I am preparing to publish a driver in Github. I want to make sure that I provide a complete set of instructions to download and install the driver. I can’t seem to find a good reference in the documentation. As I don’t have a fresh install, I need to recreate what I did so others can benefit. Are these steps correct? I will be adding more commentary in the readme file.
Download the source files to your local repository.
Create an Edge Driver Package: “smartthings edge:drivers:package ”
Create a channel. “smartthings edge:channels:create”
Assign the driver to the channel. “smartthings edge:channels:assign”
Enroll the hub to the channel. “smartthings edge:channels:enroll”
The driver should now be available for devices on your SmartThings hub.
It looks like you’re providing the instructions for people who want to create their own channel.
Most authors are just letting others subscribe to the channel they already created. That way people will also get any updates in the future and, of course, they don’t have to go through the effort of creating their own channel. Once a channel has been created, all people have to do is follow the invitation link and then pick the drivers they want downloaded to their own hub. So that’s intentionally a pretty simple process.
So I wouldn’t call what you’re doing “instructions for installing an edge driver.“ They’re more “instructions for creating an edge Driver channel.”
I am an individual developer and not part of an organization. It’s not clear that SmartThings allows me to create a channel. Even if they do, I am not sure that I want to take on the responsibility of supporting the device ad infinitum. I just want to publish what I have done and, while it may serve some people unaltered, it may also encourage others to improve it.
That makes sense. The documentation for developers can be quite confusing with the discussion of “organizations.“
Would you be OK with changing your topic title? I’m concerned that people who are brand new to all this and looking for the simplest possible way to install a custom edge driver that someone else told them to use might otherwise find your topic as one of the newer ones, and then feel completely overwhelmed. When in their case all they really had to do was follow the link and select the driver from a webpage.
You would need step 6 which is smartthings edge:drivers:install to actually install the driver.
However your instructions are for others to make their own copy of your driver that they can customise, similar in spirit to installing a DTH. The intention is really that it is you that should be creating a channel with the driver in it using steps 1-4 and then using smartthings edge:channels:invites:create to create a URL that others can use to enrol in the channel and install the driver via the web.
@JDRoberts - Glad to change title to not confuse others.
@orangebucket - Are you saying that I can create and invite people to my channel without going through a SmartThings certification process? I am just an individual and wouldn’t qualify for SmartThings organization / certification requirements?
This is still a learning experience for me and I have appreciated the help that the community has given me. I survived the migration to Edge, wrote two edge drivers to keep my home functioning, and glad to share these to the broader community. The device that I am trying to publish is for the Leviton VRCS4 which is not supported anymore by Leviton and SmartThings but to those of us who have it installed, still is a very useful device.
