Serial control

I am curious if there is a way to have smartthings control something with simple ASCII strings using an xbee or smartthings shield? The vision here is I have a crestron system in my house. Would love to be able to program an action that makes sure one of my kids didn’t leave 3 TVs on when they left the house.

Really open to any ideas of integration on this.

Digi’s xbee ZB Pro SMT is compatible with the ZigBee Home Automation network, we have a product based on this and Parallax’s Propeller going through SmartThings certification. With some code changes it could be setup to send and receive ASCII to an ASYNC device. However, this would not be a trivial project it would require custom SPIN or C code for the propeller and custom Java Groovy code for the SmartThings custom Device Type. I only mention our device as it is an example of what you can do. I don’t think it would be a good fit as it is built for harsh environments and will be overkill for what your are wanting to do.

Another option that will only work with SmartThings is a SmartThings Shield for the Arduino:

https://shop.smartthings.com/#!/products/smartthings-shield-arduino

I would say this is very doable and sounds like a fun project its just going to require some time and custom code. If you have C development skills you should be able to knock it out no problem!

Did you ever find a solution to this? I’ve got a Lightolier lighting system with a Brilliance II control panel in the basement. It will accept simple ASCII commands over RS-232. I have the protocol, and I can control the lights using an old windows XP machine and Lightoliers “demo” program.

It would be great if I could use the SmartThings Shield and an Arduino to feed it simple ASCII commands based off of “virtual lighting devices”. I have no idea how to do this though, is there a project that already exists that does something similar?

Thanks.

I think I found the solution: