Trying to recreate my WebCore automations to Smartthings Routines. How do you create a trigger for a device changing from one state to another? I only see triggers for the device’s state at that time. Not for the device changing from one state to another state. I have a routine that runs when the home state chnages from Night to Home.
Generally ST Routines fire when the state changes, unless you mark something as a precondition.
1 Like
True, but I need it to fire when the state chnages from Night to Home specifically. The state will chnge to Home when we arrive home. But I want to know when it changes from Night to Home.
Lots of folks are using virtual switches to track state. I have one that is used to signify “Nighttime” and use it as a precondition for routines. So, for what you want to do it would be something like “If Nighttime and location mode is Home, Notify people”. Then use a second routine to control when “Nighttime” is on or off.
1 Like
Thanks very much. I will give that a try. But what a messa around to do something that should be simple. Thank you Samsung for killing a great tool and offering something far, far less.
WebCoRE triggered for any change of state too, but it just made it a little easier to figure out what it had changed from.
If you must use app Routines then what you could do is address how you set the mode to Home. It is you that sets Home so you can use different Routines to do so depending if the mode is Away or Night to start with. That gives you scope for adding actions at the same time you set Home.
If the change from Night to Home is particularly important then you can create a new mode called e.g. NightToHome and change to that first, then trigger on that, do your stuff and then set Home.
How do you create a virtual switch on Smartthings? I have created switches using Google Home Helper, but not directly on the Smartthings app.
-
If you have an Android phone and are in the US or Korea, there is an option under smartthings labs in the app that can do it.
-
failing that, if you have a smartthings/Aeotec hub, there are several community-created edge drivers that can create virtual devices for you. Each has different features. They are listed on the “virtual devices” list on the quick browse lists in the community-created wiki.
https://thingsthataresmart.wiki/index.php?title=Quick_Browse_Lists_for_Edge_Drivers
-
if you don’t have a hub but you do have a PC. You can use the CLI to create one, but it’s quite a bit of work.
-
if you don’t have a hub and you only have a mobile device, or you just want an easier method than number three, a community member has created a webpage interface to the new cloud API, which will let you create a virtual device.
SmartThings API Browser+ ... Now Available to All
- or if you don’t want to use a virtual device at all, you can get a power strip that works with SmartThings, and use one of its sockets as a virtual proxy. That doesn’t have all the same features that a virtual device has, but certainly if you just want to use it as an on/off precondition it would work.
There are probably some additional methods, but that should give you a few choices. 
3 Likes
Hope all will forgive a slight tangent.
I’ve got 1 virtual switch and 5 virtual dimmers that I created a couple of years ago using the IDE.
How can I tell if these will auto-migrate or if I need to recreate them using one of the methods listed by @JDRoberts ?
This question has been asked officially several times, and there is as yet no official answer. We don’t know what’s going to happen to existing virtual switches created through the IDE and we don’t know what’s going to happen for people who don’t have a hub and therefore can’t use edge drivers.
There is a way to create a simple virtual device using the browser option provided by @TAustin , but that has limited use cases, and of course, it’s entirely dependent on the community created service.
So the short answer is, we haven’t been told yet. 
So I guess the safest option is to create replacements using one of the methods you listed.
Thanks!
1 Like