Rule machine - as per the app developer, this app is no longer available for new installs, distribution, or support

Makes sense, thanks for sharing!

1 Like

So would you recommend Bluestacks if I only need to run one instance at a time?

Yes, it appears to be free and took 5 minutes to download/install/setup.

Been about a year since I setup DuOS but I paid for a license for that, for one thing. Not sure if that is required in all cases or not.

There are other truly free ones like Droid4x and Nox. Do a Google search for Android emulators and there are plenty of comparison articles.

UPDATE: there is also AndY

1 Like

And MeMuā€¦

2 Likes

What are you using to run this on your desktop?

1 Like

bluestacks or DuOs are the emulators I have used. See the suggestions of others as well, I am not an expert on them by any stretch, but Iā€™d go mad trying to do all this manipulation without these facilities.

3 Likes

Iā€™ve used Bluestacks, but always worry software like that is a vector on my network. But it works awesome for what @JH1 is doing (essentially mass programming/migration/similar).

1 Like

@bridaus Are you at risk of becoming security conscious? :joy:

I kid. I kid.

So yes, you should be careful and make sure the emulator isnā€™t malware of some sort.

I would tell you the way I do it, but I would be accused of being paranoid. Okay, mostly I will run these in isolated, non-persistent environments such as Vmware, Virtualbox, etc. If the emulator was an attack though, they could steal your ST creds, so change your passwords. And even then, your ST config could be compromisedā€¦ anywayā€¦ we could go onā€¦and on and onā€¦

Thank you @bravenel for Rule Machine. I appreciate all the time and energy you put into Rule Machine. RM made my ST experience so much better than I thought it could ever be.

Sad to say, but today I had to uninstall RM due to a device not allowing me to delete it because it was ā€œstuckā€ in RM (and Iā€™m not saying this is the fault of RM).

Hope to see you back here someday Bruce. Thanks again for the fun with RM!

3 Likes

I just finally uninstalled RM yesterday. Core is a really great replacement.

3 Likes

Rule Machine was an outstanding rule engine. It had so much potential to be so much moreā€¦ butā€¦ well we know how that all turned outā€¦ oh wellā€¦

Thank you @ady624 for picking up the slack of others and making something unimaginably better!

6 Likes

Consider this a PSAā€¦

Rule Machine is not a supported app. Not by ST and certainly not by the developer. He left us all high and dry on that one.

Iā€™m actually amazed that RM has lasted this long. Iā€™ve been saying for months that RM is a dying animal and that eventually an update would be a final shot.

Yesterday was a warning shot. RM is going to be completely dead soon.

And in my opinion, if after tomorrow, if you continue to use Rule Machine then you are choosing the problems that are coming for you.

Iā€™m not being an ass. Iā€™m being realistic. Iā€™m not saying use CoRE. But yesterday was a notice that you had better find an alternative.

Good luck.

2 Likes

Point taken - a couple triggers disappeared last night, and I would up deleting the rules.

What is the condition last night, that cripples RM, to which CORE is less susceptible?

@ero4444 Follow this threadā€¦ It explains everything. CoRE can recover itself.

1 Like

CoRE was hit equally. The difference was that since the developer is still actively working on it, he was able to add an option to restore previous settings after the damage was done.

Other smartapps that also use state were also hit, including some officially published titles.

But so far CORE is the only one which has a restore feature. And that was added after the crash.

Details in the deathknell thread linked to above.

1 Like

In all honesty, the feature itself was planned from get-go. It was one of the hard learned lessons from RM. Not RMā€™s fault, but protection was obviously required against such fatal state loss. There is a parameter in all conditions at the very end, called Parent ID. That is the key that allows recovery. Because that allows the reconstruction of the conditional tree (multi-level parent-child tree). The feature was never finished/published because there was no need for it, but was planned for from day 1. Again, thanks to RM. It seems to have killed RM, but taught us a lesson. :frowning: I have removed my last RM rules yesterday, RIP RM, youā€™ve been a good friend.

6 Likes

It is time to say goodbye to Rule Machine but I can understand why people keep using it. They do so for the same reason I did, Rule Machine worked. It is a ā€œdonā€™t fix what ainā€™t brokeā€ situation. I had 44 rules and it took the better part of two days redoing them in CoRE plus working out the kinks from the different ways the two apps worked.

By far CoRE is the way to go especially now that there is a restore function for the next time SmartThings engineers decide to improve their database.:wink:

5 Likes

Wow thatā€™s a lot of rules. My rule of thumb (no pun intended but would have made a great rule engine name :slight_smile:) is to do everything in Smart Lighting and only do advanced rules in CoRE like parenthetical logic or setting lights to 1% instead of the 10% steps in SmartLighting. I literally have 2-3 rules in CoRE and like a dozen in Smart Lighting.

My RM is still installed and set to look for an odd status/state thus never firing now. Maybe today is the day to kill it off. RIP RM ā€” great while you were there but sad to see it go the way it did. ST needs to get it together and give us something like RM and CoRE offer. A logical/rule engine is the most important thing in HA after ability to connect a device to the hub of course.

@ady624 thank you so much for your awesome work!!!

3 Likes

In another thread a spokesperson from SmartThings clearly indicated that they are not about to incorporate CoRE or any rule engine into their product line. He wrote, can you see your grandma setting up home automation with CoRE? The statement was they are trying to make the SmartThings platforms so easy that grandma could set it up and use it.

Itā€™s too bad that the SmartThings user interface is so bad. If the interface was changed to allow a good pictorial logic flow for setting up CoRE they could dump everything and go with the one app.

Oh well! Never gonna happen.