Please help...

Fluz

Hi so...

This is my first post on the forum and to be frank, it was hard to find an alive Smart Home Automation forum. Somehow, it seems like no one place has been decided on as being THE place for smart home tech, anyway.

I currently have a Amazon Alexa Dot, Lifx Bulb & Thats it.

That may not seem like a whole lot but the reason im holding back on purchasing more items is im having a hard time deciding on a platform.

I would like to use a Hub and iv done most of my research into SmartThings. It seems like the best product for what i want to do however i have some questions:
1. Am i able to run a 'Routine' from my PC. That is, trigger a routine. If not, can i web scrape and then run a routine. I know it seems specific but it is a must for my application.
2. I am second guessing my Amazon Amexa choice, at the time i was running an iPhone 6, however it broke and im now using a Pocophone with Android. I dont know if switching to Google Home would have any benifits however i am curious.

The main reason im looking into SmartThings is because i built my own 'hub', running on a PC. From it i can scrape a website, triggering the light to come on, audio to be played and an on-sceeen message. It also has some pre determined 'Presets' for lighting that i find the most useful, however it has no way to 'talk to' Alexa. It would be perfect if i could change this over to SmartThings with a siren, more lights and anything my heart desires.

So i guess, is it possible to have a PC trigger a Routine, or any other web scrape method to do so.

Thanks, Josh.

mushii

Hi Josh welcome to the AV Forums.

Everything on Smarthings is either going to run on your Smarthings hub or in the cloud.

Looking at what you want to do I am not sure Smarthings is the correct device for you.

Are you intending on running a PC 24/7?

What infrastructure technologies do you want to connect to? WiFi, Zigbee, ZWave ?

How do you want to interact with your SmartHome? Events, sensors, timers, scenes, external triggers, tablet, phone, smart assistant?

What will be it’s principal functionality? Lighting, security, HVAC?

The more high level detail will help

Fluz

Hi Mushii,

I am a volunteer firefighter and so have need to be woken up in the night. This website: https://mazzanet.net.au/cfa/pager-cfa-all.php displays all my states calls and messages. I built my own software to scrape it and trigger python scripts to active my Lifx bubl however as i wish to expand my smart devices into Motion sensors for lights, drip sensors for a pump and other common smart uses.

I did look into running a PC 24/7 however not only is it costly, it is also quite loud, even if u use 'stick' sized PCs.

I would still like to use an assistant, currently have an Amazon Alexa Echo Dot.

Wifi and zWave are main protocols I would like to run.

When you say that everything on SmartThings is either going to run on the hub or on the cloud, what do you mean by on the cloud. I would like to trigger a routine simply with a PC script or an 'On cloud' script that i could have hosted on a server. However, my #1 prefrence would be some sort of SmartThings intergration for web scraping.

I know this is a little confusing and specific but it is essential to my smart home.

Thanks.

mushii

I think your expectation for Smarthings is a little too high. You really need to be looking at the next tier of HA products that can manage more complex interactions although you maybe able to do what you want using IFTTT. My problem is that Smarthings does not have a good track record for up-time, they have had some pretty catastrophic multi-day server outages, which given what you want to use it for is not ideal. As it has resulted in zero functionality with Samsung not being able to provide ETAs of return to service.

Fluz

Could u provide a suggestion of an alternative?

mushii

I would either look at

Fibaro HomeCentre
Homey
Homeseer
Indigo (mac)
Domoticz

I am sure that I have missed a few that others will chime in on.
I run Homeseer because I wanted all of my processing locally and not in the cloud. Mine runs on an Intel NUC which is silent. It has never missed a beat.