SmartThings Smart Home Dashboard Overview

About a year or so ago, SmartThings changed their SmartApp development platform from being hosted on their servers to a remote-hosted model in which developers must find their own hosting (i.e., self-hosted, AWS, etc.). I had already developed a version of my Smart Home Dashboard under the old model, but this change forced me to rewrite it.

So I started on a journey to figure out how to use the new development process. A lot of it was trial and error, and there wasn’t a lot of working examples at the time, so the development became a little messy. But fortunately I finally found a working example to use as a starter and I slowly started piecing the SmartApp together.

Although it’s currently fully functional, it’s too messy and complicated to post as a DIY project to help others wanting to do something similar. So in the near future I plan to start a rewrite that can better accomplish that goal.

In the mean time, I’ve included some screenshots of the current version to help give an idea of some of the features and functions. Just to give you some context, the Home screen lists all of the rooms, presence sensors, and weather. It also shows the temperature and/or humidity for the room if there is a sensor with that capability.

You can see at a glance if there are any lights/switches on (yellow glow), doors opened or unlocked (red background), or some other activity in a given room. If you select a room, it show’s all devices in the room as well as their current status. If the device is actionable, i.e., a switch or a lock, you can press the device to toggle the state.

The Smart Home Dashboard uses Ajax to send commands (i.e., turn on a light) and Web Sockets to receive real-time updates as devices change states.

There are still additional features I want to add and I continue to add support for new types of devices as I get them, but I hope to address some of that during the rewrite.

Let me know if there’s any interest in this project. If there is, I’ll try to move it up on my schedule.

Jeff Fry (FryDay Development)

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