SmartThings Current State is Stalled?

[darkoperator (Carlos Perez)]

this just what I wanted, after a month of having the solution and thinking of switching to Revolv this will keep me interested until end of Q1 2015 when the offline hub comes out

[darrylb (Darryl)]

@Ben : This is awesome, and a huge win. Thank you greatly for some of this. I know your having to repeat yourself, sadly, as much as I read the forums, I just cant piece all the mass information together easily. Nice write-ups like this, make that a lot easier, and I find very productive.

I love SmartThings, and only want to see it grow. This is very positive.

[pstuart (Patrick Stuart [@pstuart])]

@jodyalbritton thanks, no my nexus 5 gps is fine. I have been reviewing the logs of location reporting and nothing indicates why SmartThings thinks I’m leaving the house during reboots.

Ironically, since last night, I can’t reproduce the issue. It wasn’t a problem a few app versions ago, when presence for me was completely broken… So maybe the latest update changed something to fix it…

Wish the release notes highlighted any changes not just the highlights.

[pstuart (Patrick Stuart [@pstuart])]

@Ben

Local IP support for devices / SmartApps is non-existent… The answer is write it yourself…

Not sure what this means. We have several LAN-based integrations. Additional sockets and communication options are available with latest and upcoming firmware updates. 3-6 weeks.

What I mean by this is that if you want to create a smartapp to “Discover” or manually enter the IP of a device, ie a Camera, computer, etc. There is no default UI for this, have to write it yourself.

There should be some standard “cards” for configuration that developers can reuse and modify to their needs.

The dynamic pages are a mess to troubleshoot, no IDE support for it, and having to install it on the Android device usually requires removing the app, closing the program and starting over. Not a good IDE experience…

Maybe the HTML pages will help create custom UI surfaces for device discovery and configuration?

@Ben

No way to dynamically create, modify or hide tiles in a device type

Perhaps this will be a part of the HTML tiles mentioned above. Please define your desired use cases?

Maybe, but this is really meant based on a device’s response to turn on or off “sections” of a device. or add information, etc.

What’s also missing is a response list view for lists of data. For example, if I want to poll my music server for a list of songs and select one and have it play on the Sonos, I have no surface to list all the music.

Given this, then I would want to hide / show this list view or submenu view and not have to show it all the time.

Same thing for larger tiles, I would love to be able to expand / collapse tiles, have a small tile, and when tapped, opens to a larger tile showing more or different information.

Right now the whole device interface is limited to just scrolling tiles… HTML tiles might fix this, might create other issues, but can’t wait for it…

Again, I want to make it perfectly clear, the purpose of these rants, are not to point out the flaws of SmartThings only… It is to be a voice of the customer, and speak up for the end user experience and keep pressing SmartThings for feedback. I think this platform has the right things going for it, and have been able to do things I could only dream of on other platforms…

If I go quiet or just move on to something else, then nothing was gained… I’m invested in my time and energy into this and want to see it be the best. I’ll piss some people off, I realize that, but you have to break a few eggs to make a cake.

I don’t want to see other developers just leave because they don’t get responses, I want them to know that things are moving forward, just never at the pace anyone wants it to.

[Tyler]

There was a fix applied in 1.6.6 specifically targeting departures on a reboot. This should no longer happen in the majority of cases.

Our release notes need to get better. I’ll apply some pressure in that direction.

[geko]

@pstuart

you have to break a few eggs to make a cake.

Hm… Depending on what cake you want to make, you may also have to crush a few nuts.

[doug-st]

@Ben

• Local IP support for devices / SmartApps is non-existent… The answer is write it yourself…

Not sure what this means. We have several LAN-based integrations. Additional sockets and communication options are available with latest and upcoming firmware updates. 3-6 weeks.

The additional socket / communication options will more generically handle connections which will allow UDP Listeners/Sender & TCP Server/Clients interfaces.

The current interface allows for HTTP RESTful interfaces. This implies that the response needs to be a valid HTTP response frame - if it is not valid it is dropped by the HTTP parser in the lower layer of the cloud. The HTTP RESTful sockets currently time out after 7 seconds so the response size is bound by the number of TPDUs (TCP Frames) that can be transmitted in that time – assuming it is a valid HTTP Response as noted above.

