I’ve just received a notification that my hub will cease to operate on June 30th. That’s fine, but really I’m concerned with the future direction of smartthings. My concern started when I was forced to move to the new app. I had a couple of smartapps that I had written to handle things, and suddenly the logging ceased to tell me what was going on. I also noticed that one of the device handlers had some funky interface elements, and I thought, well maybe I could fix it. I logged into Samsung’s developer workbench, and noticed that the system doesn’t appear to allow for community development. This is by far the most concerning thing to me. Very few corporate developed device handlers have worked very well. Most of the time the device handlers have either been tweaked by the community, or flat out developed because the device manufacturer never bothered to develop one. Also any app development seems far more complicated than it used to be. I’ve also heard that Groovy is on it’s way out as well, which means the apps that I have created are soon to stop working. My big concern is that Samsung seems to have little concern for the community that made Smartthings what it was. That eventually they will kill the old IDE, and will have developer workbench, but with very little documentation, and zero concern that the old guard of smartthings will be able to adapt.
This concern is driving me to start considering alternatives. Does someone have an idea or can point me to something that sums up Samsungs plan/roadmap for the platform?
The main reason for custom DTHs for Z wave devices, for example, is because the smartthings Z wave implementation has not fully implemented features like central scenes. So people are always trying to work around the limitations of the smartthings platform. Fewer limitations would mean fewer workarounds were needed.