ST Drivers vs Non-ST Drivers

Devices & Integrations
1

Is there an advantage to selecting a ST version of a driver instead of a non-ST version? At the beginning of the conversion, my devices would automagically start using the ST version. I did not download anything. Some of my devices use custom made Z Wave drivers. When the ST versions of these drivers become available, will they also appear in the driver list without having to download them?

Thanks.

2

Community developed (Non-ST) drivers generally have:

  1. more features
  2. many have additional fingerprints so that additional devices can be paired.
  3. most of the developers are quick to respond, fix problems, add fingerprints and in many cases add additional features when requested
  4. many Community drivers have no real ST equivalent.

I have been using drivers for about 18 months and most of the drivers I am using are Community drivers because I think they are better. But some people are only comfortable using official ST drivers.

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3

Thanks for the reply. I agree with your points. Samsung owns the platform so if they make a course change then a ST driver seems more likely to have been factored into that change then a Non-ST driver. I have been cornered before in another tech platform when the platform changed course and left my customizations hanging.

4

Strangely, in SmartThings’ history it has often been the custom community – created code, which has been able to keep up with platform changes, not the stock releases.

A good example right now is the stock zwave switch edge driver when used with the very popular GE z wave switches. Many people have reported that after the automatic migration their switches simply didn’t work. The solution was to instead use a custom edge Driver created by a community member, and then everything worked fine again. :thinking:

And when the stock edge drivers were initially released, they had no way of exposing the individual components of a multi component device to voice assistants through the official integrations. Once again, it was community developers, who came up with solutions. This situation lasted for months.

There are other examples of this as well. :man_shrugging:t2:

5

Going into this I am trying to use stock drivers if at all possible, but agree it seems the community ones are often better out of the gate and better kept up. You also have infinitely higher chance of getting good help from a community developer versus reaching out to smart things support too (stock response of reset hub for example).

My reasoning for staying with stock is we have now been bitten quite hard by Samsung pulling out major chunks of functionality with no reasonable replacement, yes with warning, but many people have built a complex system on top of those that now just stop working

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