A post was merged into an existing topic: [ST Edge] Change Driver Tool in the ST App
Is it me or is anybody else worried about the fact that there is no CONVERT tool for legacy Groovy DTHâs and SmartApps. Why is there so much attention of going toward the shiny new (even if performant) when the old faithful, open source, and MANY contributions is being abandoned. I hope that the Samsung acquisition wasnât the death of this open platform. I just got wind of Groovy/IDE being sunset/deprecated and it scares the you know what out of me. This is multiple years of developing code for myself and the community going down the tubes. It pushes me toward jumping ship onto a hub where the platform is not pulled from under me after hundreds of hours of dedication. Please consider customers and our best interests which consists for a CONVERTER of some sort which prevents the nail on the Groovy coffin. I work for a software company that has done this many times (by really smart people) and we all know anything is possible in computing. Any way to get some attention from Samsung on my point? Just a sad few days for me as I rely on this platform and my extensive code library.
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I am fairly relaxed about things. Iâve only been using SmartThings about three and a half years but Iâve been aware from day one that the legacy platform was going. Indeed the worry was that the new platform had an app with near zero functionality and it offered absolutely nothing to community developers at all. Fortunately my phone couldnât run the new app as if it could I wouldnât have used SmartThings at all simply because it couldnât do anything. However the legacy ecosystem, though obviously not really fit for purpose, tided me over until the new ecosystem could be pointed in the right direction, so by the time I replaced my phone a couple of years ago it was possible to start bailing out of legacy.
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Iâm not sure why this is so often mentioned. This acquisition happened over 7 years ago. Itâs certainly changed the direction of what SmartThings is and has grown to be, but itâs not been âthe death of this open platformâ.
That said, while I still run my SmartThings hub, all of my important home automation is run on a different hub platform (that focuses on local-execution) . The current SmartThings infrastructure is too unreliable and slow, and the newly emerging infrastructure has lots of teething to go through before it will even come close to being a suitable replacement. But eventually I hope their new architecture becomes a solid alternative.
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I think many people are apprehensive, but the Samsung acquisition was seven years ago, and isnât the cause of this current transition. In some ways, smartthings is the victim of its own success, as the groovy platform just doesnât scale sufficiently for what is needed in 2021 and going forward.
Edge drivers have some really significant advantages over the groovy cloud, the most obvious being that theyâll run locally.
As far as a conversion tool, we donât really have any idea what will or wonât be provided. 
Weâre still in the developers stage of the beta, not even to the consumer stage of the beta. Itâs quite likely that for most of the existing stock DTHs there will be a pretty seamless transition to edge drivers.
Custom DTH is an entirely different issue, particularly since weâre going from one language (groovy) to a different one (LUA), but itâs also possible, although not yet promised, that the new stock edge drivers will have more features and remove much of the need for custom DTHs. And matter compatibility may also help.
Meanwhile, there are quite a few community members who have begun writing their own custom edge drivers, mostly for devices where the beta does not yet offer anything. You can find these from the quick browse lists in the community â created wiki if youâre interested in looking at some:
Quick Browse Lists for Edge Drivers - Things That Are Smart Wiki
So, yes, there are a lot of uncertainties and, yes, smartthings doesnât have a great history of enabling migration. But I am feeling mildly optimistic. 
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@orangebucket, @jlv and @JDRoberts thanks for weighing in!
I just keep reading that end of 2021 is the death of Groovy DTH and SmartApps. Just so Iâm clear as to what my âcustomâ needs are and ST handles it like a champ. I have water sensors and light sensors (Xioami Aqara zigbee, which are awesome). I need to know if water or light has NOT come on for X number of hours with a notification. ST has been rock solid for my needs and my SmartApp has a little report showing me last water & last visible light for all sensors I flag as monitored. I canât stress how easy it was to build in Groovy and how there is zero maintenance of it â just friggin works. Migrating to new ST App had zero negative effect on this functionality.
@orangebucket completely agreed and I have been using Home Assistant and the stuff I need is easily done there with automations or even custom Python (using AppDaemon) if I wanted to go that route. However, managing those configurations at 5 places where I need them is an extreme pain. ST has been awesome for my specific needs.
