This is a very risky game we play here. We are at complete mercy of SmartThings. Years worth of work can be undone by a word or a line of code.
No offense taken. I keep insisting that SmartTiles is a very simple app. The MVP utilization of SmartThings cloud is the original idea, but everything else is old school. Well, you do need to throw in an attractive, mobile first and responsive UI, but that’s easy with time, knowledge, commitment, resources and passion. You know.
Whether an app is “bublishable” is determined by ST gods, it entirely subjective and may change without notice. So, plan accordingly.
I am completely torn with this one. I am both excited for you Alex and sad for the ST Community at the same time.
First and foremost… We understand. And… we’re sorry.
But, I think what needs to realized is this is the purpose of an open platform right? Someone (@625alex) creates and app/experience that is open source. It may or may not gain some traction… but if it does, then someone (Alex) obviously, and rightfully so, would want to monetize his/her incredible efforts.
So, Alex I am happy for you. Honestly I am so glad you were able to write an awesome app using our platform and that has lead to such an opportunity for you! 'MERICA!
I hope and want this to be a great endeavor for you and SmartThings won’t shy away form helping you make something awesome! Please let us know whatever we can do to help!
I know this isn’t the last we will see of you and I look forward to your future works!
I think I have my next live coding Friday challenge
Maybe just a read only with a defined password version is a reasonable status checker that might meet the standard.
Who knows. But I think a simple OAUTH based Status App that publishes out a webpage would be fun to submit to ST for approval (or rejection) and see what can be worked out.
I understand. Considering popularity and added value that SmartTiles brings to ST platform, it would be silly not to monetize it. Other developers in the community do it (typically by selling companion apps on iTunes or Android app store) and don’t feel bad about it. An neither should you.
@625alex Alex I do credit you with a great application, and I enjoyed it so much that I donated via Paypal before it was even called SmartTiles.
I use multiple versions of the dashboard I use to target my different teenagers, so I don’t give them access to other parts of the house. With this announcement, I won’t be able to do that any longer correct?
tgauchat
(ActionTiles.com co-founder Terry @ActionTiles; GitHub: @cosmicpuppy)
30
Existing personal copies / instances installed via your own IDE account will continue to run and are permitted under the license. I have a couple myself.
Folks who have a personal / private copy of the source code are lucky in this regard.
The “multiple version” feature is very useful and something that Alex wanted to add somehow to the Installer. Might happen in the future if possible, I hope.
I don’t think it’s a loop hole per say. I think it is an interesting use of oAuth in regards to SmartTiles. I think I was actually the first one to have an app that did this and at the time I asked if it was out of bounds. The way ThingLayer uses oAuth is exactly the way it is intended. You create an endpoint and the other users can grant access to that endpoint via oAuth without handing you permanent keys to their ST infrastructure. The difference with SmartTiles is that it in and of itself is a SmartApp. The ThingLayer SmartApp just provides and endpoint to a third party api. In this regard, I don’t think the ThingLayer smartapp is publishable either, but that does not stop anyone from using it.
The click to install method actually generates more installs. It works for android and it will work for SmartThings. I install more apps to my phone from the web than I do from the play store.
Yeah just look at what happened to the Twitter dev community.
This is a solvable problem. SmartThings needs a pub/sub service that SmartApps can subscribe to. I feel like a broken record on this one. Pub/Sub would eliminate all of these polling issues. Completely. I know it is possible because I have built it already. I really hope that this is one of those things that Ben and others have talked about as a coming addition.
@tgauchat I understand, but any existing fixes or updates, support for new devices is done correct. If something changes, I have to abandon my dashboards or move to @florianz dashboard solution. or I will have to fix it myself.
I’ve read through the other thread, I’m confused is this to help monetize the project (which I support), is this because ST may attempt to block the solution because of the taxation on its API that it never had intended.
I’m confused on the end goal of this. I saw @625alex reply are other people taking the code and attempting to sell solutions off of it? And, I don’t mind if you want to “protect SmartThings from its users.”, just make it more difficult to install and use so only power users are leveraging it.
tgauchat
(ActionTiles.com co-founder Terry @ActionTiles; GitHub: @cosmicpuppy)
33
The Community (i.e., this Forum, though there are probably folks that don’t use the Forum) is a mix of guru developers, hackers, tinkerers, power users, novices, and, frankly, some very naive consumers.
