Simple network commands to integrate into IR remote Android app

I am ‘making’ a universal remote for my system; basically a Samsung tablet with the app anymote Smart IR. (intend to have a home screen with widgets built out to be awesome and perfect. :smile:

Question/s:
There is an are that allows for "network commands"
Raw TCP command
Raw UDP command
HTTP GET command
HTTP Post command

To that end, how/what do I need to know/do to use this with smartthings?
I want - “lights on” “lights off” and “lights 50%”

THANKS

Are you trying to have the Samsung Tablet issue commands directly to SmartThings to turn the lights/on off or dim the lights? And if so, were you thinking about doing this through Tasker or some other means?

Yes - basically yes.
I have been researching various ways of doing it – tasker seems the most obvious. I just tried making a ‘DO’ button with ifttt and that seems to have promise.
If I can make this work (which I believe is totally doable) then, I will, in effect, have the most awesome universal remote for 149.00 and change.

Right now, triggering ‘do’ buttons or tasker macros seems a bit of a Rube Goldberg Kludge – but I’m not beyond trying anything. Just hoping (and expecting) that brighter minds than mine have already travelled this road.

Between @joshua_lyon’s Sharp Tools tasker plugin and SmartTiles (http://www.smarttiles.click/) by @625alex there are some great community tools that should give you just about everything you’ll need.

Here’s the main thread on SmartTiles

If you find you need to go further, here’s a tutorial on rolling your own api endpoint that you can send http requests to

As Kevin noted, I developed a set of Widgets and Tasker Plugins for Android called SharpTools which makes the integration with SmartThings much easier than some of the Rube Goldberg approaches. :smiley:

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I’m playing with it now! - Like I said, brighter minds than mine. :slight_smile:
the Smarttiles is also something I’ve used - and am awed by.

Wish me luck and hopefully you won’t all get tired of my questions.

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Two questions.
I downloaded Tasker, Sharp tools (purchased the unlockables), and sharp tools app builder. I built a task - light on and exported it as a App.
I am able to launch this app via Iremote as part of a set of commands. cool.

Questions:

  1. Is exporting an App the best way (or even a good way) to do this? (i couldn’t figure out any other way of launching a task)

  2. In tasker/sharptools, is there a way of building a task that can call more than one light at a time? I don’t see a way to do that in the “configuration” portion of “Action Edit”

Thank you!
(i’m near to having the perfect remote. My empire will be complete)

It depends a bit on the use case, but if it’s working well for you, then I wouldn’t worry too much about the ‘best’ way. :slight_smile:

The great thing about Tasker is you can customize it any way you want and there are often many different ways to trigger a Task. It sounds like you are trying to trigger the task from a specific remote control software – if the remote software has the capability to trigger Tasker tasks, that is usually the easiest way as it allows you to quickly change your Task without having to re-export it. Note that often times you have to open up Tasker and create a new profile to see if there is an Event/State plugin available for your software. It sounds like your software has the capability to trigger external apps, so the next best approach is to export the Profile/Task as an app like you did!

There are a few different ways that come to mind:

  • You can setup a Hello, Home action (phrase) in SmartThings to trigger several different events to occur at once then use the SharpTools ‘A Phrase’ plugin instead of ‘A Thing’
  • Each Tasker task can have multiple actions, so you can keep adding multiple SharpTools ‘A Thing’ actions to the task to trigger lights in sequence
  • You can use the Tasker variable mode of ‘A Thing’ (tag icon in the action bar) to enter free form text and the system will do partial matches and execute the command against all matched things.
    • For example, if you switched to the Tasker variable mode, then entered ‘Living Room’ for the device name and ‘off’ as the command, SharpTools would turn off all of the devices with the word Living Room in their name

Let me know if you need additional details on any of these…

Thank you! That was perfect help. I’m just becoming (a little bit) familiar with Tasker and the bit + sign at the bottom. :slight_smile: And thanks for the great sharptools plugin too!

I am really pleased with the way my new remote is working. Beats the heck out of anything Harmony (or anyone else for that matter) could do.

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Smart IR will soon have the ability to run Tasker tasks directly without having to create an app. I am using a test version and it works great. They also created a work-around to use IFTTT. I have not tested that.

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Very cool!
In conjunction with a $150.00 samsung tablet, Smart IR, along with tasker, Smartthings, and sharptools makes for a seriously great universal remote/ home automation brain. (and much more, obviously)

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Yup. I’m waiting for Smart IR’s Anymote kickstarter to ship later this month. With Anymote (plus Tasker & Sharptools) I should be able to get Smartthings to control AV equipment. When V2 hub comes out with bluetooth it might be able to send commands to Anymote directly.

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