webCoRE is going to die?

[JDRoberts]

@David_Van

What a bummer, ST is nearly useless without WebCoRE. The new rule engine cant even come close to the complex pistons in use out there. I’ll keel over before I pay a subscription to any alternative service just to keep my home automation running! Take me back to 2014!

There is a non subscription option, but it requires running 3 systems and being ok with a very Rube Goldberg approach…

1. use ST for whatever you like about ST
2. use hubitat to run Webcore and whatever other groovy you can’t bear to lose.
3. set up virtual devices as proxies.
4. use MQTT to communicate between ST and Hubitat, thanks to @taustin’s new project. (You need another device here to host the new platform smartapp that manages the MQTT
   
   
   
   integration on the ST side.)

Integration Solutions using MQTT

I’d like to share some projects I’ve been working on that provide some nice integration options between SmartThings and other external applications. These use MQTT, which if you’re not familiar with, you can find plenty of information about on the internet. Put simply, you install what’s called an MQTT Broker application onto an always-on computer on your LAN (‘Mosquitto’ is one of the more popular free ones), and it provides a structured way to publish and subscribe to messages across devices and applications. This provides a nice solution to being able to get device information into, and out of SmartThings in a consistent and reliable way with little-to-no development expertise required. MQTT solutions have existed for SmartThings on the ‘old’ Groovy-based platform. My new projects …

It’s complex and only for power users, but it should be doable.