Where do I start? The more I read the more lost I get. Help, please!

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I’m not even sure this is the right section to post this, or even the right forum. I seem to be skipping from one place to another and getting passed to a third right after that. Let me just tell you about my situation right now.

I started buying a set of IKEA home smart devices a few weeks ago (I now have maybe 10-12 bulbs of varying kinds, I have 2 remotes and 2 motion sensors. I also bought a Google Nest Mini and I had from before I 2 chromecasts - 1 audio only and 1 normal. More over I also got at new Samsung TV with Smartthing, Airplay, AppleTv and all kinds of stuff built in. On top of this I came across a couple of cheap Deltaco RGB lights, as well a a pack of 3 smart plugs of the same brand.

I have managed to get pretty much everything online and I can have Google to do what I tell her to, in most cases. However, now all my iPads and iPhones a jam packed with different apps on account of all the different brands in my system and it’s just a huge mess. So I figured “Ill get one hub for everything” = enter SmartThings Hub V.3

It seemed to be the most compatible all in one-solution for me, and at this point I didn’t even know anything about smart apps or webCore, applets and so on. Then I realise the old Classic version is dead and I have to figure out what can I do with this thing now? My apps had no smart apps installed and I didn’t know where or how to find these little device handlers. I think you get the picture. I am so totally lost I I need some sort of list if things to begin with. Without being directed to another thread or forum before I now why I was there in the first place.

So please, exactly where do I start from scratch to to get my stuff to work all trough my ST hub? At this point I haven’t even managed to find a solution to, what I assume must be a no-brainer by now, intergrate the IKEA lightbulbs. That would be a start, at least. Sorry about this long rant, but I had to write it all out as i don’t find any answers on my fragmented ways of asking google and other search engines for help.
Thanks in advance, I hope I can get my head around all this eventually…
/Björn

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Welcome!

Most of the time you won’t need custom device type handlers. You just open the app, choose add a device, find the device you want to add and follow the instructions in the app. That will be true for your IKEA bulbs.

HOWEVER, and this is a big however, most devices, although not all, can only belong to one hub at a time. So if you have your IKEA bulbs currently connected to an IKEA gateway, you have to reset them and then connect them to your smartthings hub instead of using the IKEA gateway. So it’s one or the other, but not both.

However, there are exceptions to this, as some devices do connect to their own controller and then that controller uses the Internet to talk to your smartthings account. That’s called “cloud to cloud.“ for example, if you have your IKEA bulbs connected to a hue bridge, that’s OK, that hue bridge can also talk to smartthings.

So, the first thing to learn is the first rule of home automation: “the model number matters.“ there’s no one way to do things, it depends on the specific model of the device that you are working with. :sunglasses:

I’ll leave other people to help you with your overall project and other devices. Just keep in mind that you basically have to look at each device individually in order to figure out the best way to get it to work with smartthings. Good luck!

Oh, and before I forget, if you do need to find custom code or you want to browse what’s available, there is a set of quick browse lists in the community – created wiki which are organized by category. However, smartthings is in the middle of a big transition: new hub, new app, new platform, and some of the old DTHs will not work with the new app. So before jumping into anyone of them, look down at the very end of its thread to make sure that it’s currently working.

Also, that page is divided into sections: smartapps, DTH‘s, project reports, etc. if you go down near the bottom of the page and find a section for project reports, there is a list there called “get started“ which is supposed to be for new people. Again, though, some of the threads there may be referring to the old platform so check the calendar dates as well. Anything before 2018 may be out of date by now.

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Hi, and thanks for responding to my cries for help =)
The list of links a is certainly something I was hoping to find by myself without too much hassle, but well I didn’t. I ‘ve started to sift through it to see if there is anything that could be of use to me.

However, from what I understand , everything that is not webCore is now obsolete. Correct? I read your extensive post about where to go and bother people about it and I ended up watching one of the video tuts-introductions before I fell asleep (not criticism to the they guy who made, was just knackered. I have to admit though, that this stuff is hard for me and certainly doesn’t make a lot of sense to me without rewatching several times as well as trying to understand a lot of the tech lingo.
I did find out how to add IKEA lights to ST, but I really thinks its a pain as I have to move stuff around my place just to get the damn hub to be close enough to let the poor bastards into ST-dimension. Maybe there is a way around that, Im sure Ill never find out.

Anyways, thanks again. It was probably a mistake to get interested in home automations as it’s clearly to hard for me to figure it out, and the amazingly helpful community I read about, that only seems to be you, Mr JDRoberts =)

/Björn

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If you mean custom smartapps, that’s not completely true, but pretty close in the sense that webcore can do everything the other apps can do and probably more.

It’s definitely not true in terms of the features that are built into the official app, the automations Are fine and may be all you need.

Also, there are a couple of different third-party developers have created some really sophisticated and advanced smart apps which are very popular because they have features that would be hard to build for yourself even in Webcore. That includes @rboy ‘s library, SharpTools, ActionTiles, etc

UNDERSTANDING MESH NETWORKS

As far as getting your IKEA bulbs connected up, try reading post 11 in the following thread (I’ll link directly to that one). After you read that post go up to the top of the thread and read the whole thing and you’ll understand a lot more about how your devices will communicate with each other. :wink:

THE BASIC QUESTION: HOME AUTOMATION CHOICES

With regards to Home Automation, you can do it two different ways.

If you want to make it easy, put aside your expectations of what you might eventually make it do, just start with the app, use the rules engine which is built into it, and choose your devices from the ones which have official integrations, that is, the ones you can add without needing any custom code just by selecting them in the app. To be honest, that’s all that most people ever need, and it’s all that the vast majority, probably over 95%, of smartthings customers do. There’s a lot of power in the built-in features, and a lot of devices to choose from.

Or, you can set out to become a “power user,” which is what most of the people in this forum are, and start diving into Webcore and Connecting up devices that don’t have obvious integrations and using other custom smartapps and DTHs. :wink:

It’s your choice. Both ways work for different people. The second one is a lot more complicated, but it’s not a path you have to take unless you want to and you find it enjoyable, or at least interesting. The smartthings app on its own is more power than most home automation systems in the same price range have. So if you want to just stick with that, everything will be a lot easier and you won’t have to go searching all over the Internet to figure out how to do something. :sunglasses:

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You can take a look at #rboyapps on this forum or www.rboyapps.com for some ready to use apps based on most requested features from users on the forum.

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