Rule Builder iOS app

Thanks for this! SmartRules was one of the few things that was nudging me closer to the non-jailbroken path, now I get to keep the best of both worlds!

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You can thank one of your fellow jailbreakers that convinced me to make the effort to lower that requirement :smile:

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I ran into a minor issue last night. I was headed to bed and wanted to put the house into night mode via my watch. As my finger came down on the ā€œNightā€ icon, it suddenly changed places with my ā€œOpen my noisy garage door thatā€™s right below my sleeping wifeā€ icon.

This triggered a slow-mo scene where my brain fired an ā€œABORT! ABORT!ā€, but the finger just didnā€™t get the message in time, and the damage was done. Fortunately, she doesnā€™t remember waking up and giving me a nasty look. =)

Haha. I can definitely imagine my brain telling my finger to abort to no avail (I can also imagine the dirty look from my wife)! Sorry about that. Enabling ordering of the rules is a priority for version 1.4, so that should take care of this issue for you. Hopefully they donā€™t move around too much until then.

Sounds great. Thanks! Now that I know itā€™s a potential issue, I can just wait a few extra seconds to make sure everythingā€™s loaded. Just surprised us a bit last night is all. Keep up the good work!

1.3.1 is live and everything should be working great. Let me know what you think! Thanks!

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I finally had a chance to start really digging in and Iā€™m REALLY liking this. Itā€™s so much more convenient to be able to have all of the ā€œtriggeredā€ rules in one place instead of buried within each individual device.

A few questions/suggestions:

  • I saw above where you mentioned an after sunset rule assumed before sunrise and vice-versa. If I created a rule that had both ā€œafter sunsetā€ and ā€œbefore sunriseā€ as conditions, should it still work?

  • Are folders or groups on the to-do list to better organize/manage rules? Iā€™d like to be able to put all of my QuickTap rules in one folder, everything for the nursery in another, etc. I see myself ending up with a few dozen rules and that would keep the top-level list much more manageable.

  • Is there a way to export our ruleset? I assume theyā€™re stored in the state table within the smartapp, but Iā€™d like to be able to:

  • Take a backup of my config (and for bonus points, be able to restore it!)

  • Have a human-readable list of my rules

  • Is the SMS source number (mine came from 844-647) always going to be the same? Iā€™m using it to alert when our toddler makes a covert escape from his room at night, so Iā€™ve assigned a delightfully obnoxious text tone to that number.

  • I have seen some QuickTaps on my watch not work but havenā€™t been able to come up with any common thread. If thereā€™s anything I can do to help troubleshoot or be a guinea pig, just let me know.

Keep up the great work!

One more thing I thought of last night. How about letting us add some ā€œvariablesā€. A couple of things that this could be useful for off the top of my head:

  • Phone numbers: If I could set ā€œBrianā€™s Phone Numberā€ in one place and then use that in all of my SMS actions, thatā€™d mean only having to change it in one place should my number change.

  • Times: Iā€™ve got devices that behave differently before and after our toddlerā€™s bedtime. As he gets older, that time will change. It would be very convenient to update this in one place and have all of those rules adjust. Time ranges would be useful here as well.

2 Likes

I really love the ideas of global variables that can be actively changed. This is a great idea.

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It might just be me but I would love the following features:

  • Have multiple IF this happens statements instead of just any of these happen. So I can set multiple triggers
  • Split up the While True statements so I can multiple While Allā€™s with While Anyā€™s in the same rule

+1 the Global Variables #btk
Thanks for all of your hard work because I really love this app but itā€™s just not ready for more complicated rules (maybe it is and iā€™m just missing it :smile:)

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Is anyone else having issues with rules not firing when they should? It looks like most of my rules arenā€™t working any more. Support wants me to recreate all of them, which would be a chore. And I know the issue is not the app since everything worked and suddenly stopped working. It was a backend change on STā€™s side that seemingly broke things. I also have several other Smartapps that donā€™t work anymore as well.

@obycode - might it be possible to offer, in the future, a way to ā€œresubmitā€ the rules so they reschedule themselves when things in ST break like this? (Did that make any sense?)

Are the rules that arenā€™t working triggering on times or event subscriptions?

I believe Brice told me if you save a rule (even without making any changes to it) it will delete the rule and then recreate in the Smartapp. I hope I remember that correctly, Brice (@obycode) can you confirm? If so I wonder if that would help instead of recreating them all from scratch.

I hope this isnā€™t a global problem and that they donā€™t have to be recreated. I have over 60 rules right now and I do not want to recreate them all.

Yup, thatā€™s right. If you go into the rule and then save it, even without any changes, it will resend it to the SmartApp. Iā€™m also curious about what kind of rules are having issues. Mine are still working well. Anyone else seeing issues?

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Every now and then I get the forever spinning wheel. About 30 minutes ago I tried to remove my Life360 presence sensor which was added to SmartRules so I unchecked it but it still showed as a SmartApp within ST. I checked it again then unchecked it but no luck removing it from SmartRules. SmartRules still shows as a SmartApp attached to the Life360 presence sensor. Those are the two issues Iā€™ve seen since the last upgrade.

I vote pretty much for all the additions recently posted especially the backup since I just accidentally deleted a rule but not sure which rule it was. Opened the rule while scrolling and finger slid across the delete button.

Thanks for this app @obycode . Iā€™ve replaced all my rules and alerts from Smartthings into this app.

Using this app made me realized how unorganized and chaotic it was setting up simple rules in Smartthings. There are at least 3 different ways for motion detectors to send a push notification, for example. (And finding them all to stop them is maddening!)

The only remaining rules I have left for Smartthings to manage involve the Thermostat. Are there plans to add this functionality in the future?

Also, add more icons :wink: I have so many rules that I ran out. And thatā€™s not a bad problem to have!

Thanks Brian, Iā€™m really glad the app is helping you out. Making things easy and clear is our goal! Thermostat support is definitely coming soon. Iā€™m still trying to figure out the best way to add more iconsā€¦ Itā€™s a known issue, but we havenā€™t come up with the best solution for it yet. It is definitely on the drawing board though.

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Is triggering a rule from a momentary switch on the roadmap? Iā€™ve got some virtual switches that Iā€™d like to trigger some things in smartrules.

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A momentary switch canā€™t trigger anything, because it doesnā€™t have any attributes, only a command, push. Thatā€™s why they only show up in the actions section. What youā€™re looking for is a button. If you give your virtual switch the button capability, then it can be used as a trigger.

See here for info about the button capability and here for the momentary.

It looks like my virtual momentary switch triggers events and has capability ā€œSwitchā€. Hereā€™s the code Iā€™m using: momentary button Ā· GitHub