TUTORIAL: Using EventGhost for Scheduling

[luma]

@tgauchat

For general Event handling, I think it would be helpful to write a SmartThings customized Plug-In. That way it could allow configuration and hold the long endpoint address and authentication token information and make it unncessary to use the generic URL call functions with the full URLs. In fact, a customized Plug-In could support the most common Capabilities / Commands (on/off, etc), and Attributes.

This is a great baseline, and I’m very tempted to add this to my project list.

But … well, there may be some more popular third-party event handler standards to follow instead of Event Ghost – perhaps MQTT, for example; IFTTT might also be expanding their functionality, but it is another Cloud…

There is an MQTT plugin for EventGhost which can be combined with an MQTT broker (several options available for cloud or local deployment) and the MQTT Bridge. AWS, Azure, and basically everyone else with a dedicated IoT service support it. Further, there are client libraries available for nearly every microcontroller system, so $2 wifi platforms like the ESP8266 can interact directly with MQTT - and thus with EG and ST and Home-Assistant, etc etc.

We’re still working through some bugs in the bridge but it feels like MQTT is probably the most flexible way to import and export events onto a common bus that several other platforms can interact with.