Hi Robert, thanks for the exhaustive feedback and explanations!
I see it was also you who mentioned in another threat that a GPS (Green Power Sink) is required and not yet/currently implemented in SmartThings. Therefore, I was looking for a/the roadmap and/or an official (uservoice) place to put this on the (priority)list, because (lots) more people are looking for this functionality.
At this moment I own a Philips Hue Bridge (PHB), acquired for testing purposes. Other Zigbee devices, once connected to this bridge, are discoverable on ST, but not this Green Power Device (GPD). Any integration with other devices including scenes therefore becomes useless.
I don’t think polling the bridge won’t work either, I’m not looking for device existence/health/status, I need (device/scene) triggers to be forwarded to ST.
The device I was referring to is an ABB Busch -Jaeger 6716 U-500 Friend of Hue smart switch. All devices mentioned in this threat use this same (EnOcean) Green Power Device (GPD) technology as the base, the physical button is vendor specific.
I do understand when ST sees no heartbeat and/or will be unable to ‘health check/poll’ the device, it’s put it in an ‘offline’ state. Though I think it’s possible to disabled health checks in a DTH, not sure what that means for the status :-). From the GPD perspective it will not be able to except/execute any commands anyway, so why bother. It’s no more than a (uni-directional) button, once pressed/held, some other device(s) is assumed to respond and that’s where the GPS comes in.
I also understand a DTH is required for a GPD, at the and it is a device. Several people started developing one to no avail. But, to my understanding, as long as these GPD’s are undiscoverable by the platform why write a DTH. As mentioned, I use the same pairing sequence as with the PHB on the same channel (PHB is off), but nowhere any log records for this pairing request for the Thing …
Again, writing a DTH makes no sense and I assume more is needed at a lower level in ST.
Unfortunattely I found the answer to my question at NXP’s ZigBee Green Power (for ZigBee 3.0) User Guide v1.1 (nxp.com.cn) paragraph 1.6.
A Green Power Sink (GPS) is indeed an GP infrastructure requirement. Before nodes can operate using the ZigBee Green Power feature, they must be commissioned to establish their relationships with each other. Therefore a (one) GPS must be commissioned for pairing GPD’s and maintaining a table. A GPD and GPS can be combined in a so called Combo Basic device/node, in this case implemented on the ST Hub.
Without this lower level ‘component’ in ST, building a DTH makes no sense.
So we have to wait for ST to put this on their roadmap/priority list.
Implementing a GPS would be a differentiator for SmartThings. It’s pretty hard to replace dump switches with smart controllers and dip-switched into the same outlet. In Europe it won’t even fit at all. Because these (GPD) buttons have no body, it’s much easier to replace, putting the GPD on top or anywhere else. Samsung might even consider building them, though now I’m getting to commercially involved.