New Smartthings Setup - Latest Device Handlers?

Devices & Integrations
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Hello everyone

I posted here in 2018 saying I wanted a large setup for my home using Smartthings. I had quite a bit of feedback, and I have to say I was a little discouraged. Truth is I was on Zipato already - I have a cluster made of one main controller and two (sub-) controllers, and I always tought one day I’d get it to work well. I have had it with Zipato now - their controllers hang, rules stop working for no reason anyone can give me - or run multiple times, and Zipato support are not very responsive, plus not much help from the community either. I don’t want to get a professional company to set up a home automation system for me - that’d be super costly and would involve cabling, so I want to stick with Z-Wave and possibly Zigbee devices…

So basically I am back to square one - this setup with ZIpato, I am sure will never work. So I plan to transition slowly over to Smartthings, a few devices at a time, and see what happens as I add more devices. I have a lot of devices

So I need to ask you guys a couple of questions, would be super glad if anyone can help:

a) Is there a central location where one can find all the latest custom device handlers? I tried looking this up and found a lot of device handlers in the topics. But it’s not structured and takes more effort trying to find the latest stable version of anything.

b) I have a lot of devices already. The Zipato ones I am inclined to do away with, as I lost trust in them. But I have others that work decently (to some extent): Qubino, Fibaro, MCO Hime… E.g. I have a number of Qubino Flush Shutter devices (AC)… To use this as an example, how do I find the latest custom device handler (since the Qubino site indicates you need one)? I found the links for 2 device handlers on the Qubino site, but they are pretty dated, and I am not sure they will function with my version of Samsung Smartthings ( SmartThings Hub (V3)) and the new app, since the Classic seems not to work any longer. So where do I start and how can I be sure I have the latest device handler for this device please?

Many thanks in advance.

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You can try the quick browse lists in the community-created wiki and then look for the DTHs with the most recent activity. But that’s just a start. To be honest, the whole issue of custom DTHs is kind of a mess right now. A lot of them need updating in order to work with the new app but since the groovy cloud will be going away, probably later this year, and we don’t yet have full details on what will replace it, a lot of the original authors have decided not to invest time right now in making a lot of changes that might need to be completely redone again in a few months. So there’s a lot of abandoned code at the moment. :disappointed_relieved:

Some of the manufacturers, particularly zooz and Inovelli, have been working hard on keeping up with all the different changes and keep publishing new code. (both are only available in the US, though).

And some of the independent code authors Who charge a license fee, such as www.rboyapps.com , have also been trying to keep up with the changes.

But some of the big manufacturers, including Fibaro, Have just thrown up their hands and said “we are manufacturing to the Z wave standard“ and aren’t doing anything about providing code that would be unique to the smartthings platform.

So… at the present time I personally have not been recommending any products that require custom code unless I know the manufacturer or @rboy or a similar developer is providing it. Beyond that, it’s up to the code authors to indicate whether they intend to continue making changes in the future.

So here’s the list from the wiki, but there is a lot of dead code there unfortunately. But at least it’s a place to start, and you can ask in the author threads if the code is going to be updated going forward. Sometimes you will see that someone else has taken it over, which is why it can be more helpful to check the author threads than just GitHub, especially if you just look at the posts for the last few months.

https://thingsthataresmart.wiki/index.php?title=How_to_Quick_Browse_the_Community-Created_SmartApps_Forum_Section

There are threads in the announcements section of the forum which mention the official plans for eliminating the groovy cloud in the future, but again don’t say what will replace it.

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You can also locate all the RBOY APPS device handlers and smart apps on the community with the tag #rboyapps

RBOY APPS Device Handlers

RBOY APPS Smart Apps

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Thank you, JD. We had actually spoken a couple of years back, I read a lot of your posts here, and appreciate your input. I had to look up Groovy cloud as I am completely new to this - if I understand well it’s the language developers use to write DTHs.

