The End of Groovy Has Arrived

This announcement says that Groovy-based apps and drivers are going to die.

Today’s email says: “All other SmartThings and third-party SmartApps will be shut down on December 21, 2022”.

I don’t understand it. I have a custom cloud app that sends events to a Lambda function. I also have an app for HomeKit automation. These aren’t Groovy apps. Would they also shut down by the end of the year?

Dates do not match. FAQ says "starting "9.30.22 and Notice inside Android app says “starting” 10.15.22.

Can’t keep up with this. Will Philips hue devices be ok with this transition and still run locally?
I have both the ST hub and hue bridge.

It is the same problem they’ve had all along, lazy and ambiguous wording, though that does seem somewhat fundamental. It is also easy to get right as the first we heard of it all was the CEO saying it starts on 30th September. Just agree with him, and if he was wrong think of a way of making him sound right.

The latest timescales are pretty consistent with the first ones if you try to work out what they meant rather than what they said.

September 15th: Announcement.
September 30th: Things start migrating.
October 15th: Stop fiddling with the legacy stuff.
December 31st: Hoping to have things done and dusted.
Sometime in 2023: Turn something off.
Sometime in 2023+1: Start fielding complaints from users that things have stopped working and no one had told them anything.

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Not sure this has happened to anyone: some Routines I created containing only Edge driven devices are not showing as local (no Home symbol) on my app.

Is this normal, and is there any reason why this is (or should be) happening?

Sorry if this has been asked already but I can’t find it in this topic…according to the platform transition FAQ, the Fibaro Dimmer 1 device will no longer be supported and I have a few of them in my house. I’m hoping there is an Edge driver this device can be migrated to? Is that known now and can I move it and test or do I need to wait for Samsung to try?

My other devices are Fibaro Dimmer 2s, newer IKEA zigbee bulbs and a couple of Fibaro Single Switch 2s - as none of these are listed in the affected devices table of the FAQ, I’m presuming they will be no issue with them?

Finally, I have a bunch of Webcore pistons so what is the best way to plan ahead for those? Do I try and create routines via the ST app to replicate the pistons? What if the routines don’t provide as much configurability as Webcore?

I would suggest you test it anyway, with existing Edge drivers. A quick search on this forum appears to show no Dimmer-1 Edge driver - though there is a Dimmer-2 driver available.

Don’t be too sure about that. Test - you may be surprised to find others that are actually affected. That said, some people have opted not to test and to see what happens after the “Great Changeover”.

I guess the primary fallback is Routines from the app. It’s what I have done so far. If you have complex pistons, you may expect a very complex piston to translate into 10, 20 or more Routines. And you might be faced with an insurmountable problem because you hit the routine limit (200). E.g. in my case, my heating was controlled by only 3 pistons in WebCoRE. It’s a very complex system that raises the demand on the boiler depending on the time of the year and on outdoor ambient conditions. I have calculated that to replicate all of these complexities into Routines - I would need to use a minimum of 72 Routines. 72 - from 3 pistons!! That means more than one-third of my routine allocation would be gone, and I don’t have enough space left for that.

As an alternative to app Routines, I intend to transfer some functionality to SharpTools - where I understand there is a paid account and a premium paid account (or similar). Not sure yet what can be done with it, but I am hoping that I will be able to transfer anything that does not require instant activation (e.g. anything related to pumps or solenoids, such as hot water circulation pump, pool pump, irrigation, etc.) to SharpTools, and see how it works. Yes, it runs in the cloud, but so did WebCoRE, and the devices in question are pretty much “background” devices where some degree of latency is sort of acceptable. This would give me back some “space” so I can use Routines for other stuff, given that I have seen no intention by ST to raise the silly and arbitrary 200-routine limit.

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I think you will find that in the vast majority of cases, with a lot of brainstorming, a lot of routines, some creativity, and occasionally additional virtual devices, you will do most of what you can do on WebCoRE using Routines. It’s just that it continues eating away at your Routine and Device allocation (200 of each), besides the fact that it’s chaotically organised… You cannot even group Routines together, and I have had to adopt a naming convention to try and keep things organised. So - no, it will not give you everything you lost with WebCoRE, unfortunately.

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Why would SmartThings send out an announcement like that without assigning extra staff to this forum to help individual customers get answers to questions and make plans for the transition? :thinking:

I understand employees might not be able to make all the same candidate suggestions, But still…are they really just leaving it up to a community of peer volunteers with limited information to try to help?

I know it’s better than what Insteon did, but SmartThings didn’t go bankrupt.

This has been a fantastically creative and supportive forum of volunteers but it’s never been intended as frontline customer support for basic issues, and “we’re shutting down existing features” does seem like a basic issue.

Maybe I’m overreacting, and there won’t be that many questions to answer. Or SmartThings will offer a better official transition guide soon. Or there will be more employees assigned to this forum next week.

It could happen, right? :hatching_chick:

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Not having visited the forums for a while I had no idea this was happening until the email, and even being familiar with software the email and FAQs arent that easy to digest and work out what the impact will be.

I use the Speaker Companion smartapp as it allows a specific Sonos favourite to be started - but routines/scenes only seem to allow a Play operation - i.e. play whatever was last playing.

The ST app seems to allow a favourite to be chosen so why not a routine/scene - how can I choose what starts playing when triggered?

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Hue will be OK.

Note to anyone who might still be using a custom smartapp (which I doubt at this point) to connect their Hue devices to ST. That would need to be changed over to one of the official Hue integrations.

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You may want to look at using a combination of Routines and SharpTools Rules Engine.

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You are able to move Routines around on the screen. That may help grouping them somewhat.

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Luckily I’d upgraded to a V2 Hue hub earlier when on sale - but its not a trivial task as the upgrade wizard didnt work so all bulbs had to be added by serial number, a older Livingcolours remote re-paired using Hue Essentials app, and all the bulbs re-added to ST as theyre effectively new devices.

check out SharpTools

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This all seems excessive just because there’s no control to select a Sonos favourite in a routine/scene when its available (at least for now) in the Sonos device page in the ST app.

I’m comfortable with software but Id imagine that many users will be unhappy with these extra steps to restore existing basic functionality after these changes are made.

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yep - that is definitely true :frowning:

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The following thread is specific to discussing the options for power users who will be losing custom groovy smartapps, including Webcore, but find that basic routines aren’t enough for what they want to do. You might find it of interest. :thinking:

Replace Groovy with Automations—what’s your plan?

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Hue is complicated.

Right now there are two official integration options: cloud to cloud or LAN.

Cloud to cloud should continue to work exactly as is.

The LAN integration will require a new Edge Driver. ST has said they are working on one, but it’s not available yet and some of us suspect they may just wait for Matter support to be released by both companies.

There are some community members working on a custom Edge Driver, but it’s still in early beta.

And that’s just if you’re currently using an official integration.

If you’re currently using a custom DTH and/or any custom smartapps for your Hue devices, those will all go away. You will probably have to manually transition to the new platform. And you might lose some advanced features. :thinking:

Damn. I know I complained about the lack of communication just a week ago, but I honestly didn’t expect that the official communication from Samsung would somehow make things MORE confusing. :man_facepalming:

Looks like I made the right call finally switching away.

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