I started using SmartThings with a hub last year thanks to Matter, although ironically my first post here was the custom driver for IKEA Zigbee buttons.
This is mostly a recap of features I’ve been requesting since to improve the functionality of SmartThings and make life easier to users, hopefully it will help tracking them as I believe some of them are fairly easy to add.
Lights
- Make groups action “Turn On or Turn Off” (toggle) local, currently it’s cloud based and it requires workarounds when you want a button to locally toggle a group of lights.
- Relative brightness control (e.g. “increase brightness by 10%”), again, basic feature for button users.
- Expose native light transitions to the app user interface, currently only available in Rules API. Also, add the missing transition times to temperature and colour setting actions to match the set level action.
- Identify feature and capability, useful for visual notifications.
- Support for native Matter groups (multicast) to avoid popcorn.
Plugs / Lights
- Capability to set the Power On state behaviour.
Buttons / Switches
- Add event for “Long press Release” to the capability and use it in stock drivers.
- Allow users to rename component labels without having to create a custom driver and a new profile. Stock drivers use generic names like “Button7” which makes it hard to know which button it is.
Sensors
- Support
Hold Timeattribute (detection delay) for motion/occupancy sensors, like the Aqara P2 motion sensor. - Also
Sensitivity Levelattribute for contact and motion/occupancy sensors, like the Aqara P2 door sensor (version 1011) or the aforementioned P2 motion sensor (version 1030). The stock driver actually supports it for other types of sensors but somehow they forgot to support those two other types.
App / Platform
- Allow more than one parameter in the actions for the app automation user interface, otherwise limits the creation of custom drivers using Matter commands that take multiple parameters (like transitions). Workarounds introduce delays and make the user interface less intuitive.
- Expand the devices compatible with Matter OTA updates, like Aqara products that already have important updates with new features.
- Matter bindings, both to bind dimmers to lights for instance but also for being able to integrate dimmers as buttons (like IKEA Zigbee buttons).