Update to SmartThings Groovy Transition

[h0ckeysk8er (Bruce Pinsky)]

@wenglish

I guess there’s no hope that Life360 integration will come back, is there?

SmartThings started off for me as a glorified lamp timer. I then set up a bunch of other automations based on presence using Life360. That worked great for a few years.

Now presence detection is reliably unreliable, and so in our house SmartThings has been relegated back to a glorified lamp timer.

I got the impression that SmartThings would convert all my devices to Edge. That was most likely wishful thinking on my part. Instead I have had to search each manufacturer’s website for instructions, and often all I find is the instructions for the old Groovy setup.

Sigh.

Big discussion on presence in the topic below, but in summary:

• ST app based presence on your phone works well for some, but not so good for others
• Alexa or IFTTT app presence on your phone can be used to trigger virtual presence sensors in ST which can be used in ST Routines/Rules API
• Using virtual presence sensors vs member location in Routines allows you to switch out the underlying presence detection mechanism without having to touch all your Routines

I’m personally using Alexa presence for our household and it has been working reliably for us (and is discussed in that same topic).

Presence in 2023, including multiple members and multiple locations

I’m really glad you mentioned Linked Places. That is something I was trying to figure out just the other day because I wanted to do something similar: have a separate ‘neightborhood’ location defined that would give me the ability to have triggers when I’m ‘near’ home. I’m on iOS, and the app does allow you to configure a linked place, but it wouldn’t allow me to set up an automation, saying something about requiring all mobile devices to be Galaxy phones. So I thought it was a dead end. But if anyone knows better, I’d be interested. Right now I think the only way to accomplish cross-location automations is with a SmartApp or other 3rd party app.