Plan for Updating WebCoRE SmartApp

[JDRoberts]

@csstup

in order to receive events, API based SmartApps need to be accessible on the internet, so you’ll also need a bridge running in the cloud (your own, also setup by you) that would communicate with your local Groovy instance (or just run the whole thing in the cloud, but again, complexity and cost).

Take a look at what’s been done in the MQTT integration project. With a local server device you may be able to avoid the cloud piece. It’s shifting the paradigm a lot, but it might preserve the front end.

Integration Solutions using MQTT

I’d like to share some projects I’ve been working on that provide some nice integration options between SmartThings and other external applications. These use MQTT, which if you’re not familiar with, you can find plenty of information about on the internet. Put simply, you install what’s called an MQTT Broker application onto an always-on computer on your LAN (‘Mosquitto’ is one of the more popular free ones), and it provides a structured way to publish and subscribe to messages across devices and applications. This provides a nice solution to being able to get device information into, and out of SmartThings in a consistent and reliable way with little-to-no development expertise required. MQTT solutions have existed for SmartThings on the ‘old’ Groovy-based platform. My new projects …

it would be a huge amount of work, though. So to me, as you suggested, it would make more sense to use Hubitat for Webcore and maybe use MQTT between ST and Hubitat. You could keep things local but save a ton of development time.

All of which is to say I agree that there are probably more cost effective options than redesigning Webcore from scratch. I just wanted to point out that such a redesign might not require a cloud piece.

In fact, I would suggest that if Webcore junkies want to groupfund something, a local bridge with a visual interface between Hubitat and ST (again, MQTT is one option) would be the most cost effective, as well as taking less time to write. Just a thought.