Is webCoRE still going to be around? I have a lot of complex rules in mind, e.g. stuff I need to happen in certain rooms when motion is detected, when to activate the circulation pump that circulates hot water around the house, when to irrigate and how much, etc. I am sure I would need webCoRE or something similar to create the complex rules I have in mind. (Once again - I might be shooting from the hip and I am not sure what can be done with Smart Apps and what can be done with webCoRE - I haven’t started anything yet!).

I looked at the wiki and the @RBoy website and so nothing for the devices I mentioned, so bad luck to me… I guess I’ll have to change most of the devices.

In any case, thanks as well to @RBoy for the input.

Many thanks

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Webcore will probably eventually go away and be replaced by the new rules API, which may have even more features and which will probably eventually run locally, at least for some things. But again we don’t know for sure.

Also remember that the new V3 app has a much more sophisticated rules engine built into it than Classic did. These are now called “automations“ with smartapps being the stuff written in groovy. The terms are a little loose and somewhat overlapping, but if you look at the main screen in the app, if you use the + in the upper right, you are using the built-in rules engine to create Automations. (And behind the scenes those automations are created using the new rules API.)

If you use the three horizontal line menu icon in the upper left, then you will find a entry for “smartapps,“ which are the ones still written in groovy.

So I think quite a few places where you have been talking about “smartapps“ you may find that you can do what you want with “automations.“ but it will come down to the details.

The following might be of interest:

How to Get Started Creating Complex Rules in SmartThings

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Thanks again @JDRoberts - your help is great, as always, appreciate it.

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The other thing to remember is more and more manufacturers are being added to smartthings every week. Plus if you add an Amazon Alexa there aren’t many things that can’t be done between the two systems.
I would also throw out there, that with the new alexa device having built in Zigbee its questionable if you will need a smartthings hub. But for now the virtual devices are enough for me to keep smartthings.

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Thanks @Mikeyf79 for the response. I will likely go with Smartthings because of the complex rules, not sure Alexa is that advanced yet, and I would rather use Z-Wave devices than Zigbee - they seem to be much more popular here in Europe (not too sure what the reason is), though Zigbee seems to be making some inroads. But it would certainly be interesting to add Alexa into the mix… But first things first - I got my Smarthings up and running and successfully added a couple of Aeotec extenders, an Aeotec Wallmote Quad, and my Samsung TV…

My biggest showstopper is not being able to add MCO Home switches at the moment. I’d rather have my favoured Aeotec Wallmote Quad instead of them, but for now I can’t afford to change them all as I have lots and lots of these MCO Home switch devices (each having four switches) all over the house.

So that might kill the project for me… I was going to depend on these switches to extend my range as it’s not a small house and with lots of concrete walls and floors in between… Yet my current system works thanks to the MCO Home switches acting as repeaters everywhere. So without this “mesh” of switches, it’s gonna be a tough one.

Anyway - thanks for your help, always.

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I’ve checked out MCO and they have a contact section on their website.
Before replacing your switches try contacting them to see if they are have plans to become compatible with smartthings, as I said lots of different companies are being added.
I’ve seen you’ve found hongtat’s DTH thread, hope that works in the meantime

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Thank you @Mikeyf79 for your advice, appreciate it. I actually e-mailed MCO Home early this morning. I received a prompt reply saying “This is abc from MCOHOME, nice to reach you out. Our products are based on standard Z-wave protocol, as you have seen that the devices are workable with zipato gateway, that means you have to check with SmartThing about this issue.” So that’s that, I guess, and I know what SmartThings would say if I reach out to them: device not supported.

Yes - that thread seems promising, so I will try that device handler (if I manage to somehow “bind” it the device, we’ll see about that :slight_smile: ) and I’ll let you know whether it worked.

Many thanks

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May I ask something else here - I would like to add someone else as a location owner besides me (my son) and cannot find from where - or if it is possible at all… Would you guys happen to know this? Especially @JDRoberts , as you seem to know the ins and outs of the system :slight_smile:

Many thanks

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@Mikeyf79 , just so you know @hongtat 's solution worked perfectly for me, and I am really happy to get it to work despite zero support from SmartThings and MCO Home… See my post in that thread :wink:

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Actually, my knowledge is fairly narrow and is limited to device specifications and network protocols. It’s just that it’s in an area that most people don’t care about, so I tend to stand out. :wink:

I don’t actually know very much about the app because it’s not voice navigable. And I don’t work with code at all because it doesn’t work well with text to speech. (I am quadriparetic so depend on voice reader technology.)

