Announcement - Changes to Legacy SmartThings Platform

#10

Sorry, I meant to include one in my post and forgot. There’s a link in the discussion I’ve been following here.

#11

Thanks for that link. The interview with ST head of engineering begins at 39:30.

#12

I am by no means a fly on the wall but I don’t think @ady624 would have done a gap analysis in as detailed as he did if he wasn’t trying to keep similar albeit more streamlined functionality in rules engine.

The way I understood it, i will have two choices: transfer everything to RE manually or transfer everything to Hubitat. Both have the same pain point of moving everything over. Unless there is a migration tool (but I don’t think the Webcore users are a be enough demographic for samsung to care).

#13

I don’t disagree with that. But the existence of functionality in the Rules Engines does not automatically ensure that we will have a user-friendly webCoRE-style interface to work with, which is what many of us want and Adrian indicated the community, not SmartThings, would have to build. (Also, he did say there would be no simple migration, even if a webCoRE II is built).

Perhaps we’ll all be satisfied with the final implementation of the Rules Engine and won’t care. I hope so if that’s the course we have to chart, but I’m skeptical.

#14

Here are my questions regarding webCoRE and the next steps with SmartThings.

Will it be recoded and transitioned over to new Rules API? Will it gain capability of local execution? Will old pistons continue to work? Is webCoRE still being further developed at all?

#15

Adrian, the creator of webCoRE, is now employed by SmartThings, and is actively working on webCoRE v2.

I believe it is being written from scratch, but the UI looked somewhat familiar in the alpha screen shots I have seen. The goal (from Samsung’s perspective) is to keep everything local (so we stop hammering their servers :grin:)

Pistons will have to be re-written, but similar logic should still apply.
(certain elements, like variables, are on the timeline, but I have not actually seen in use yet)

I posted about a dozen screen shots of an alpha version a few months back…

#16

Knowing Adrian, this is likely true. But has there been any actual confirmation of that since the “proof-of-concept” presentation last year? Again, I had the distinct impression that, even if he did create webCoRE II, it would not be on Samsung’s dime.

#17

Then what are they paying him for?
Why would he show off an unpaid “side project” at the giant conference?

Of course, if they are not paying for the UI to be built, it means that there will be no (corporate) restrictions on the final product.

#18

My understanding has always been that they hired him to help develop the Rules API, and that he was recruited in large part because of his accomplishments with webCoRE. I don’t believe he was hired to develop webCoRE II and I’ve seen no evidence that has changed. I was hopeful you might prove me wrong.

My impression was that SmartThings allowed him to show proof of concept for a webCoRE II to show support for the webCoRE community, which is a small but vocal subset of SmartThings users. But Adrian clearly (in my opinion) suggested that while SmartThings was supportive of the idea of webCoRE II development, they did not intend to devote any financial or other resources to the project, meaning all development would be community based.

I’m not trying to argue with you or anyone else nor be a Debbie Downer on the subject. I’m just hoping to separate fact from speculation as those of us invested in webCoRE want to be able to make informed decisions going forward to 2021. As it stands we have no published roadmap and no clear commitment from anyone, only a promise that groovy will disappear in the future.

And that we can surely agree would be ideal, so long as the passion and skill exists in the community to produce a viable alternative to what we have now.

#19

You may very well be right, @bthrock…

Adrian and I are not kicking back in the local bar, so I do not have an “inside” perspective in that sense.

I guess the way I am looking at it is, Adrian’s masterpiece (webCoRE) was designed to work around the limitations in the old groovy based system… Now that he is working directly with the new “system”, I imagine that future hurdles will not be so challenging to overcome. (we finally have a guy on the inside, who is aware of previous obstacles, and will likely program with that in mind)

All that being said, I believe that the creator(s) of the new GUI should definitely be financially compensated for their work.

#20

Is there a beta group for this yet or is it all word-of-mouth still?

#21

The date has been set for ending the Classic app —> October 14, 2020

#22

Thanks for the heads upon. This concerns me very much. Maybe time to switch to HE? There are still custom devices I have that won’t work in new app. Of course, I won’t have those in HE either. Ugh.

Any way to test the new platform without completely switching over?

#23

And Echo Speaks is being discontinued on September 8, 2020

#24

Oh nooooes… that one I wasn’t ready for!

Edit: Wait, is that Echo Speaks on ST only??

#25

Yes, only on ST. It appears ES is the most resource intensive smartapp on the platform.

#26

What! Is that from the dev or did ST/Samsung say that. Maybe that’s why my Alexa speak automations are no longer working.

#27

WCmore to the rescue!

#28

From ST in the link I posted above

But the dev has posted he will make a lite smartapp that will work with the new ST API. No date on when that will become available.

#29

Thanks. I saw that after I posted!