Samsung Data Exchange Platform / API: SAMI / SAMIIO -- Anyone familiar? SmartThings Implications/Integration?

General Discussion
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Please pardon this very long Topic Name, but I can edit it as the Topic evolves. And pardon my complete ignorance of the essence of this post – I guess my goal is to become less ignorant, doh!

I’ve been introduced by a friend to the Samsung SAMI Project, and I’m just at the very beginning of getting a feel for what this project and platform is all about. Heck, I didn’t even know what the acronym SAMI stands for (and why it is sometimes written as “SAMIIO”).

SAMI is definitely related to Internet of Things … or is it just a data sharing platform … or just another cloud?

Oh… there’s this:

… ‘SAMI,’ short for Samsung Architecture Multimodal Interactions, and it’s a cloud-based platform capable of reading and storing data from various sensors. It’s compatible with Samsung’s S-Health products, and completely open to developers.
ref: Samsung introduces 'Sami,' an open health-tracking platform

If there are any “SAMI experts” (ummm… probably anybody that’s used SAMI is an expert relative to me at the moment), I’d love to chat. Myself – well, I’ll share more information here as I explore, experiment, and perhaps understand what this is all about.

https://developer.samsungsami.io/

The SmartThings relevancy…

At first glance, SAMI seems to provide an environment and API that has a lot of functional overlap with the SmartThings Cloud and the SmartThings Web Services API. It is far too early for me to understand or explain the overlap, let alone speculate if the two environments could be reconciled and what sort of value there would be in doing so (technical value and business strategic value).

As an arbitrary example, SAMI has a “Device Simulator”… sound familiar?

Is SmartThings going to integrate with SAMI? Should it? Is this integration optional or could it be mandatory due to SmartThings’s ownership of Samsung? Is SAMI redundant to ST in any way – or, is SAMI completely irrelevant to SmartThings?

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It’s the beginning of Skynet…

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interesting, while the high level story seems aimed at health care and related devices, the example code is loaded with HA device examples:

{
  "ddid": "9f06411ad3174a4f98444a374447fe10",
  "ts": 1388179812427,
  "type": "action",
  "data": {
    "actions": [
      {
        "name": "setOn",
        "parameters": {}
      },
      {
        "name": "setColorAsRGB",
        "parameters": {
          "colorRGB": {
              "r": 192,
              "g": 180,
              "b": 45
          },
          "intensity": 55
        }
      }
    ]
  }
}

and this tidbit:

{
    "data": {
      "devices": [
        {
          "id": "SdP8UyrNdNBm",
          "dtid": "polestar_locator_v2",
          "name": "Polestar locator v2 Betty",
          "manifestVersion":2,
          "manifestVersionPolicy":"LATEST"
        },
        {
          "id": "e98fsEKW5cQp",
          "dtid": "polestar_locator_coord",
          "name": "Polestar Locator Coord Betty S2",
          "manifestVersion":5,
          "manifestVersionPolicy":"DEVICE"
        }
      ]
    },
    "total": 2,
    "offset": 0,
    "count": 2
}

which could it be these guys?: polestar

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There’s some overlap with home automation, but it’s actually coming from a completely different direction in terms of the engineering issue.

You know how we talked about mesh networks as being very appropriate for most home automation use cases because we’re talking about very small packets, relatively low polling, pretty stupid devices, and everything low in cost in terms of both energy and dollars?

Now let’s consider medical monitoring. Whether we’re talking about someone in the hospital, a jogger doing a daily workout, or an elderly person who is “aging in place” and living in their own home but with welfare monitoring, we’re usually talking about expensive devices doing real-time constant monitoring. Tons and tons of data, constantly being updated. Big messages, high traffic, sequencing required, high-energy cost but worth it.

So “big data” for real-time monitoring of mobile devices. (Mobile in the sense of they don’t sit in one place not just restricted to phones. Fitness bands and other wearables.)

Samsung’s SAMI is intended as a cloud service to process that type of data. From those types of devices.

They want to sell that service to anyone who makes devices of that type.

Now, it’s entirely possible that the wearable you are using for health monitoring would also become the input device for home automation commands, whether they were based on micro location or voice control. But that’s the only real overlap.

SAMI would not be intended to store, say, the schedules for your Phillips Hues lights because the reporting is not that constant and the individual devices are not that smart. And, to be honest, there’s just not that much data. Even if you’re doing energy monitoring of a residential home, there’s not usually all that much data.

But once you start counting heartbeats and other things that have to be monitored in real time and that happen many times a minute, you need a different engineering approach then a Z wave home automation network.

Hope that helps,

p.s. SAMI IO. Two “i’s.”

p.p.s. “Device simulator” is a standard term for any controller system IDE, just like “device type,” and “device handler.” I wouldn’t read anything into that as far as SmartThings goes.

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This service like many other IoT initiatives at Samsung may eventually get folded into SmartThings. Prior to the acquisition they also had their own Smart Home Platform. That site now displays a deprecation notice.

http://developer.samsung.com/smart-home

and this

http://developer.samsung.com/iot

ss_iot_img02.jpg731×258 53.4 KB

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In this case, thank the Force, it’s far more likely to be SmartThings’ cloud being folded into SAMI or both being folded into a larger IOT cloud. Which I’m pretty sure is what that diagram means. ST is just a label.

No way is the existing ST cloud, which can’t even handle sunset requests, robust enough for medical monitoring.

They might reuse the SmartThings name, or even use multiple names for the same backend, so the IOT cloud is a service SmartThings can use. That’s probably what you meant, just from an engineering side “folded in” means “use what’s already there” and I don’t see that happening.

I know " folded in" from a marketing standpoint often just means which brand label you use, and, yeah, I could see that. :blush:

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This may be old news but under the “More” category at the bottom of the screen there is an option for Sami and a sign in screen. Anyone used this yet ??

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That just links to SmartThings Developer info (and thus the regular SmartThings API pages)… Just confirming that Samsung Smart Home is now replaced by the SmartThings Platform.

I wonder who did the conversion work… Samsung or ST resources.

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Wow! One of the most meaningless diagrams I’ve ever seen. My bs meter just went off scale :smile:

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Anyone used this yet? I noticed it under Labs recently too

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I noticed the “SAMI Samsung Air Conditioner” amongst other SAMI devices in the IDE when you enter a new device. How can you connect this device to a Samsung Smart Appliance? Are these Samsung devices supposed to be registered somehow in the SAMI portal??? Looking at the device when you add it , it looks very promising, now i need the missing link between SAMI and ST. I have installed the SAMI alpha app from the LAB.
Lots of questions i guess :smile:

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