@Ben

• No UDP support for local hubaction

I lose track of this one as I have gone back and forth to developers on it a bunch. Maybe @doug knows something about the timeframe for this.

See above.

@Ben

• No response from Raw socket sends

Ditto - @doug or @scottvlaminck

See above.

@Ben

• Truncated responses from local hubactions, its a mystery as to how big a response can actually be.

See above.

[geko]

@doug-st

The additional socket / communication options will more generically handle connections which will allow UDP Listeners/Sender & TCP Server/Clients interfaces.

Will this upgrade be available for the current hub hardware? Thanks.

[doug-st]

Yeah. The support is there in the next firmware release, and cloud support should follow Ben’s timeline.

[hamishahern (Limitless Led)]

SmartThings and supporting UDP support for home automation… this is their response for 2 years… I have tried my best, and even purchased the dev maker kit from kickstarter. I even sent Smart Things $100s of free lighting packs with all our LimitlessLED products, but they still do not respond to my emails about a timeframe of implementing simple UDP support… UDP and TCP is the backbone of our world, yet smartthings does not support it… This is the only response I could get out of them…

“I just heard back from our firmware team, we don’t support UDP right now.” -Andrew Urman 27Aug14.

There have been many threads over the months and years…
UDP & TCP Sockets from SmartThings

UDP & TCP Sockets from SmartThings

I have something like this already (but Mac). It is essentially a bridge to OS X’s unix shell and OSAX scripting. I would not have been able to integrate SmartThings with the rest of my house (most importantly iTachs) without it. While it would be nice to do all of this on the hub, one thing has occurred to me, and that is the rather finite command structure of the device-type. Without some kind of command parameter parsing within device types, preferable coupled to some form of user-space database, the 100’s of commands needed in my usage model (HT) becomes unwieldy very quickly.

Local UDP Commands from Hub, PLEASE!

Local UDP Commands from Hub, PLEASE!

Trying to control my 16 channel Amp and I have a working prototype in C# controlling it over UDP port 8750… I need to send one line of code to this port, to do simple things like: -Turn on/off a zone (1-8) -Mute a zone (1-8) -Change volume on a zone And a bunch of advanced features like bass, treble, etc… But I really want to automate the sonos connect that I have hooked up to this amp, but again, I run into the fact that I can’t use simple UDP or TCP commands from the local hub. Please ST, Please… Allow me the simple ability to do RAW sockets, or at least a simple UDP datagram or TCP data packet. In most cases, I don’t even care about the response, although that would be nice too.

LimitlessLED

LimitlessLED + CBus + NCD + Limitless Smart Meter + SmartThings

I have a few ideas about connecting the following Four major systems to smart things, I will post details here as I work my way through them. LimitlessLED wifi enabled smart light bulbs, www.limitlessled.com  I will integrate using IP Address: 192.168.1.100  UDP Port:50,000  Control Colors and Light Groups using 3 byte commands. 2) Schneider Electric Clipsal Cbus, micro controlled light switches, and micro controlled light dimmers and sensors.  I will integrate using a cbus direct connect SIM 5000SM/2 module board. national control devices www.controlanything.com allows up to 48 window sensors on one board, I will work to integrate this with smart things also. Limitless Designs DIN rail Smart Meter. I will also look to integrate this with perhaps turning off appliances or changing …

[hamishahern (Limitless Led)]

@doug-st, here is how to use UDP sockets… for our Device Discovery Code…

//1 second broadcasting (50ms x 20times = 1000ms = 1 second)
UpdateStatusMessage("Broadcast UDP 20 times at 50ms intervals for LimitlessLED wifi bridges: "& txtCommand1.Text);

for (int i = 1; i <= 20; i++) {
byte[] b = UTF8.GetBytes(txtCommand1.Text);
udpAdmin.Send(b, b.Length, new IPEndPoint(“255.255.255.255”, 48899));
System.Threading.Thread.Sleep(50); //sleep 50ms
}

WriteLog(“Scanning for 1second up to 1000 LimitlessLED wifi bridge responses…”);
udpAdmin.Client.SetSocketOption(SocketOptionLevel.Socket, SocketOptionName.ReceiveTimeout, 1000);
while (iFoundWifiBridges < 1000) {
receiveBytes = udpAdmin.Receive(listenEP);
//wait here until a UDP packet has been received.

sResponse = UTF8.GetString(receiveBytes);  //convert udp datagram bytes into a string.
static System.Text.RegularExpressions.Regex expression = new System.Text.RegularExpressions.Regex("^(([0-9]|[1-9][0-9]|1[0-9]{2}|2[0-4][0-9]|25[0-5])\\.){3}([0-9]|[1-9][0-9]|1[0-9]{2}|2[0-4][0-9]|25[0-5]),([A-F]|[0-9]){12},.*$");
IsValidWifiBridgeResponse = expression.IsMatch(System.text);
if (IsValidWifiBridgeResponse) {
        
}

  //Catch TimeOut Exception here, no more LimitlessLED Bridge devices responded within 1000ms.

}

source: www.limitlessled.com/dev

[geeji (JJG)]

Just found that very interesting thread, and I have a few comments.

@Ben

• Can’t send MMS or email with or without an attachment either

No timeline that I know.

Am I the only one able to send emails from my Smart App using httpPost and mandrillapp.com ?
Curious, because I got the mandrillapp.com pointer from other helpful forum members.
But to be honest, at that time it is a bit awkward since it works only with direct httpPost parameters, while all my attempts with httpPostJson fail with this too cryptic and thus totally useless error message :

error groovyx.net.http.HttpResponseException: Internal Server Error @ line xxx

And for the attachments, I have not yet figured how to properly encode them from my Smart App (UUencode, BinHex or whatever) before calling httpPost, so they do arrive…
…but a bit garbled ;-).

@Ben

• Temp sensors are so random, I’m not sure what climate I live in.

Need more data to go on. I am under the impression that these are much better now (especially with v2 devices) and of there are consistent variations they can be addressed with user over-riding offsets.

I have seen that comment several times on the forum, and it looks to me like it is a hardware issue with the ST multisensor.
I have spent quite some time developing a custom handler for the very similar “Fibaro FGK-101 Temperature & Door/Window Sensor”, which uses an optional Dallas/Maxim DS18B20, and AFAI can tell, the reported temperatures are quite reliable (better than +/- 0.5°C).

[michaelalden]

Will smartthings make it easier to find smart apps its a pain in the ass to create smart app then search through all the apps. There is no search feature which would be smart or better categorizing the Smartapps. It would be nice if android just had an option to install user smartapps without using IDE.

[Ben (Ben Edwards)]

We just had a meeting about this today and know that SmartApp discovery and search is in an embryonic state and it needs attention. I think we’ll see a great deal of effort on this in the coming months.

[Kooltaco]

@Ben
I know you guys are gearing up for CES but it has gotten really quiet on here about fixes and integrations and the promised firmware upgrades. Is it safe to say we should not expect anything until after the CES Show?

[geko]

@Ben

Local IP support for devices / SmartApps is non-existent… The answer is write it yourself…

Not sure what this means. We have several LAN-based integrations. Additional sockets and communication options are available with latest and upcoming firmware updates. 3-6 weeks.

Is this available yet? It’s been almost 12 weeks.

[625alex (Alex, ActionTiles Control Panel)]

Where’s the Nest integration?

[smart (Ron S)]

Philips hue and Sonos full integration. Honestly Santa I have been good!

[lobo5519 (Jim)]

uh - seriously no offense dude but can we get off dogs barking on Sonos and bulbs that change color and move on to something more interesting!!!

[smart (Ron S)]

@lobo5519 those devives may not be of your interest but the majority of rants, complaints and feature requests are for the light bulbs, dimmers and Sonos and the latest is Harmony Home hub. It’s not just about dogs barking and colored light but a few things we are passionate about and waiting impatiently for
weeks and month, dude!