Sorry if this has been brought up before but I fail to understand why this device cannot run locally?
I have been using a simple custom ‘virtual lightswitch’ that I wrote to be able to control lamps around the room when the real lightswithc is pressed. Very convenient!
That was until my internet went out and I was surprised to see that to be able to use only a GE z wave in wall light switch and a smartthings power outlet I need internet?
Sorry if I am being silly here but am I missing something? these are both primitive devices and the code is only using on/off() and listening to those events?
The issue isn’t the device. It’s the code, both the device type handler and the smart app.
SmartThings is primarily a cloud-based platform. With version two of the hub, they did allow for a very small amount of local processing, but it’s a very small amount. Only device type handlers which are included in the firmware for every smartthings customer are eligible to run locally. And the only smart app which can run locally is the official smart lighting feature and a small amount of smart home monitor.
And that’s it. Routines don’t run locally. The mobile app on your phone cannot talk to the hub locally even if they are both on the same LAN. Any custom code, whether it’s a device type handler or a smartapp. Will not run locally.
There’s no official list of DTHs that run locally, but there’s a community FAQ:
You can see that the SmartThings outlet is there–but only if you use the stock DTH and only if you are using a smart lighting automation which only includes devices using DTHs on that list.
This isn’t what we were expecting when they said V2 would have local processing, but it’s what we got.
In your case, if you use the stock device type handlers and you use the official smart lighting feature to have the pocket socket turn on and off when the switch turns on and off, it would still work locally.
Shouldn’t matter at all, all of the custom device type handlers run in the cloud anyway. Unless you coded a device type handler which for some reason has a hardcoded IP address in it, but you’d probably already be aware of that issue.
Ah okay thanks, sorry to hijack the thread a bit, your response earlier reminded me of an issue I had with a custom device handler not functioning after switching out a router.
