New user, want a routine/app, how?

[JDRoberts]

SmartThings is very powerful but not very intuitive. The following clickable link is an introduction to the various ways of setting up schedules and controlling new devices. I wish there were a more straightforward way to discuss it but there are just a lot of different options. Some of them are quite easy to use once you find them.

A Short Intro to Scheduling/Device Control/Rules in SmartThings Classic

(March 2018: All of the following applies only to the SmartThings Classic app. If you purchased your hub after March 1, 2018 and are using the new “SmartThings (Samsung Connect)” app, creating rules works differently.) You’ve got your hub. You’ve got some devices. Now how do you schedule what happens when? SmartThings doesn’t have a rules engine/scheduler, so there’s no one tutorial for how to do this. But it’s an open platform, and there are about 12 different ways to set up various kinds of schedules. Some require custom code, some don’t. A “scheduler” in this context is anything that causes a networked device to perform an action, even if it’s just to toggle on or off immediately. (Network engineering definition, forgive me. ) (Note: as of April 2017, the original author of …