One of the great things about SmartThings is how easy it is to develop for and how active the development community is. Users can create SmartApps for specific scenarios, and then use those SmartApps multiple times in their SmartThings environment as needed. Unfortunately, there isn’t an “app store” type concept within SmartThings. Unless a SmartApp …
Continue reading “Add Community Created SmartApps to SmartThings”
As I’ve switched my home automation from Vera to SmartThings I’ve also been expanding my network of z-wave devices at home. Since SmartThings does such a great job with different notification options I’ve also been looking more into monitoring our home for different kinds of damage or danger. One of the first tasks on the …
Continue reading “Smart Smoke Detection – Using First Alert ZSMOKE with SmartThings home automation”
BBC News has a very interesting story about the ongoing territory disputes China and its neighbors are involved in. Rupert Wingfield-Hayes travels to the disputed area on a Filipino fishing boat to get some of the first photos and videos of China’s ambitious plans: Other countries that claim large chunks of the South China Sea …
Continue reading “China building islands in the South China Sea”
Using logic with MiCasaVerde’s Vera home automation products can be very frustrating. Thankfully, the PLEG plugin is here to help, here is an example.
One of the more frustrating aspects of building z-wave scenes in VERA I’ve found over the years is when multiple points of automation are touching the same switches or sensors. Thankfully there is usually a way to workaround it by using apps like VERA Countdown timer.
