Hi everyone, I switched from HomeSeer and have a basic event I need to do in ST but wondering if I can do this using the built in smartapps as I’d like to avoid core.
If bathroom door closes, turn on the fan. - This works fine using smart lighting I believe it was. Where I’m confused though is:
If bathroom door opens, and the fan is on, turn off the fan after 20 minutes. If the door closes within 20 minutes, then cancel that event and restart the 20 minute countdown again when the door opens.
CoRE IS SmartThings! Don’t make the mistake I did and ignore CoRE and struggle with trying to figure out how to do this or that. A couple of hours using CoRE and you will be able to do everything your mind can think of using a CoRE Piston. It takes 5 minutes to install and you will be able to write that Piston in 5 minutes.
Why are you wanting to avoid installing CoRE?
Just FYI webCoRE is now in beta and I would use this.
Can all be done from the comfort of your pc.
Thanks everyone I’ll check into these. I’m fine using WebCore, since as you say even ST could go away lol. Again to clarify, what I was looking to do is:
Probably easier doing it in WebCore. One question I just had though regarding it though. Is WebCore making my ST hub more intelligent, in that it’s installed ON the ST hub and doing all of this logic locally? That’s where it throws me off since I have to program pistons at https://dashboard.webcore.co/. If all the logic is happening locally then I’m good with it, but I just don’t like it if every event is being run by some server in probably a totally different country than I am over the Internet if that makes sense. I’m coming from HomeSeer where you don’t even need Internet to do the above task, so just want to make sure if I was to use WebCore to write the above programs for the door fan, that my Internet could be down and this all still works.
Smart Lighting can do this for you, while CoRE is usually my goto app I try and use smart lighting for what I can.
Are you sure? He has two conditions to meet. Bathroom Door is Open AND Fan is On…Didn’t know that Smart Lighting evaluates multiple conditions like this.
Don’t get me wrong, I use SL for a multitude of simple automations. Its fast and runs locally. However, for things that are not just as simple as ITTT then there is CoRE.
webCoRE is in Beta but CoRE is alive and kicking and is pretty rock solid. You shouldn’t have any worries installing it until webCoRE matures to it’s potential although it’s pretty awesome right now! There are a couple of things that I can do in CoRE now, that has not been implemented into webCoRE as of yet.
As far as keeping things stock…Well…ST stock=a hot pile of boo boo. Apps and Devices. The beauty in this open system is 3rd party apps and devices.
CoRE makes ST a POWERFUL HA system. If you stick with Stock then you will have a system that is only 10% of it’s potential.
Its really just one condition for the door, when the door open turn on the fan then when door is closed shut the fan off in 20 minutes, smart lighting does this well, I use it for my pantry light and a contact sensor on the door.
yeah, smartlighting can do this.
I originally thought this wouldn’t work because I started with a “turn off.” But you are absolutely right, as you showed in post 19 below-- this capability is in the official smart lighting feature, but only if you start with “turn on.”
My bad. 
LOL… calm down Ron… just wait until CoRE goes the way of the Rule machine… you’ll have to throw your ST setup out. 
Yikes! I would hate it if I had to throw my ST setup out. 
Those who have Rule Machine still use it. I have webCoRE installed and building Pistons as we speak. I have CoRE Pistons that I will probably never switch over to webCoRE because they work great and if it ain’t broke…
webCoRE is moving at a rapid speed and things are changing quickly. That’s why I suggest the tank for what he wanted to do. webCoRE is awesome and way more faster than CoRE. I love it!
The real point is, “ST Stock Apps are OK for doing basic stuff”. Most 3rd Party Apps were built because there was no solution with stock apps or the 3rd Party Apps do things better.
yeah, I still have RM and i use it, and I use CoRE. I’ve just come to realize, to ever count on any of these 3rd party solutions sticking around. Even after, I donated to several like SmartTiles or ActionTiles, they can turn to close source and stop letting people use it for free or give it up like Bruce w/ RM and just not let it out anymore.
Understood. However, I would not be an advocate for ST if I had to rely on “their” apps and devices. Yuk! 
Rather take the chance. YMMV
You can’t count on the official features sticking around, either. Dashboard shortcuts, light groups, the old garage door, Mode changes in the mobile app, several camera characteristics: multiple official features have been withdrawn over the last few years. Some officially published smartapps have also been withdrawn from the marketplace.
There are some home automation options where you license some code and you buy some Devices and they will continue to run even if the company goes out of business. (Indigo is one.)
But SmartThings is a cloud-based platform. They can and do push out changes that you can neither refuse nor delay. If Samsung chooses to sunset any individual feature, or the entire line, the devices will still work if you move them to a different controller, but the SmartThings installation will not.
Speaking just for myself, I decided about a year ago that my own interest would be best served if I treated home automation as similar to mobile phone service: I budget assuming a three-year life for any individual device, including the hub. And I set aside the amount I’m willing to pay per month to have the features that I want.
I have no brand loyalties, and I buy nothing based on future promises. It’s all about what it does for me now, with the assumption that The space is changing rapidly enough that the company may change what it offers or I may change what I want, and either may cause me to choose to replace each individual part over a three years cycle. Again, including the controller.
It reduced a lot of my stress and greatly simplified my budget to just go with the idea that even if futureproofing was possible, there would probably be new features that I would eventually want and I wouldn’t want to be locked into a past choice. 
As long as that 3 year cycle doesn’t include the hard wired devices. If z-wave of today all of the sudden became not compatible with z-wave of the future, or another standard took over, I think I’d pack it in and find another hobby. The time and cost to replace all that. . . .shiver. Zigbee too but so far I have no hard wired Zigbee devices.
It does include the hardware devices, but that’s made me think about what hardwired devices I really want. Of course if I get past the three years and I still like the device and the automations that run it are still working and the device itself is still working fine, I keep it.
As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, everything I do with home automation is for practical reasons. (I’m quadriparetic.) so I don’t necessarily do every switch in a room, or even every room. But everything I put in now is with the understanding that I may choose to replace it in three years. And that includes light switches.
I have an old ProTools Pro Audio Recording Solution that I paid well over $10k when I invested. Today, it is totally obsolete! However, I can still make great sounding music on it today despite it no longer being supported or updated.
I guess that’s how I look at this as well. Only tough part is it’s cloud based. However, I made sure that all of my devices also work, even if the cloud goes down. Just no automation but I will still have basic functionality. The likelihood of z-wave going bye bye without any local hardware to still support it is slim to none.
When I first started planning in 2014, I had thought home automation was going to be like home improvements, like when we remodeled the bathroom to make it wheelchair accessible.
But after I had been using home automation for about a year, I realize that features were changing so quickly that the home-improvement model didn’t really work for me. For example, when I started there really weren’t any good voice control options. Now full-featured voice control is a minimum for almost any new device that I buy.
Different people will approach this differently. Some people will want a 15 year payback for any project. Others will just buy whatever looks good that day. I just decided that for me, it made the most sense given the rapidly evolving space and my own budget to arbitrarily stick a three year payback period on anything. I would consider that I got my money’s worth out of it if I kept it for three years. And that let me be open to new technologies without feeling that I had made a bad decision on the previous stuff. 
But again, that’s just what works for me. I’m sure other people will look at it in other ways.
Awesome! You’re right, that works: I’ve edited my post above.
Nice work, That’s definitely a simple way. 