@jlv I realize how long ago the acquisition happened but the demise is about to happen and if I keep my mouth (well keyboard 
) shut, Iâll just be victim to losing the platform that I love and have invested a lot in. I understand that local execution is great but like I said above, rock solid DTH and SmartApp for my need.
@JDRoberts been reading your comments for years, nice to get a response from you! I certainly can understand the scalability aspect. I just wish there was more of a desire not to piss of customers that bought into the platform due to the open aspect. I also see your point that itâs so beta that end of 2021 that I keep seeing everywhere is likely not going to happen anyway. Place I work for wrote a converter from old UNIX Informix 4GL code to C++ for Windows compilation and yes the dude that wrote it spent hundreds of hours and worked at JPL/NASA for years so pretty damn smart, to say the least. We all know Samsung can hire 10 guys like that to make the conversion happen â if there was enough desire on their end to keep/satisfy legacy customers. I hope that actually happens⊠or even better have a ârun legacy Groovyâ ability for folks â donât kill Groovy though.
All in all I should receive my Hubitat in a few days and have no choice but to research other platforms especially ones that can easily take my current code and specific need, which I described above. Again, I love Home Assistant but it does take more maintenance in the 5 places where I need it.
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Its not so much the coding conversion but the testing in âproductionâ environments. Each conversion would require aquiring, debugging and testing each and every device (with different firmwares, etc) is a pretty difficult task, esp for products you donât have any control over. Never mind all the various implementations people have them in. And as they are no longer in the hardware business, they have to justify those costs with corresponding sales numbers ($0 for other companies products)âŠ
I too purchased a Hubitat last year but so far have not felt it reached the level of sunsetting my ST implementations. ST has a high WAF for me. Iâd be interested in hearing your thoughts after you get it up and running.
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One observation, unlike the previous groovy dth, where codes are shared and easy for people to learn and customized, the Edge DHT work like a close source project, where people doesnât share their code, that in a way make the adoption / migration slower.
They donât have to be, you can post them on git hub. But I agree they should be open source by design.
Closed source drivers means someone could design malicious code.
There are many many more people who are missing out on custom drivers because it involves copy/pasting custom code today. Being able to subscribe and click to install will make it easier for end users to install custom drivers.
Only install drivers from companies or developers you trust. Even with open source, unless an individual/group is reviewing the code, then you can get malware.
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How are users going to change to use Edge drivers when Groovy stops working? Will you swap our devices from using DTHâs to Edge drivers automatically, or will we have to manually uninstall and reinstall each device individually?
Right now the beta is focused on developers and building edge drivers. There will be a separate announcement regarding migration/transition at a later date.
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Many of us on here not only read, but modified code to suit our own needs.
I canât help but feel that âclosed source by defaultâ is a step backwards.
It should be open source by default, with the option for commercial operations to distribute closed source code.
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We are making our drivers available here:
and here
Given that we are no longer hosting the code for community Edge Drivers it is up to each developer as to how they store their code.
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My biggest concern about the new Edge platform is, with everyone rushing to just get their driver out, weâll get a bunch of plain vanilla drivers that lack thoughtful capabilities that make the platform useful.
See my post today regarding changes made to ecobee which deprecated some very desirable capabilities that created a great automation ecosystem with ST and Classic.
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Once you are installing the code by subscribing to someone elseâs channel, thereâs no way to know for sure whatâs in it, just like downloading an app from an App Store. you have to trust the persons reputation.
The only way around this is if the person makes the code available and you put it into your own channel. But thatâs a lot more work than most customers want to do.
So I think closed by default is how most people get most software. Like over 90% of phone apps. You may prefer the other way, but I donât see anything unusual in smartthings having that architecture. FWIWâŠ
Edge is not for C2C integration such as ecobee. Edge is for devices that are paired to SmartThings with protocols such as zwave and zigbeeâŠ
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Hi Caleb, Can you fix my account too?
Iâm still just getting the spinning icon after clearing cache, and trying the incognito window.
Thank you!
If youâre trying right now, AWS is having some issues impacting samsung login to driver channels
Https://status.smartthings.com
