Smart Things unbelievably broken again- SimpleRulesBuilder stopped working too

Just trying to set and forget my routines so my smart home works as intended, and it has been a multi-month fiasco since I first bought my hub.

I’ve been using simplerulesbuilder.com because it was the only simple interface to see all my rules in one place, and have an open ended conditions list (rather than the weird ones that each app may or may not support simultaneously) and an open ended list of actions it can take (rather than depending on individual apps to hopefully support all my devices- which they don’t).

A month ago I had to reset my phone. Now I have to update all my rules for a new presence detection because there’s no way to claim my old phone device. It’s just stranded there. I had to delete it and make a new one. That makes no sense.

This week, simplerulesbuilder stopped functioning. No idea why.

I tried updated my devices. No luck.

I tried uninstalling the app through the web interface and reinstalling, but now it gives me this awful error:

“Client is not associated with a SmartApp in location Home.”

I can’t click “Authorize” any more. Just doesn’t work.

So now Simple Rules Builder is unavoidably locked out of smart things.

I can’t figure out how to make complex rules- like when the house goes to “away” mode, I want different light actions to happen depending on whether it’s dark out.

The entire interface and “apps” makes no damn sense, the phone app is confusing and mysterious on how it works.

There’s just nothing good about this experience. My last grain of sanity was relying on simple rules builder. Now that’s broken I have an entirely useless piece of trash.

Somebody help me.

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There have been OAuth issues today. In general if your integrations/automations stop working and you didn’t change anything, don’t touch it! It should eventually come back when ST fixes whatever server side issue they’re having…

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It’s been days. I can’t walk around my house in the dark anymore, and I’m sick of getting “motion when nobody’s home” texts when there are quite clearly people home.

so all of your lights are directly tied to presence instead of mode?

I don’t mean to sound coy when I ask this…but do you not have any way to control things manually?

so all of your lights are directly tied to presence instead of mode?

No, I have Rules that trigger different lights for when the modes change, conditionally based on time of day.

I don’t use the garbage interface on the app, I used simple rules builder to do it.

I don’t mean to sound coy when I ask this…but do you not have any way to control things manually?

I can do it manually. I could do it manually before I invited this piece of junk into my life XD!

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SimpleRuleBuilder Gives me this:

IFTTT auth works fine, so I don’t know if it’s Oauth or something else?

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Yeah, there are OAuth issues with all different integrations, not sure if it hits everyone or if it’s just random.

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So here’s the thing- the Wife Acceptance factor is draining rapidly every day. What do I do now? Just twiddle my thumbs?

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If the SmartApp feeding Simple Rule Builder wasn’t reviewed and published by SmartThings, it will no longer be installable. The “shared OAuth / backdoor” installation method was disabled within the past few days.

Open a support ticket for visibility and then use the light switches manually until everything smooths out. Not sure what to tell you, this is why I try to keep as much of my setup local as I can. Yes, SmartThings should be able to reliably do all of this stuff, but I went into my system build with the mindset of ‘what if it can’t’ and I haven’t had anywhere near the amount of issues that some people have had.

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Okay so I’m getting the feeling that Simple Rule Builder is never coming back.

Is there an alternative to this app?

Furthermore- using the built in apps, how do I turn on the side porch when somebody gets home, but have it automatically turn off after they get inside? I’ve been using a 10 minute timer and turning it off, but I’m not sure…

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If you have an iOS device, there is a third party rules engine, SmartRules, which I like a lot. Costs about $10 in the App Store, and I think it adds a lot of value to SmartThings. There’s also a two dollar add-on that lets you use I beacons with SmartThings. You can download it free and try one rule to see if you like it. There’s no android version yet, although they’re working on it. So that’s one option. You can find a lot of discussion of it in the forums.

http://smartrulesapp.com

There are some community members trying to build another rules engine that would be free, but they are just getting started on it.

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This can be accomplished using Smart Lighting. You can set it turn on a light when someone arrives and then turn off 10 minutes later.

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