Multiple windows for "Windows Open" stock app?

sremick · August 19, 2017, 5:09pm

So I’m fairly new to SmartThings, so be gentle.

I’m starting to install window open/close sensors, and was looking into the “Windows Open & AccuWeather Forecasts Rain” SmartApp that’s built in. In the description it says “Rain is in your forecast and at least one window is open”. It seems that you should be able to select multiple windows all within one smartapp trigger. However when I go in, the window selector is a radio button that only lets you select one sensor. What am I missing here?

Navat604 · August 19, 2017, 5:33pm

No chance for that. We treat new user like dirt so be ready.
Actually you are not missing anything. A radio button is for selection of one device. There are quite a few things to learn when we are new around here so I really recommend jumping right into a smartapps called WebCoRE. It’s a community built rule engines and will definitely be able to do the rule you requested.
Also play around with IDE website for smartthings.
As for my first sentence. I was just kidding and welcome to SmartThings. It’s a Hobby with both happiness and frustration

tgauchat · August 19, 2017, 5:41pm

One way to learn is to find the source code of the SmartApp and see if you can make the modifications needed for the desired effect.

Not all SmartApp and Device Types are published and easy to find, but this one is, I think…

github.com

SmartThingsCommunity/SmartThingsPublic/blob/master/smartapps/smartthings/left-it-open.src/left-it-open.groovy

/**
 *  Copyright 2015 SmartThings
 *
 *  Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not use this file except
 *  in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at:
 *
 *      http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
 *
 *  Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed
 *  on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License
 *  for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.
 *
 *  Left It Open
 *
 *  Author: SmartThings
 *  Date: 2013-05-09
 */
definition(
    name: "Left It Open",
    namespace: "smartthings",

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JDRoberts · August 19, 2017, 6:03pm

Welcome!

Back in the beginning when smartthings started, The official features didn’t have very many options, so people would write their own smart app for the specific feature they wanted, and then submit it, and quite a few of them got published for other people to use. It’s also possible to just share your code informally, and we’ll get to that in a minute.

Meanwhile, time went on, and two things happened.

First, the official features were expanded considerably, most notably with the addition of the official “smart lighting” feature, which can do a lot more than just lighting. And the addition of smart Home Monitor, which can do a lot with sensors. So once both of those were available, the need for a little tiny individual smart apps that just did one thing was greatly reduced.

Second, for those with a little more technical background, community members created a very sophisticated rules engine called Core, which eventually evolved into web core. This is essentially a scripting language for SmartThings and can do pretty much anything you can think of in terms of rules. Very powerful. Also, pretty complex, although there are many community members will be glad to help you with it. So if you are comfortable with that kind of approach, definitely go straight to web core.

FAQ: What is WebCoRE? (And what was CoRE?) webCoRE

CoRE (now WebCore) is a very powerful community – created rules engine for SmartThings. It allows you to set up stacked conditionals like “If A then B but only while C and not if D.” Setting it up can be quite complex, but there are many community members who will be glad to help you. For example, here is a piston that one member created to notify him if the dog had already been fed twice that day and he picked up the dog bowl for a third time. He needed this because he has a large family and people didn’t always remember whose turn it was to feed the dog. [image] The original version of CoRE Has now been replaced by a new version, WebCoRE, which moves the data entry to a web interface. This allows for flexibility and an architecture that requires more memory than is av…

There is a really hacky workaround which would allow you to assign multiple contact sensors to one zone and then use the zone representation in another smart app but to be honest at this point that’s going to be way more work than just starting with web core.

So now you get your first, and probably most important, lesson about SmartThings: it’s very powerful, it’s not very intuitive, but there will always be lots of community members who will be glad to help you find a way to do almost anything.

Automate85 · August 20, 2017, 4:56pm

I too am a fairly new ST user (less than two months) and find WebCoRE extremely powerful. I mostly rely on it now, vs. trying to find a suitable SmartApp that does exactly what I want. There’s a bit of a learning curve for WebCore, but the community is extremely, extremely helpful and lots of examples.

Debugging complex logic can take some time. I have a door/window open/close piston that sets my Ecobee mode to various states. When used with multiple contact devices and various ‘modes’, the test matrix for all use cases expands greatly. So I end up running all over the house testing corner cases to ensure all is well.

I pretty much have stopped searching for SmartApps to do what I want and just jump straight into webcore. One SmartApp I do like is vacation lighting.

Multiple windows for "Windows Open" stock app?

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