SmartPhone as 'SmartThing'?

In the thread about a connected alarm clock Dmitry brought up a very good idea.  I think it’s worthy of having it’s own thread and discussion.  The idea is for your smartphone to be more than just an interface for the SmartApp.

Now we know it will already be more than “just” an interface.  It’s also an alert device.  Various things will be able to be emailed or texted directly to your phone.  But what other things make sense?  Three things come to mind for me:

First, a presence FOB.  I’m trying to remember if the the hub has bluetooth or not.  But I’m sure it has wifi.  Of course, both of those things require the user to have those radios turned on, not something everybody does regularly.  In a perfect world new cellphones would have a z-wave or zigbee radio in them.

Second, as Dmitry said had SmartThings trigger and alarm on the phone.  Not sure an email or text alert.  But a loud alarm for various serious events.  Like if a connected smoke detector triggers that there was a fire or and open/close sensor opened at 3:00 am in the morning.  This would trigger a loud audible alarm from the phone… not something that could be easily missed.

Third, vibration patterns.  I envision that certain lower priority events might trigger a specific vibration pattern.  For instance, if my kids came home it might send me a text or email, but also my phone vibrates in a pattern, like… two short, one long vibration, which I know means: Kids home.  I just feel the buzz, buzz, buzzzzzzzzzzz on my hip and I know what it means.  Or maybe if I leave the range of my house and my garage door is open it triggers buzzzzzzz buzz buzzzzzzzz, and I know this means I forgot to close my garage.

Anyone think of anything else?

I have already mentioned this but… For android this is easily fixed toghether with Tasker thats why I really hope for a smartthings Tasker plugin. It would be extremely powerful.

If you dont want things/actions to happen to late then a presence fob is not enough. With Tasker and Android this is easily done by using cell near to set wifi near and ultimately wifi on --> wifi connected which will let you act depending on SSID. Manually turning Wifi on/off for locations I know is something I have Tasker do for me…

The same is done for alarms, have a smartthings plugin context (message from smoke detector) and when fullfilled have Tasker make the phone sound an alarm and blink  like a christmas tree.

Buzzing is of course also possible to set different patterns and triggers for with Tasker.

All I am saying is that Tasker already solves alot if there will be a plugin :slight_smile:

I think there’s also been some internal discussion around using the GPS in a smart phone for presence-type events as well.  If a location had a lat/long associated with it, then the phone could trigger present/not present events based on its location.

I would LOVE to be able to use some geofencing features the iPhone is capable of - not sure how open the built in features on the iPhone 4s and 5 are (right now I can set reminders for when I leave work etc…) but is that capability open to 3rd party apps?

The scenario I would love is to have a timed geofence for my furnace in the winter months. When my wife leaves school - she hits up daycare before she gets home - this would leave plenty of time for the furnace to kick in and warm back up to 68. I’d LOVE the programability of being able to set a condition where if she left school M-F between 3pm and 5pm - that once she left that geofence - that the furnace would kick in and warm back up. Sure I can set timers/programs to do it… so maybe not worth the effort in that sense - but would still be fun to see those capabilities!

Is there a program like Tasker or Llama for iPhone?  These Android apps allow for some some very complex event/trigger situations and I know they are at least open enough to be able to write plug ins for them.  Seems like it would be possible for a plug-in that sends a command to the SmartApp to perform a function.

Speaking of that… what would be idea is if SmartThings allowed for email commands.  For instance, if there was a specific (secret) email address for each hub known only to the hub owner of course.  And if that address received an email with a keyword in the subject it would perform a specific task.  Hmm… I think that’s thread worth… :slight_smile:

I’m not sure if there is a program like that or not - I will take a peek later.

Some geotriggers are baked in - but there are parts of the phone that apple sometimes doesn’t open up to 3rd party interaction… I’m wondering (not an iOS dev) if that’s the case or not for the baked in geofencing capabilities.

I’d love for the SmartThings app to use data from phone sensors. My Galaxy SIII contains the following sensors:

Proximity sensor
Barometer sensor
Lights sensor
Gyroscope sensor
Magnetic Sensor

I guess triggering events based on these sensors would be using something like a Tasker plugin, as a previous poster mentioned. Tasker is extremely powerful. I’d love for the Android developers of the SmartThings app to consider including support for this additional level of automation.

Josh/Eric:

The geo-fencing  & potentially leveraging a smartphone’s GPS via the SmartThings platform somehow is great.  Lets hope there will be a way to integrate this somehow.  A 3rd party  product I use for caregivers (Freedom Watch) who have to deal with loved ones who wander (seniors with Alzheimers, autistic children) works under the same premise.  Sending out a text msg. that includes a link to GoogleMaps when someone goes outside of the geo-fence that allows you to track them/see where they are can actually be a lifesaver.  I guess one of the challenges would be that once the geo-fence has been crossed & the alarm/trigger has been sent - how it could then provide status updates every X minutes to provide better near real-time tracking.

I probably misunderstood somewhere along the way, but isn’t there a way to do this? Otherwise, how do you get alex’s system knowing when he left work?