I presume your asking in response to this part?
Keep in mind that this was in response to a request around a pop-up for the dimmer/value-range and a pop-up for selecting fan-speeds.
Apologies if I wasn’t super clear here. As of writing this post, there are four action types you can configure on Super Tiles:
- None - do nothing
- Hyperlink - open a hyperlink (or use REST API / Run Rule syntax)
- Rule - execute a SharpTools rule
- Thing - execute a thing command*
Hyperlink
I think the normal use case for hyperlinks is relatively straightforward. You can add a hyperlink to open another web page (or even open an app). One thing that’s unique about hyperlinks is we have support for special hyperlink syntax that allows you to interact with REST APIs or to Run Rules. While Super Tiles have a native way to execute rules, you might prefer the $.runRule() syntax if you want to pass parameters into your rules.
Rule
Provides a straightforward way to select a rule for execution. Since rules can include logic, like IF Conditions, it’s a really powerful way to interact with your devices. For example, you could create a rule that cycled through different dim levels or preset colors each time the rule was run. Or you might turn on multiple lights at once. Or dynamically change what the rule does based on conditions (eg. are certain people home or not). If a basic Thing command doesn’t do it, I would take a look at rules to see if it could help.
In this example, my rule queries an external API and updates a variable. So this is kind of like a tap-to-refresh concept.
Thing
The Thing action enables you to select a thing and then any of the commands it offers which don’t require parameters. This means commands like on(), off(), push(), play(), pause(), open(), close() and other similar commands that your Thing provides are available.
Commands that require parameters like setLevel(level), setHue(hue), playTrack(trackUrl) are not available directly as Thing actions, but you can access them from rules… and execute the rule from your Super Tile.
During the beta, a common use case we saw was to toggle lights on/off. Unfortunately, the most common device drivers in SmartThings and Hubitat only provide on() and off() commands – they do not provide a native toggle(). So we added a ‘macro’ called ‘Toggle’ to handle this very common case that would have otherwise required rules.
For example, some devices provide a long list of basic commands (without parameters), like a media player:
