SmartThings, Hubs, Philips Hue Scenes, Action Tiles and Setup - Help Please

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I can’t answer the detailed questions about ActionTiles, so hopefully someone else will be able to. Otherwise you might need to ask those in the ActionTiles community forum.

For some of your other questions…

The issue you were running into is that at the time of this writing, Alexa routines cannot be triggered by most switches. As you noted, those who have a smartthings/Aeotec hub do have the ability to create a number of different kinds of virtual devices which can trigger an Alexa routine. But the choices for those without a hub are much smaller.

The workaround is to use a community created tool, the API browser plus, which can create a virtual lock. And you can trigger an Alexa routine from a lock. So that’s the way to deal with that issue. (API browser plus is just a webpage, you don’t need to have a smartthings/Aeotec hub and you don’t need to have a laptop. You can just access it from a mobile device.)

SmartThings API Browser+ ... Now Available to All

If you want it to be a switch, just because it’s easier for the humans, create a couple of smartthings routines (not Alexa routines) so that turning the virtual switch on unlocks the virtual lock, and turning the switch off locks it again.

And when you use a smartthings routine to turn on a switch, you can have that same routine turn it off again, after a delay of, say, one minute. That way it’s ready to use again the next time. It’s not quite as smooth as a button, but it should serve the same purpose.

You can’t get to hue scenes within the official smartthings features, though, not even just to copy their settings. So you will have to activate them using an Alexa routine or Ifttt. (those who have a Smartthings/Aeotec hub do have one additional option using a communitycreated edge Driver, but that’s not available to those without a hub.)

Lots of people use either Ifttt or an Alexa routine to activate a hue scene from smartthings, it’s a very popular use case. So the main issue you still have is that you’re going to have to use a virtual lock to activate the Alexa routine if you want to use that method. But again, you could also create a virtual switch and use a smartthings routine to have it lock/unlock the virtual lock, so humans wouldn’t ever have to say “unlock lock b”. It’s a little more work to set up, but you can end up with the same functional outcome as you would get from a virtual button. :sunglasses:

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Thanks all - have solved with IFTTT pro calling on multiple scenes to a trigger and then setting up multiple virtual switches in ST linked to Action Tiles. A routine in ST then ‘switches off’ the switch when its state is ‘on’ after 5 seconds, so it then resets on Action Tiles and thus acts as a button. All sorted!

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Just an fyi….the Aeotec Smartthing hub still shows on Amazon, but there are none for sale. Does anyone know if they’re just out of stock, or since Samsung has gone back into the hardware side, (and cheaper), is Aeotec maybe pulling out?

Or, maybe I missed something somewhere.

Thanks

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As far as we know, just out of stock, which is common with Home Automation Devices these days.

@jkp gave you a link in post 17 above to a company which does usually have it in stock.

I’ve never bought anything from that particular company, but I have purchased several times from zwaveproducts.com and they also show it as being in stock at the time of this posting.

Aeotec Smart Home Hub; SmartThings Hub, Z-Wave, ZigBee, Matter, WiFi Enabled Controller – ZWaveProducts

But you never know these days, smartthings doesn’t generally make announcements in advance about hardware decisions. :thinking:

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This was interesting. As of today, Aeotec (the manufacturer of the hub) is now offering it through an Amazon storefront. It is in stock at Amazon warehouses and will ship from them, but does not count as a prime purchase and returns are based on Aeotec’s return policy.