Weekly Update from Alex - 06/24/16

[JDRoberts]

@zala

I’m equally interested/concerned in the progress being made regarding platform features though. Like most, I’m battling full WAF (wife approval factor) as I slowly implement smart tech into our home. It would really help to know if scene controllers, wall mounted video control panels and other new device types/partner support are on the way.

That helps us address expectations as we piece this together rather than buy a turnkey solution such as control 4. They (WAF) want the polish without that pricetag and don’t care that we can’t tinker with it.

The community is awesome at building new apps or device handlers but I feel we need an uptick from the officially supported camp too.

It’s hard to defend a question about why we can’t choose a four button scene controller as it’s not supported (eg Leviton range) or why we can’t have the blinds she picked out (Lutron) as there’s no partnership.

If you get blinds from the Lutron Serena range, they work with IFTTT, which gives you indirect integration with SmartThings that is usually sufficient for window coverings. There may be a slight lag introduced because of IFTTT, but that’s not usually a big deal for shades.

Lutron Caséta and RA2 Select Integrations - Connect Your Apps with

The Enerwave SC7 is a 7 button wallmount device that works with SmartThings and is quite popular, although it depends on community-created code.

[OBSOLETE] ZWN-SC7 Enerwave 7 Button Scene Controller

See post #4 for custom Device Type and SmartApp for this device. While I’m still working out a few bugs with my Enerwave Dual Load ZWN-RSM2 I’m hoping someone can get me started with getting the ZWN-SC7 to control devices on/off state. Specifically, I’m hoping to control 3 of the ZWN-RSM2 modules with this device and will be adding even more in the future. In short my rooms almost all have ceiling fans/light combo’s but only one hot wire. So I’m putting the ZWN-RSM2 in the fan canopy and using the ST App and ZWN-SC7 to control them. ST doesn’t support secondary controllers from what I understand, but from the little digging I’ve done. My guess would be that with a custom device type and maybe app, I should be able to accomplish that. ST does recognize and install the device, so I guess…

And the third-party SmartTiles dashboard is an app that can run in any web browser, so it’s easy to use with a wall mount tablet. Again, it’s not officially supported, but it has been featured in the official blog. It’s fully customizable, so you can display only the individual devices that you want to. Also very popular in the community, there’s even a thread just to discuss different hardware options that people use with it.

www.smarttiles.click

The downside to the Enerwave and SmartTiles solutions is that they will not work if either the Internet or the SmartThings cloud are unavailable. So an officially-approved device that could run locally would definitely be better.

So I’m not disagreeing with your point in any way, just wanted to mention that there are some alternatives that people are using now.