Mapping SmartThings location to an actual building

Devices & Integrations
1

Hello again,

I have a Schema App with a location and few devices. I can control my cloud devices on SmartThings and cloud devices can send events to my Schema App. So everything works fine.

Now I move to the next step of mapping SmartThings entities with my cloud entities.

Use case - As an installer, I can be working on multiple buildings with same SmartThings account.

How can I differentiate interaction types from different buildings in this case in my Schema App to be able to send different devices to SmartThings? Can locations in SmartThings be used to map to an actual building? If yes, what would be the unique identifier from SmartThings which I can use?

2

Hi, @Divya_Nagarajan
What identifies a specific Schema Connector instance is the Access Token. When we receive requests from your side, the platform knows which devices to update using the Access Token since the External Device ID might not be unique.

About your use case, I’m having issues understanding why you’re an installer in multiple buildings in a single SmartThings account.
Is the account the owner of those buildings? There are other options for Enterprise integrations:

I mention this because:

  1. In normal user accounts, there’s a limit of devices per location and locations per account: Rate Limits and Guardrails | Developer Documentation | SmartThings
  2. Schema Integrations can’t define which devices you want to install in a single location, to filter them.
    All the ones you send in the Discovery response will be added to the location.
    Even after you delete some devices, they will be added again in the next discovery request (every 24 hours).
  3. You would need to have separate locations on the ST side (there’s a limit of 10 per user) and separate accounts on the third-party Cloud side to be able to limit which devices are discovered.
  4. The Enterprise option has more flexibility for users with several buildings
4

Hi, @Divya_Nagarajan
I asked the engineering team about your case and they agree that we need more info on what your use case is as I mentioned above.

  1. Your purpose/goals using the SmartThings platform
  2. Company name
  3. The structure needed for your business like the identification of devices per location as you mentioned
  4. How are you using the Schema Connector in this context?

So, please send those details over email to build@smartthings.com. This is to understand your context better and open a further discussion about your options.