Change SmartThings Location Mode based on Guest Checkin [Replacement of Rboy Apps Automation]

Discovered SharpTools and ready to sign up but not sure if there’s an easy way to accomplish what I’m trying to do.

We have vacation homes we manage and want to change the SmartThings location mode at guest check-in/out time (or within parameters tied to those times). Rboy apps (through iCal) via SmartThings allowed us to do this and we have the automations set up. When Rboy Apps broke (due to the deprecation of the IDE), nothing is talking to SmartThings to change the Location Mode.

Is SharpTools the solution that can change my SmartThings location mode based on a iCal event?
Does it have the ability to alter the timing of location mode change (for instance, we want Home to be triggered 4 hours before in a house that has a slow heating system)?

Thank you.

The Rule Engine does not have access to iCal events. Feel free to create a feature request though! We already have support for processing the iCal format for dashboards, so in theory it could be extended to the rule engine. :slight_smile:

Edit: It looks like there’s a recent feature request for it here that you could cast a vote on and perhaps reply with your use-case to bump the thread.

There’s been quite a bit of discussion about this recently on the SmartThings community and it seems like people are using various approaches. There are a variety of solutions specifically targeted to the rental space that some people have switched to - I can’t speak to what solutions are recommended or if people are finding them to be good replacements, but you might search the RBoy threads in the SmartThings community.

SharpTools is a general purpose rule engine and is not specifically targeted to the rental space, but some people have found that their PMS supports sending webhooks based on check-in times or other events and they can use that with HTTP Triggers in SharpTools rules to build out the logic they are interested in.

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