Hi Everyone. Is there a document that explains how to communicate with devices using the rest API? I have seen a developers guide, and some code
examples that people couldn’t get to work.
Okay. What I am ultimately trying to do is communicate with devices on the smartthings network, using a different “cloud” than smartthings. Is this even possible? Do we have
to become a partner with Smartthings to get access to their full API?
SmartThings bills their product as a cloud service. The devices on that zigbee / zwave network only facilitate the access to their cloud.
That being said, I’m not sure how wiling they’d be to offer an alternate endpoint to their devices. They did offer a tutorial on how to create an endpoint on the ST server:
http://build.smartthings.com/blog/tutorial-creating-a-custom-rest-smartapp-endpoint/
Or you could create an app to make a simple REST request. It’s conceivable that you could make an app a user would select every device they have and have it report every state change therein. But that seems clunky and likely against their terms of use.
As an aside - it would be interesting if someone were to make a zigbee / zwave hub that could both push state and receive commands from multiple services.
@scottcarlson – The tutorial that @imbrian linked to should walk you through setting up custom REST endpoints that will allow you to communicate with devices connected to your SmartThings account from an external cloud service. The methodology covered in @megapixel’s tutorial allows you to send commands to devices (on, off, etc), query for state, and even subscribe to events and register callbacks to your external service.
Take a look through the tutorial and if you have specific questions about your use case, post them here and we’ll try and get them answered.
-d
I looked through the tutorial, it seemed helpful. I have another question that came up: how do I pair devices?
@scottcarlson – What is it specifically that you’re trying to pair?
If I may ask, what is the purpose of using your “cloud” service vs. SmartThings? If you’re trying to cut out dependence on SmartThings or a remote network that won’t work. The Hub only communicates with SmartThings’ service so even REST calls to the devices go through SmartThings server to your Hub.
Thank you for help. I have another question. Can the smartthings hub be accessed from outside of the local network?
Okay, what we are trying to do is to develop a system that will communicate with smart things. We also would like to know the general process of pairing devices eg. what buttons do I push in the simulator or IDE environment. I understand that in some devices there is a tab to pull out.
Thank you.