@jkp might know The answer to the location question, otherwise I’m sure someone else will. :sunglasses:

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There are 2 options.

  1. Have your son sign in using your Samsung account.
  2. Have you son create his own account and invite him to be a member. Use the 3 line menu (upper left section of app) and look for members. I use this option.
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Thanks @Paul_Oliver… I had already set him up as a member, but he wanted to be Owner in order to be able to configure devices etc. (e.g. change their device handlers), and frankly, I encourage him :slight_smile:

So I guess having 2 Owners is not possible as the app seems to only allow invitations to other Members, not other Owners, pity, but anyhow…

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Great news Martin. That’s what this community is all about… helping eachother.

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So, an update on the project thus far:

I have managed to add some devices that are supported out of the box, including Fibaro Motion Sensor, Zipato Smoke Sensors, Zipato Door Open/Closed sensor, and so on… I have added a gas sensor with a custom DTH, and the MCO switches I mentioned above through a DTH written by hongtat… I have 20 devices on the network now, and a multitude of child endpoints (which I trust do not count to the tally of Z-Wave devices on the network and will not limit expansion in future.)

My biggest problem remains the MCO switches (MH-312 & MH-314) - they take very long to refresh in the mobile app (rather in Smartthings in general) after a physical action on them, and some of these switches have automations attached to them, and an average of 30 seconds to start is not going to cut it in a number of cases. I’ve tried reaching the DTH creator, and he tried to answer, but I believe he is stumped as it appears to be working for him and others. MCO Home have been pretty useless other than saying the device runs an older version of Z-Wave and cannot be updated.

I asked yesterday in the webCoRE community pages whether it was possible to grab an event happening on the hub and do something upon that event happening. This because I realised the hub registers events, every time a key is pressed, as follows:

450cbed5-2403-4938-9857-b4ef4849bde4 9:15:29 AM: debug Parsed zw device: 13, command: 2001, payload: FF to BasicSet(value: 255) to [:]
450cbed5-2403-4938-9857-b4ef4849bde4 9:15:29 AM: debug Command () called - Dining Light 1 BasicSet(value: 255)
450cbed5-2403-4938-9857-b4ef4849bde4 9:15:29 AM: debug Event: zw device: 13, command: 2001, payload: FF

Now if I could just grab that event from a piston, and do something with it, like force a device refresh (I see device refresh is a doable action in webCoRE),… Then that would change the whole scenario for me.

I just want to pick someone’s brain - especially @JDRoberts and others who have been using Smartthings or webCoRE for a long time… I really don’t want to have to move away from Smartthings because of this 1 device (of which admittedly I have a lot!).

In any case, many thanks to all :slight_smile:

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I’m sorry, I don’t use webcore at all, or for that matter groovy, since they don’t work well with text to speech.

I suggest you start a new thread with the device model in the title and mention the delay and see if you can get responses there from other people who might have encountered the problem.

When’s the last time you ran a zwave repair and what messages did you get? I don’t think it would fix this problem, but it might provide some more information. :thinking:

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I have run daily Z-wave repairs… I ran into a problem in the early stages as I had one of these switches install incorrectly and it created a mess in my network… Indeed, removing it left a ghost device and I had to do a lot, a ton, of reading on here to solve my problems. Since then, I have practically done a repair after every inclusion and/or exclusion.

So the network seems fine, really, the routes (though sometimes a little chaotic in the roundabout way they take to reach the hub) generally make sense, and I am quite happy with , well, everything really except for this single, but not so small, problem.

In any case, thanks for your help. I will try to open a new thread on this matter… Did you mean here, or on the webCoRE community?

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In the webcore community for your webcore-specific question, but also one here with the device brand and model in the title just in case there’s some other approach to the issue.

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