If you are a “power user” or higher, then there are alternatives to SmartTiles as you mentioned. The creation of the web based installer at SmartTiles.click is how SmartTiles got opened to the “plain user”… That’s also why SmartThings is providing the “submit, review, and publish” process… And SmartThings promises an eventual “store” (since before the day I picked up my Kickstarter reward bundle, actually… ~3 years ago?), similar to Apple App Store or Android Play Store, to let developers monetize.
In the meantime, there’s growing pains in SmartThings and the Community.
I hope Alex works something out, this product is invaluable. So many times I have almost bought another tablet for the downstairs; it’s part of the house life now.
I have donated in the past and have no hesitations paying for a private app as long as ST plays fair with access.
It would be a shame to go back to finding my stupid cell phone every time I wanted to manipulate the house.
I too hope Alex can get something worked out, and would have no qualms paying for the app (and I’d imagine there would be plenty of ways to set it up with different payment options: ie, per install, packages of 3/5/10 installs, unlimited installs, etc) - it’s definitely worth paying for in order to manage my home.
Very sorry to hear of your decision. I LOVE SmartTiles - as I wrote earlier, I’m surprised that SmartThings has not embraced and incorporated it, rather than continue with the poor, complex, unintuitive user interface that they use. Thanks again for all the time and hard work you put into SmartTiles. It is truly a work of art. Regarding the security “issue” I think it boils down to “if you decide to live in the cloud and use a smartphone, you are giving up security. Just a fact of life” Again, sorry to hear your decision, thanks for SmartTimes! Best of luck in your new projects
@tgauchat I have little real confidence in the “App Store” solution for SmartThings to solve a lot of the issues the power users have on this. The community is great, but even the Apple Store took years before a lot of the standard usages became allowed. I had been jailbreaking my iPhone before there was an App store on the iPhone, so even when the ST gets an App Store it will take a long time before they will have time to support the powerful apps that a lot of people will want to use.
SmartTiles is a great example of it can hammer the ST cloud servers, and probably wouldn’t be allowed. The developer API isn’t robust enough to elegantly support that type of app. I would hope the ST would be a web interface that leverage a pub/sub model instead of requiring the web app to poll services continuously, because polling just fails when you have requirement for “near” real time data and a lot of users requesting that data.
It is just a little disappointing, but I understand why @625alex is going to this, but i really see it as a fail at ST level for not supporting developers that wish to add value to the ST platform. I understand supporting developers is very time consuming, and difficult, I think it is even more difficult that actually building the initial platform.
The openness of the platform is why I chose ST over everything else, and if can’t help or at least not hinder or discourage its robust, thriving community of developers than it is really near the end for me. I can handle the outages, the occasionally flakiness, and I’ve adapted to not use “critical” components like opening or unlocking a door with presence, and I can handle the breaking changes of integrations with 3rd parties like WeMo or Netatmo but if developers simply don’t want to spend the time or effort to develop SmartApps or DeviceTypes than it looks like a bleak future in my opinion.
3 Likes
tgauchat
(ActionTiles.com co-founder Terry @ActionTiles; GitHub: @cosmicpuppy)
39
Your observations are astute.
A major part of SmartThings’s business strategy is promoting it as an open development platform for IoT. The existence of the role “Chief Platform Officer” is a testament to their commitment to this.
The perspective problem is that SmartThings has execution difficulties across all business functions, and so it is hard to tell whether their slow progress and some missteps in developer support and tools is any indication of priority misalignment or just on par with the rest of the company.
The Community Forum is not the only channel that could be better leveraged by SmartThings for the purpose of better supporting developers, but it is the easiest one for us active Community members to evaluate. Many Platform questions never get responses (e.g., essentially no responses to the new Capability Type requests for example, …).
But there are huge signs of improvement and visible progress (e.g., the hiring of @slagle, the tremendous strides in the Developer Documentation @Jim@unixbeast, amazing IDE enhancements by @Dianoga, surge in SmartApp submission reviews and approvals by @kris and team, etc.). I’d venture to say that we’ve seen more progress in this area than any other (e.g., progress on Hub V2 and new mobile App is unfortunately invisible, but of course, it is surely happening, don’t get me wrong).
So lots of reasons why this SmartTiles announcement doesn’t spoil my optimism. There are actually a lot of optimistic sentiments in this thread, even if we can’t hold it up against the ideal roadmap.
