I think Smartthings(Samsung) would love to get a cut of the money from these endeavors. In fact, I would be willing to bet that someone within Samsung sees these people making money off of their servers and facilities without Samsung getting its cut. If Smartthings closed the platform it would make these paid endeavors obsolete.

Smartthings would absolutely stop approving submitted apps specifically so that they can move to a paid model. They will need to come up with standards that the code must meet and then make sure that the submitted apps meet this new, more stringent quality standard. Additionally, why continue to approve or deny free code when they can charge for apps that may contain ads, extra paid features, etc? Plus, the staff involved in approving or denying code can move to preparing the system for paid apps and setting up the new standards.

Or I could be completely wrong.

Even if they switched to an app store they can’t shut down the IDE because developers wouldn’t have a way of testing the SmartApps and DTHs they’re developing.

Don’t want to give ST any ideas, but IDE access could be significantly constrained… To certain people, duration of test sessions, number of concurrently running test objects, etc.

Yesterday I sent an email to support to check the status of my SmartApp & I was directed to this thread. I must say I wasn’t completely surprised considering the fact that my publication request has been waiting 2 years for approval.

@slagle Have you guys considered creating a stock prebuilt groovy file that, if unmodified, doesn’t require review? My web service SmartApp isn’t doing anything special & I’d venture to say quite a few other ones have written that do essentially the same thing. It’d seem to me that there’s no reason the Home Remote app & the Logitech Harmony app need to use different groovy code to turn off a light switch.

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Not a bad idea. I will bring it up internally. Thanks for the suggestion!

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This information doesn’t seem encouraging to community developers. I’m sure ST will soon find out their controller isn’t suited for non-DIY users. Without community created rule engines like CoRE, the automation options of ST are underwhelming (can’t even use custom attributes in most of the automation apps).

Judging by the fact that ST implemented the option to support more than 1 instance of a capability on a device only last month, they’r in for a rude awakening once the community support drops.